- Slow Food and FAO join forces “to develop joint actions to improve the livelihoods of small-scale farmers and others working in rural areas”. What could possibly go wrong?
- Five ways to enjoy a walnut. But not until next harvest (except for 1 and 2)
- A Pan-Hellenic Seed Exchange Festival took place last weekend. Sorry we missed it.
- A revision of the Dulcamaroid Clade of Solanum L. (Solanaceae). Oh boy! Wild relative heaven.
- If you’re in Suffolk, England, on 25 May you could join a study visit about agroforestry. And tell us about it here.
- Fascinating write-up of Ajay Jha, whose “primary objective is to find profitable models for sustainable, nutritious, local urban and small acreage food production”.
Nibbles: Bamboo shoots, Cassava bread, Tomato reefer, Visionary scientists, Price volatility, Potato nutrition, Climate change & biodiversity
- After artichokes and asparagus, bamboo, obviously.
- And after bamboo? Cassava, by any of its many names.
- Botanical confusion: “Good tomatoes are a lot harder to get than good pot.” Not where I come from.
- The Union of Concerned Scientists is concerned about US agriculture.
- Per Pinstrup-Andersen is concerned about food price volatility, not high food prices.
- And Jeremy is concerned that he may not be eating enough potatoes.
- Luigi, for his part, is concerned about the two thirds of common plants that CIAT et al. say could lose 50% of their range by 2080.
Brainfood: Forest restoration, Vegetable diversity, Intensification costs, Community forests, Baja oases, Nigerian foods, European wetlands, Landscape diversity & resilience, European conservation prioritization
- Can Ficus Sp. Forests Be Restored Through Vegetative Propagation? Yes. But with the reduced genetic diversity and all, for how long?
- A qualitative assessment of diversity and factors leading to genetic erosion of vegetables: a case study of Varamin (Iran). Species richness only, settle down. But, pace the title, quantitative.
- Agricultural intensification escalates future conservation costs. Because of higher land rents. Just can’t win.
- Common property protected areas: Community control in forest conservation. They can work.
- Baja California peninsula oases: An agro-biodiversity of isolation and integration. Both too much and too little isolation are bad.
- Cultivated, caught, and collected: defining culturally appropriate foods in Tallé, Niger. …and integrating them into development.
- Wetlands in Europe: Perspectives for restoration of a lost paradise. Down to 20% and counting. Someone should count the crop wild relatives in them.
- Economic Resilience and Land use: The Cocoa Crisis in the Rio Cachoeira Catchment, Brazil. Diverse land use means more resilience.
- Priorities for biodiversity monitoring in Europe: A review of supranational policies and a novel scheme for integrative prioritization. Yeah, but doesn’t integrate crop wild relatives, does it?
Nibbles: GMO promises promises, African livestock outside & in, Vegetables galore, Farmer videos from US & Sri Lanka, Fermentation beery & otherwise, Yam people & traits, Botanic garden diversity, ECPGR, CWR in US & Benin, Herbarium data, Baobab info, Olean info, Pix, Indian cooking
- Nature “celebrates” 30 years of GMOs.
- African pastoralists know how not to destroy their livelihoods shock.
- African urban dwellers keep livestock shock.
- Vegetables can be perennial too. Oh yes indeedy. Not bitter gourd though, alas. Nor cucumber. And in other news, there’s a Bitter Melon Council. And also a campaign to promote zucchini in Iowa.
- Climate change reaches farmers in the Pacific NW. Can their Sri Lankan colleagues be far behind?
- Always good to have a beer story. Well, maybe not.
- Speaking of fermentation, this WSJ piece looks interesting, from the two sentences of it I can read. No, wait. Oh crap, try this.
- A hummus dip goes really nicely with beer. Is this the quinoa story again?
- A yam conference for the ages. Will they discuss the new trait ontology?
- Botanic gardens reach out. Genebanks next? Maybe not.
- You mean like the European ones, perhaps?
- That US CWR paper from the horse’s mouth. And a similar thing from Benin. But where does all that data come from?
- Baobab notes to go with all those factsheets.
- The Saharan olive needs a factsheet too. IRD obliges.
- Cool set of agriculture photos.
- A couple of different views of Indian food. Thanks to Cara de Silva and Diana Buja.
Brainfood: Gender and agrobiodiversity, Insect diversity, Contests and agrobiodiversity, Chinese rice breeding, Wheat origins, Historic abundance, History and conservation
- Governance of seed and food security through participatory plant breeding: Empirical evidence and gender analysis from Syria. Women are important.
- Comparison of pollinators and natural enemies: a meta-analysis of landscape and local effects on abundance and richness in crops. Both can be managed at the same time.
- Biodiversity and recipe contests: Innovative socioecological approaches to capture ecological knowledge and conserve biodiversity in Arunachal Pradesh. Women are important.
- Rice breeding in the post-genomics era: from concept to practice. China is where it’s at.
- SNPing Aegilops tauschii genetic diversity and the birthplace of bread wheat. Caspian Iran is where it’s at.
- Inferring recent historic abundance from current genetic diversity. It might actually be possible to infer historic abundance from the genetics of contemporary samples only, which seems kinda awesome.
- Europe’s other debt crisis caused by the long legacy of future extinctions. The current conservation status of vascular plants in Europe reflects the situation in 1900. Can’t help thinking this should be mashed up with the one above.
- Low genetic diversity and significant structuring in the endangered Mentha cervina populations and its implications for conservation. Low only at population level, so must conserve multiple populations. Which one would probably have done anyway, but now at least we know which.