Forests & trees

Nibbles: Mapping Life, PES, Quinoa, Forest restoration

Mapping Life is live. Will livestock and crops eventually be there?
How Valuing Nature Can Transform Agriculture. Errr … dunno. Is this really brainfodder?
A humble agronomist considers the de-commoditisation of quinoa in Bolivia.
Bioversity says that forest restoration should make better use of genetic diversity.

40 years of AVRDC celebrated. Lots more stuff on vegetables below, so stick around if that grabbed you.
Breeding with farmers, an ICARDA manual. Are there any examples with vegetables, I wonder?
Let’s Go Local! See the ABC piece before it disappears from the front page. But it’s not just karat bananas that you need, of course.
Going local in Philippines too. And India for that matter. And, ahem, Arkansas. Oh and Amazonia.
Another use for baobab. I feel a factsheet coming on.
And here are some utterly different fruits.
Talking AnGR in Latin America.
GIFT tilapia in India! Look it up, we did a Brainfood on it.
A Belgian milestone. Put out more flags.
Is it Cinco de Mayo yet? Well, break out the tequila anyway.
Is it World Donkey Day yet?
“Farmer associations hope TME 419 will soon spread across the whole country.” That would be a fancy new cassava in DRC. Anybody worried about that at all?
Plant diversity key to zzzzzzzzzz…
Well this will wake you up.

The CGIAR Consortium finds a CGIAR success story. While the Guardian does another.
Talk on honeybee diversity at UC Davis. Hopefully Robert will be available for comment. Meanwhile, across the Pond…
Seeing the food security for the trees.
Yeah I’m just not sure it’s such a good idea to name a new avocado variety Uzi, no matter how good it may be.
Deconstructing the global land rush. And here’s the data… Jatropha everywhere.
The deep roots of globalization. Move over jatropha.
More on that paper on how to recognize a relatively drought-tolerant species.
All tangled up in natural fibres.
How to read organic agriculture debates. Just in case you actually want to read them.
An Indian prepares for the Convention on Biological Diversity‘s meeting in Hyderabad in October. Not too early, is it?
Bean breeders! Funding alert! You have nothing to lose but your diversity.
India posts world record rice harvest — using System of Rice Intensification. Take that, doubters.

Transgenic American Chestnuts on trial, as it were.
1st International Symposium on Jackfruit and other Moraceae to take place 31 August-2 September. Don’t expect access to the papers if you can’t be there. h/t CFF.
Breadfruit better than DEET at deterring mosquitoes. Tastier too.
Crawford Fund opening up opportunities for coconut oil producers.
History of the potato among the Basques. Well, why not?
Microkhan disembowels the rat-meat trade of Mozambique.

Fisherfolk of the Amazon landed on film. But do they sing about it? (And it’s not just an Amazon thing, this dancing and singing about agrobiodiversity. Not by any means.) And should they be doing more slashing-and-burning?
FAO to put all its data in one basket. But including AnGR? WIEWS? One asks more in hope than expectation.
One of the many challenges of vegetatively propagated crops (like potatoes): rapid multiplication. (Well, they could always do an SNP-based tetraploid map of the damn things, couldn’t they.) No such problems with seeds, of course.
There’s been a rapid increase in the patenting of adaptation-related traits, and the private sector in industrialized countries is mainly responsible. Well there’s a surprise. But was that discussed at the CCAFS meeting on breeding objectives for Africa? And it’s just as well to remember that it’s not just breeding that’s needed. Oh, but by the way, you better grab those adaptations while you can…
Regional SE Asian fish genebank proposed. That I’d love to see. Maybe they could share germplasm with, I dunno, Chicago? And not just.