Cooking

Nibbles: Old breweries, Old grape seeds, New beer, Sheep breeds, Indian rice landraces, GM rice in China, Barley breeding, Botanical tipple, Mata Atlantica conservation, Quinoa

There are some really old breweries out there.
And some really old grape seeds in Sardinia.
The beauty of hops. New and old.
Some very photogenic old sheep breeds in the Lake District.
Someone has discovered some old salt-tolerant rice landraces. Also medicinal and aromatic rices. Well I never.
Meanwhile, at the other end of the rainbow, the Chinese dip a toe into gourmet GM rice.
Brit boffins breed flood-proof barley.
Botanical gin. Two of my favourite things, combined.
Saving the Pau Brasil is, well, complicated. But what else was it going to be?
Yet another roundup of the pros and cons of quinoa.

Professor wants to copyright the name biltong, should be forced to eat nothing else until he takes it back.
Getting to the bottom of coco de mer.
PGRFA course at Wageningen. Expensive, but worth it, and you can apply for a NFP/MENA Fellowship, check on the course overview PDF.
The IRRI genebank manager has seen the future of genebanks: “…we need to work on building the system to estimate breeding value from genotype, and then we will be able to feed more detailed knowledge to the breeders.” He probably means DivSeek. Now IRRI really need to get a different stock image of him and his genebank.
The UK now has a National Black Poplar Clone Bank. Not quite as big as the above.
A different take on Bill’s Big Bet. And more along the same lines.
Hybrid Kuroiler chickens a big hit in Uganda. Bill may be onto something after all.
“As American as apple pie” is just the beginning. I want to see Kuroilers at KFC.

University of Birmingham conservation course alumnus/a? This one’s for you.
Phonemes follow human genomes. Kinda. No word on crop and livestock genomes. Yet.
A whole blog on eating insects.
Interesting: “Each IPBES assessment must include reference citations to indigenous knowledge, and every review panel must include experts in this.”
Curated list of methods in Plant Phenotyping and Phenomics.
Nestlé’s sustainable agriculture guy visits CIAT, plants coconut, talks supply chains.
Camelcino, anyone?
UK yeast genebank reaches totally arbitrary milestone.

Our Hungry Planet: Agriculture, People and Food Security. Free online course from University of Reading.
What if people in country X ate the same diet as people in country Y?
The Man wants to fingerprint your stash.
Or maybe fragrantly hopped beer is your poison?
A new one on me: Conservatoire des Collections Végétales Spécialisées (CCVS).
All politics is local. All control of forestry enterprises ought to be.
Victoria takes to the poppy. Afghanistan unavailable for comment.
The small farmers of Paraguay holding back the flood of soy. Or trying to.
The promise — and curse — of CCN 51. And some context on the whole peak chocolate thing.
Wait, some people think Bhut Jolokia is a cool name?
The grapevine has gone viral. Millions of years ago.
Global Panel of Wise Agricultural People says to biofortify your crops.

Ok, now you have no excuse not to eat taro.
Do your bit to help pawpaws (Asimina triloba) go viral. No, wait, that didn’t come out right.
“Pica is an unexplainable food curiosity—the overwhelming desire to eat the inedible.” Or, as we say in my house, German food.
Tuscan seed journey.
Living off forest foods can be fun.
Pork beats beef.
Picturing the Earth. Some of it ain’t pretty. But even then it’s pretty.
Picturing working dogs. All of them pretty.
Kenyan chef Ali L’artiste tucks into Rwandan bananas and beans before it’s too late.