Domestication

Nibbles: Indian agrobiodiversity, High throughput phenotyping, Diet history, Barley and health, Fish biodiversity, Earthworm diversity, Livestock disasters, Irvingia domestication, Caffeine extraction

BBC Food Programme on crop diversity in India, with a little help from Bioversity’s Stefano Padulosi (whose name manages to be pronounced in three different ways in 20 minutes.
How to measure photosynthesis on a grand scale.
The origins of our diet. It’s the interactions, stupid.
Barley as superfood. No, not the fermented kind.
More diverse freshwaters give higher fish yields.
European earthworm diversity mapped. No word on relationship with yields. Surprisingly difficult to see any correlation with agricultural intensification.
It’s been a bad time for livestock (and therefore people) in Mongolia and in Ethiopia.
Domesticating the wild mango that is not a mango but is almost as tasty.
The weird world of the pure caffeine trade.

If you’re going to grown switchgrass as a biofuel, grow it in variety mixtures.
The two wild parents of the cultivated peanut get sequenced.
As also does common bean from its Mesoamerican genepool. Happy International Year of Pulses.
New wild Aussie tomato gets a cool name. No word on when it will be sequenced. Or how long it will last.
Speaking of climate change in Australia, wine might be in trouble.
And more from Down Under: new book on indigenous Australian foods. Some of which may have been cultivated.
Lots of herbarium specimens have the wrong name. Well I never.
CIMMYT and ICARDA collaborate on wheat diversity.
Roman wine rising again from the ashes of Pompeii.
Exhibition on Colombia’s food plants.
Portuguese green broth is no doubt very nice, but definitely needs a new name.
The ancient urban gardens of Istanbul live on.
Kenya gets on top of using biodiversity for climate change adaptation. Or on top of developing a strategy for doing so, anyway.
Ola Westengen has a strategy, but you have to speak Norwegian to hear about it.
Hybrid wheat is 5 years away. How long have they been saying that?
The latest Rice Today has an article on genebank tourism by Mike Jackson (p. 39), who should know.
Iowa State University is offering $900 to eat 3 orange bananas.
Sahaju: saving agricultural biodiversity in India the organic way. Cheaper than $900 too.
Want to multiply up coconuts really fast? They know how to do it in the Philippines.

Spinifex fibres for ultra-thin condoms, with indigenous approval.
Piper borbonense getting its 15 minutes.
Cook Islands shares taros with Samoa. Fingers crossed they’re TLB resistant.
A couple of videos you may only be able to get on Facebook, or at least I can’t find other sources: Ethiopian coffee ceremony, and INRA/CIRAD’s banana and yam collections in Guadeloupe.
Speaking of coffee, drink it while you can. And yes, it’s China’s fault.
The cucumber in England through the ages.
Gourmet maize in Oaxaca right now.
All kinds of gourmet food in Peru right now too.
Ok, ok, a Filipina chef on gourmet heirloom rice too.

No new salinity tolerance in cereals? You need to look at the right thing.
No new crops? Focus on plants’ sex lives.
No hope for drylands? Look to biodiversity.
No new agricultural land? No problem.
No data on neglected Himalayan crops? Got you covered.
No way you’re drinking coffee from civet droppings? Chemistry to the rescue.
No place for the offspring of F1 hybrids in your agriculture? Go apomictic.
No new fruits left to try? Hang in there.
No diversity in your Aragonese homegarden? There’s a genebank for that.
No impact for your agricultural research. Try clusters.
No agroecological patterning to your crop’s genetic diversity? It’s the culture, stupid.