- PhD student from East Africa wanted to study greenhouse gases, biochar and other cool stuff.
- Weevils eat half the cowpea harvest. Solution in the bag.
- Ecuadorian chocolate experts visit the World Bank. Did they bring samples?
- Lots of ecdysteroids in quinoa. Not clear to me if this is good or bad.
- Yes, Malagasy rice is different.
- Evaluating a Dang Rasimi jackfruit. Looks pretty good to me.
- Crop wild relatives in genebanks help with drought tolerance in wheat.
- Meta-paper on livelihoods diversity in rice-wheat-livestock systems Indo-Gangetic Plains has no room for varietal diversity in rice-wheat.
Nibbles: Bean gap analysis, Protected areas 2.0, NZ livestock, French boar, Taro in Hawaii, UNEP, Moringa, False flax, Hordeum
- Let “The Bean Counters” show you where to collect wild Phaseolus.
- Protected areas get wikified.
- Expensive book published on the heritage breeds of New Zealand.
- Wild boar going crazy in France.
- Another Hawaiian taro festival. And why not.
- Ecosystems for climate change adaptation. No agroecosystems though.
- Moringa! Not just for people.
- Camelina! Not just for Europeans.
- What is it about barley wild relatives lately?
Nibbles: Amazon agriculture, Livestock conservation, Chestnut redux, COP 10, Stone Age flour
- More on that thing about how the Amazon was once pullulating with people. And why.
- Why conserve livestock genetic resources. And one possible way to do it.
- The American people are bringing back the American chestnut.
- COP-watchers, something to amuse yourselves with if things get dull.
- Even Neanderthals understood the benefits of a diverse diet. Though not, perhaps, of jewellery.
Nibbles: Abalone, Yak, Forests, Mountain plants, Yams, Ulmus, Apple, Banana
- We now know how to harvest abalone sustainably. Is there anything we cannot do?
- Wild yaks get assessed. Wait, there are wild yaks?
- “…forests played a central role in the rise of the modern state.” Not as flaky as it sounds.
- Andean plants at risk from, well, everything.
- Yams in Nigeria, from festivals to in vitro.
- London’s elms.
- “[L]ike biting into a perfume bottle, but without shards of glass piercing your tongue.” A knobbed russet.
- Banana evolution just got more complicated.
Evergreen agriculture: crops and trees
What if growing maize under trees – really under trees, under the canopy – improved yields by 280 per cent? It did in Malawi. Even if this practice doesn’t translate well to developed world agriculture, the principles of Evergreen Agriculture can.
Matt at Muddy Green takes a look at Evergreen agriculture: crops and trees, a different kind of agroforestry. I’ve always imagined that agroforestry was more about alley cropping or the like, but this idea of planting under the trees seems rather interesting and rather successful, at least in places where the trees are bare during another crop’s growing season.