- Lots to catch up on, strap yourselves in.
- The South’s original peanut is the Carolina African runner, and it is in need of help.
- Saudi Aramco World does its usual class number, this time on chili peppers. And, in a similar vein, more than you probably want to know about Tabasco sauce.
- The evolution of DNA sequencing. In 76 slides, no less, but worth it.
- Japanese rice grown in Uruguay for U.S. hipsters. Gotta love globalization.
- Sustainable salmon at long last?
- Mind the gender gap.
- Latest modelling suggests 2% crop yield decline per decade, assuming modest 2 degree C rise in temperatures by 2050. The original paper. We are so screwed. (Well, Uruguayan rice growers and U.S. hipsters aren’t, not so much.) No, really. No, wait…
- You know, if we need supercomputers to tell us that forest corridors are good for seed dispersal, it’s no wonder we can’t stop global warming. Just kidding, I think it’s great that supercomputers get a break from climate models every once in a while. Oh, and isolated trees not entirely useless either.
- Native wild bumblebees also in trouble, not just honeybees.
- So did you miss us? Even more tomorrow to clear the decks.
Nibbles: Frances Seymour, She don’t lie, PNG coffee, Rony Swennen, Corridors, Eating bugs, Potato breeding
- Former CIFOR DG interviewed about Global Forest Watch and more. I would have asked why you can’t import your own data or share a map you make.
- A particularly important place to watch the forest is Honduras, because deforestation there is correlated with cocaine trafficking.
- Not clear from this World Bank piece if deforestation in PNG associated with cultivation of another drug, i.e. coffee.
- Better bananas would be good for forests, wouldn’t they?
- Bah, just let them have corridors, they’ll be fine.
- And don’t forget to eat the forest bugs.
- Ok, I can’t figure out how to fit the history of potato breeding into this narrative. Any of it organic, though?
Nibbles: Brazil agrobiodiversity & nutrition, Chinese mummy cheese, Grey forest literature, ICRISAT chickpea, CIAT cassava & forages, Jamaican cassava
- Brazil revises its National Biodiversity and Action Plan and wants to mainstream biodiversity and nutrition.
- That’s a really old cheese.
- Are you conducting projects testing how the presence of trees affects food production and natural resource management? CIFOR would like to hear from you.
- ICRISAT super-chickpea takes over India.
- And CIAT amylose-free starch cassava to take over Brazil. China next?
- Red Stripe to use cassava. Jamaica? No, they really did want to make cassava beer. Well, come on, things are peachy with cassava bread, why not beer?
Brainfood: Weird coconut, Rainforest management, Pollinators and grazing, Pre-Mendel, Italian grapes, Indian fibre species, Cereal relatives, Brazil nut silviculture
- Scope of novel and rare bulbiferous coconut palms (Cocos nucifera L.). Produces bulbils instead of floral parts.
- Holocene landscape intervention and plant food production strategies in island and mainland Southeast Asia. Like the Amazon.
- Grazing alters insect visitation networks and plant mating systems. More outcrossing in grazed birch woods.
- Imre Festetics and the Sheep Breeders’ Society of Moravia: Mendel’s Forgotten “Research Network.” Before peas, there were sheep.
- Genetic Characterization of Grape Cultivars from Apulia (Southern Italy) and Synonymies in Other Mediterranean Regions. About half are also grown somewhere else.
- Fibre-yielding plant resources of Odisha and traditional fibre preparation knowledge − An overview. 146 species, no less.
- Functional Traits Differ between Cereal Crop Progenitors and Other Wild Grasses Gathered in the Neolithic Fertile Crescent. How do cereal progenitors differ from all the other grasses our ancestors used to eat? Adaptation to competition and disturbance. They were weeds, basically.
- Testing a silvicultural recommendation: Brazil nut responses 10 years after liana cutting. Biodiversity bad for Brazil nuts.
Nibbles: Czech agrobiodiversity, Food Sovereignty reports, Forest Watch, Mexican corn, Youth
- The Czech national genetic resources programme in a nice brochure.
- Food Sovereignty: A Critical Dialogue, by Patrick Mulvany. Another nice brochure. Not entirely clear why it’s not included in the Journal of Peasant Studies special edition on the relevant conference.
- Forests can have Big Data too. Yes, it’s Global Forest Watch. And more from WRI, but it’s really all over the intertubes. No sign of the brochure. Yet.
- “So when I eat this [corn] I eat with all the energy of my history.” No brochures needed.
- Making agroforestry and agriculture in general attractive to yutes. Would a brochure help?