Featured

January 29, 2009

Featured: Gates

From Jacob, on Gates speaks:

Has anyone ever quantified how geo-diverse Africa is? And compared it with, say, Latin America or Asia?

Well? Has anyone?

January 22, 2009January 22, 2009

Featured: Living Labs

You see a comment like this one …

Your blog is a daily inspiration. Thanks.

… and your immediate reaction is to hit the Spam This button. But no, Bertie‘s comment on Living Labs videos online was genuine. That makes it even more welcome.

Thanks to you, Bertie, and LEISA.

January 16, 2009

Featured: Lost in genebank database hell

Dirk on Lost in genebase databank hell:

There are a lot of data on plant genetic resources available. Collectors and curators have spent long hours to add detail to their records. Now, all these data appear to be buried in ever more fancy databases and it is getting near impossible to retrieve a complete record set.

January 11, 2009

Featured coment: rice pests

Yolanda on rice pests:

[T]he real subsidy to biological control in irrigated rice comes from the water! The timing of all of it is also quite remarkable. The flooding cues the aquatic insects to molt into adults. This results in a outward migration of adults that emerge out of the water. The spiders use the rice plants as fishing places, trying to capture as much of the emerging aquatic insects.

Fascinating discussion.

January 8, 2009

Featured comment: citrus

Onkel Bob on Show Yourself (not that it has any relevance to that):

Why didn’t Turks create the same garden scheme as the Persians? Is it their pastoral roots? One would think they would want citrus fruits in their winter pastures. Even after settling in Anatolia, (what we currently call Turkey) the Seljuks and subsequent Turkish migrations never developed the garden schemes we see in SW Asia/Levant.

Fresh Nibbles

Grinding, fermenting, and detoxifying our way to bigger brains — an anthropologist makes the case that food processing, historically women’s work, did as much for human evolution as the mammoth-spearing got credit for.
Speaking of transforming raw ingredients into something civilization-defining: a Japanese temple has been quietly perfecting vegan cooking for 700 years, no marketing department required.
Meanwhile in the Philippines, Naturland, the international association for organic farming from Germany, is linking up with Global Seed Savers Philippines, to help farmers get their hands on indigenous crop diversity before it disappears.
If you want to see what “future-proofing seeds” looks like at scale, the National Soybean Germplasm Collection just turned 100: a century of squirreling away soybean diversity, just in case.
Kazakhstan wants in on the squirreling too: plans are moving forward for a new genebank to safeguard agricultural biodiversity across Islamic Organization for Food Security member states.
The University of Reading is also 100, and in celebration scientists there harvested beans from its cacao collection (yes, it has a cacao collection) to make Britain’s first homegrown chocolate bar since 1932, a novelty act with a serious undertone: climate change is squeezing cacao’s traditional growing belt.
And in Italy, the squeeze is already showing up on the balance sheet: Parmesan’s “Fort Knox” — $350 million of cheese squirreled away as loan collateral — is feeling the heat, with rising cooling costs and falling yields rattling wine and olive oil too.

Published on August 16, 2026