Cooking

Nibbles: Gates & Slim, Aquino, Home genebank, Quinoa indigestion, Cornish pasties, Exotic vegetables, Funny cheeses, Leafsnap, Beekeeping

Bigshots visit CIMMYT, miss opportunity to mention genebank. No, wait…
Bigshot visits IRRI, including genebank.
Yeah but who needs those anyway, you can make your own!
Now the French want their say on quinoa.
Speaking of the French, you think there is any horsemeat in Cornish pasties?
“I grew up with zucchini, but I prefer the flavor and texture of angled luffa.”
Gotta love the fact that there’s a thing called the Rogue Creamery.
Missed the fact that Leafsnap had been named one of the top 10 science apps of 2012.
Germans report on Italians helping Ethiopians. To keep bees. One suspects Ethiopians could teach Italians and Germans a thing or two about keeping bees, but that’s another story.

Today’s genomic breakthrough involves kernel number in maize.
Neolithic people overhunted, then thought better of it.
Was guinea fowl ever domesticated, I wonder?
How to figure out if you’ve looked hard enough. For plants, that is. And some discussion.
Gin is in trouble. But help is at hand.
A workshop on chocolate and vanilla. My kinda event. And chocolate does need help. Gin, chocolate. Pretty soon life wont be worth living.
Simran Sethi’s Twitter chat after TEDxManhattan was storified, but it’s gone now of course. Try this instead.
Final say on that IPBES-1 gabfest.
And the first say on that “Global Consultation on agricultural biodiversity for sustainable food security” thing.

Small is beautiful. No, wait… And more from where that came, ahem, from.
Evidence? We don’t need no stinking evidence.
CIAT blogs about a workshop about a model about prioritization about populations about breeding about beans. While its peach palm thing gets picked up.
Tibetan grasslands feel the heat. Not entirely certain why ICRAF should care, but it’s good to know.
Peaches compatible with maize in Bolivian agrobiodiversity hotspot. Not nearly enough info in this release, will need to chase it up. And here it is.
Rothamstead engineers lipids. But it’s for better nutrition, so that’s ok.
Trad med in RSA.
Fish as an ingredient of complementary foods. Nutritious, I’m sure, but I suspect Crocodile Dundee’s comment on the iguana applies.
US wheat breeders worried about access. Maybe if the country ratified the ITPGRFA?
Filipinos really like purple sweets, apparently. Here are some made of purple yam, ube, Dioscorea alata, call it what you will.

Off-colour jokes pumped out with abandon as Viagra fungus splashed all over headlines.
Two of my favourite words in one conference: sustainable and chocolate. Can I get some archaeology with that? Yes, you can. Trifecta!
Prefer beer to chocolate? We’ve got you covered.
Sudden oak death mapping gets all interactive. Will nobody do something similar for agrobiodiversity?
The geography of the onion. No, not The Onion. And not interactive.
Go online, young scientist! Even if it involves giving banana research priority setting a Facebook page? Well, why not.
Whoa, there’s an Urban Agriculture Summit?
Citrus australasica? Seriously?
CGIAR crown jewels safe at last. No off-colour headlines, please.
Some genebanks doing ok, others not so much.
Gut microbiome kinda sorta implicated in kwashiorkor. And more from NYT.

Natural History Museum wants a wikipedian. So, in a different way, does Crops for the Future.
The poetry of New York cheese labels.
Another crop genome bites the dust.
Kew contemplates the snake gourd.
Now you can outsource your experiments.
Strange bedfellows: small organic farmers and the Tea Party, a marriage made in Nebraska.
Got research on underutilized species (or indeed sustainable food chains) you think you might like to publish?
The OECD publishes a huge study of the biology of Brassica crops. Yes, the OECD.