- What must be done about sorghum in Africa, by someone who should know because they worked at ICRISAT, which has a sorghum genebank.
- ICRISAT also has pearl millet genebanks — in India and Africa. So when did pearl millet become “alternative” in India? Well, at least it’s not on this list of “indigenous foods.”
- 3000 rice genomes (from the IRRI genebank), and 1000 bull genomes. Brave new world.
- The CIAT genebank makes the news, and not a genome in sight.
- An in situ forest genebank deep in the heart of Sabah.
- And you can bet they’re all saving seeds the right way. But there’s always a webinar if not. Or this.
- Micronutrients? It’s the food system, stupid. Yes, indeedy. And there’s even a webinar about it.
- The fascinating microbial system of cheese rinds.
- Sauerkraut has a pretty fascinating microbial system too, I bet.
- Artisanal whiskey is a thing? Isn’t it, basically, moonshine?
- Truffle oil is a scam. Damn.
- Coconut water tries not to seem a scam.
- Heifer Farm shows off its weird carrots. Yeah, they’re more than just about livestock at Heifer.
- Though that doesn’t include insects, I don’t think. Yes, insects.
- Or bluefin tuna. Or the vaquita. But enough of that.
- Plenty of weird tomatoes on this great wiki I came across.
Nibbles: Pig genes, Eating pork, Mesoamerican crops, Apple family farming, Global food security, Wild food in Europe, Student crop videos, Important plants, Teff, Finger millet, Pacific NW grains, African veggies, Genius mangoes
- Asian genes in European pigs are a good thing.
- How about American pigs though?
- Great Spanish language cacao infographic. And more along the same lines.
- Innovative apple family farming in the Tyrol.
- Not sure that will be much use in terms of global food security, as per this recent review, but you never know. Because, you know, climate change?
- Well, there’s always wild food. Though in some places more than others.
- Student videos on the origin of food plants.
- But did any of them change their lives?
- Oxfam thinks teff can change lives.
- Different part of same continent, different grain to revitalize.
- Different continent, different grains to revitalize.
- Bah, who needs cereals when you have indigenous vegetables?
- Wait, what? Seedless mangoes? Why is this not first-page news?
Nibbles: BBC series, Pacific breadfruit & yams, Sustainable diets, Cuba atlas, MSB standards, Biofortification on radio, German food scandals, Mexican foods, Non-PC food, CWR interviews, Old Irish sources, ITPGRFA funding, Crop Trust presentations, ISHS, Neural crest and domestication, Wheat genome
- That BBC mega-doc on botany just started.
- PGR News from the Pacific: breadfruit and yams. My former colleagues keeping busy.
- How sustainable is your diet? Here comes the data.
- Cool historical atlas of Cuba has some agricultural stuff.
- The Millennium Seed Bank’s Seed Conservation Standards, final draft.
- Kojo Nnamdi Show on biofortification.
- German sausage and beer industries hit by scandal. What the hell will Luigi survive on?
- Maize beer, maybe. And amaranth.
- Thankfully neither of which have objectionable names.
- Nigel Maxted of University of Birmingham on crop wild relatives.
- His mate and mine Ehsan Dulloo of Bioversity, on the same thing.
- Ancient Irish apples, both wild and cultivated.
- Seed Treaty is short of funds, but they are working on it.
- The Crop Trust is on Slideshare!
- Banana symposium coming up in August.
- A theory of mammal domestication.
- First stab at the bread wheat genome. A tour de force.
Nibbles: Prof. Mithen, Commons, Park Grass, Maize genome dupe, Training breeders, Insect-eating fungi, Shea, Teff breeding, Cannabis genome, Organic study, Old sunflower domestication, Rick’s tomatoes
- Developer of super broccoli reflects on his career. With photo of collectors in NSFW shorts.
- Touring the commons of the world. Thankfully no tight shorts in sight.
- Video explaining Rothamsted’s Park Grass experiment. Apparel entirely acceptable, don’t worry.
- Ten million-year-old genome duplication finally came good when ancient farmers domesticated maize.
- Training materials for African breeders to be developed.
- Fungal diversity to the rescue of plants, for a change.
- Africa’s black soap.
- Improving teff. That’s a low bar, I suspect.
- A genome I’m sure we can all get behind.
- Oh dear, that organic meta-analysis “flawed” after all. Will it ever end?
- Rethinking sunflower domestication. An oldie but goldie, which re-surfaced today for some reason. Does anyone know where we are with this now?
- The Deliverance of tomatoes.
Brainfood: Old flax, Rice in Spain, Rice in Iran, Mozambican cowpea, Agrobiodiversity reserve, Old olives, Georgian livestock, Crowdsourcing fungi
- Harvesting wild flax in the Galilee, Israel and extracting fibers — bearing on Near Eastern plant domestication. The wild stuff was harvested before the Neolithic Revolution.
- Building resilience to water scarcity in southern Spain: a case study of rice farming in Doñana protected wetlands. Better to restore part of the rice fields to natural wetlands.
- Evaluation of rice dominance and its impact on crop diversity in north of Iran. Rice can’t catch a break in Iran either.
- Evaluation of four Mozambican cowpea landraces for drought tolerance. One of them is promising.
- Agro-Biodiversity Spatial Assessment and Genetic Reserve Delineation for the Pollino National Park (Italy). Somewhat gratuitous use of GIS, as far as I can see, but pretty maps.
- A comparative analysis of genetic variation in rootstocks and scions of old olive trees — a window into the history of olive cultivation practices and past genetic variation. Much more variation among rootstocks than scions.
- The diversity of local Georgian agricultural animals. I’d like to see a Megrelian horse one day, they sound cool.
- Crowdsourcing to create national repositories of microbial genetic resources: fungi as a model. Why just fungi, though?