Domestication

Nibbles: FAOSTAT, Drought, Seeds, Helianthus, Coffee trade, CePaCT, Figs, Old rice and new pigeonpea, Navajo tea, Cattle diversity, Diabetes, Art, Aurochs, Cocks

FAO sets data free. About time.
Presentation on drought risk and preparedness around the world. Nice maps.
A Facebook for seeds?
The diversity of Jerusalem artichoke. In France.
Coffee certification 101.
Nice plug for SPC’s Centre for Pacific Crops and Trees.
The fig of choice in San Francisco.
Back to traditional rice varieties in India. But forward to new pigeonpea varieties in Malawi. Go figure.
Navajo tea. Would love to try it.
“The mixed (east-west) affiliation of Mongolian cattle parallels the mixed affiliation of Mongolians themselves.”
Lancet article mentions Lois Englberger and her Go Local work in the Pacific in context of diabetes epidemic in Asia-Pacific.
Edible art.
More on bringing back the aurochs. Does anyone really want one, though?
Great variety of rare and exotic poultry breeds. Temptation to pun smuttily averted, mostly.

Rejoice, Dorian Fuller is blogging again!

Rethinking peanut genetic diversity. All you need is a new marker.
Saving the English hay meadow. Hey, there’s a few crop wild relatives in there, apart from anything else!
30,000 year-old fibres not flax after all?
Today’s modifier for “Green Revolution” is “old-fashioned.”
Maize evolution is a tale of chromosome doubling and subsequent divergence of the two sets.

Long article on the politics (and more) of maize in Mexico.
Yet more on the slow comeback of millets in (parts of) India.
International Conference on Pollinator Biology, Health and Policy on July 24-28, 2010 at Penn State.
Hunted ungulates are semi-domesticated.
“…psychoactive plant toxins were a mundane occurrence in the environments of hominid evolution, and our ancestors may have been exploiting plant drugs for very long periods of time.”
“I was confronted with centrefolds showing downy, smooth petals and moistened, hot-pink lips that pouted in the direction of tautly curved shafts and heavily veined pouches.”

Botany Photo of the Day is an onion wild relative! Pretty.
More on that livestock-can-help-reduce-desertification thing, this time from Scientific American.
Breeding Striga-resistant sorghum. Whatever it takes to protect local beer, boffin-dudes!
Emmer wheat reviewed to bits.
No passport data for your barley? Fear not.
Rachel Laudan ably defends Hawaiian food.
Origins of almond traced to Iran. Not for the first time.
Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture: A Commons Perspective. Presentation from our friends at FAO.
Presentation on the untapped potential of cassava in the Great Lakes region of Africa. One of many from CIAT lately. Check out their stuff on beans too.
The Seed Cathedral of Shanghai. Thanks to those public awareness wizards at Kew.
Big shindig on biofortification. Be there, or be malnourished.
Times of India bangs the drum for nutritious millets.
Yet more loveliness from serious amateur pea breeder Rebsie Fairholm.