I can’t believe I forgot to include news of the President’s homebrew in the list of my favourite agrobiodiversity stories of the past few weeks. I suppose it was all done by the Obama campaign as part of a complicated social media strategy to deflect attention from the Republican convention, but I don’t care. I like that the hop varieties involved, Kent Goldings and Fuggles, have venerable, and not uninteresting, histories.
Nibbles: Aguaje, Super pasta, Banana battery, Tomato love, Tomato hate, Microgreens, NUS, Fortuneii, Coffee, Uran agriculture
- Today’s new superfruit. This one doesn’t surprise me.
- Tomorrow’s super-spaghetti. This one really baffles me.
- Today’s new source of bioenergy: bananas. Shocking.
- 50 ways to love your tomatoes. Turn ‘em to jam, Pam.
- One reason to hate tomatoes, for good bad muslims.
- Trendy micro greens are more nutritious. Get ‘em young, chum.
- “If they are so good, why are they not spreading on their own?” Crops for the Future gives NUS the third degree.
- Robert Fortune, pioneer biopirate.
- Forget oil, water and phosphorus. Peak coffee is as scary as it gets.
- How to save urban agriculture: by the numbers.
Brainfood: Lathyrus sativus, Leafy green porridge, iDArTs, Pungency, Earth ovens, Domestication, Recovery, Maize genomics
- Exploring the genetic diversity of Ethiopian grass pea (Lathyrus sativus L.) using EST-SSR markers. They’re variable, especially in Gonder, and future collecting missions need to give “due attention to underrepresented regions”.
- Green leafy porridges: how good are they in controlling glycaemic response?. Pretty good, but the leafy greens may not be what you’re expecting.
- iDArTs: increasing the value of genomic resources at no cost. No cost for genotyping, that is; the analysis probably does cost.
- A versatile PCR marker for pungency in Capsicum spp. Beats having to taste each progeny plant, I suppose.
- Earth Ovens (Píib) in the Maya Lowlands: Ethnobotanical Data Supporting Early Use. The food preparation method is as old as the food itself; 3400-3000 bce.
- Patterns and processes in crop domestication: an historical review and quantitative analysis of 203 global food crops. Terrific, broad survey, worth more of a write-up.
- Changes in Avian and Plant Communities of Aspen Woodlands over 12 Years after Livestock Removal in the Northwestern Great Basin. Removing livestock leads to “recovery of biological integrity”. Because livestock are not integral to anything.
- Historical genomics of North American maize. Fascinating analysis indicates selection based on a limited set of ancestor lines, and “decreased diversity in the ancestry of individual lines”.
Nibbles: Drought, Vegetable talks, Bees, Communications, Resilience, Fungi, Breadfruit tools, Taxonomy, Orphan crops, ICARDA
- The Farnsworth Professor of International Agricultural Policy (Emeritus) and Deputy Director, Center on Food Security and the Environment, Stanford University talks about the drought on his Iowa farm.
- While Ted offers 11 talks on the transformative power of vegetables.
- A new use for urban bees; protecting the lead on church roofs.
- “Agricultural researchers in developing countries are keen to communicate their research …” Scidev.net communicates.
- Growing a high-value crop instead of a staple is not resilience.
- Growing mushrooms in a laundry basket might well be.
- Growing breadfruit absolutely requires some simple processing tools if it is to be.
- Speaking of growth, Jeremy abuses his position of power to direct you to Eight Fallacies about Growth
- HarvestChoice grapples with the nomenklatura problem; which genius came up with SPAM?
- The Christian Science Monitor reports that orphan crops will be the saviour of African agriculture. Again.
- ABC (Oz) fears that war will destroy the ICARDA genebank, forgetting all about that Doomsday vault.
Nibbles: Climate change data, Transcriptomics, Food industry trends, Gelato event
- Climate Adaptation Country Profiles from the World Bank. Better than you might think.
- You don’t need the whole genome, apparently. Now they tell us.
- Where the global food industry is going. Some opportunities there if you think agrodiversity is important, Shirley.
- Wait, there’s a 6-day international event on gelato?