- ICRAF are having their Science Week. Follow it on Twitter. And let us know if you’re there and want to write about anything agrobiodiversity related that comes up.
- Plant Genome Evolution 2013 has been and gone, alas, but Chris Pires has storified the whole thing, pretty much. Lots of crops in there. But it’s disappeared now, of course.
- Bioversity and FAO redesign their websites. Tell them what you think.
- Diane Ragone talks breadfruit. With video goodness.
- Aussie researcher talks about landing Gates grant to improve African livestock. Hopefully some conservation in there somewhere.
- Decentralizing data: to empower communities; and to empower geeks.
- Data, you said? Here’s data on why Kansas needs wheat breeders.
- The world’s chief agriculture scientists want to share genetic resources. Good of them.
- Europe used to have more melons.
- Enough with the Peruvian superfoods meme, please.
- I may have said this before, but it’s still valid: I need a drink.
There’s an app for Hawaiian breadfruit?
Well of course there is. And pretty nifty is it too. 
Take a real or virtual tour around Hawai‘i’s Big Island and learn about the culture and history of the island through stories of the ‘ulu (breadfruit). This engaging and resource rich app includes tour stops of cultural interest, breadfruit recipes, Hawaiian mythological stories, interviews with local cultural practitioners and links to information about how to cultivate and use breadfruit.
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Ho’oulu ka ‘Ulu is a project of the Hawai‘i Homegrown Food Network and the Breadfruit Institute of the National Tropical Botanical Garden. Learn more at: www.breadfruit.info or www.breadfruit.org
Nibbles: Weeds, Poverty, Mycorrhizae, Gluten-free wheat, Vanilla, Different apples, Pashmina wool
- Oh dear, someone else has fallen for the “weeds are better for you” line, cautious question-mark notwithstanding.
- And guess what? The poor don’t buy nutritious foods. How silly of them.
- Great post explaining the great unseen: mycorrhizal fungi as drivers of plant diversity.
- Gluten-free wheat? Really (even if the links still don’t work).
- What would you video on honeymoon in Mexico? A visit to a vanilla plantation. What else?
- Conserving apples and earth apples at opposite ends of the world.
- Oh, no, pashmina’s in trouble!
Giant fruit update
For some reason, this seems to be the time of year which the media sets aside for stories on large fruits. Or largish, anyway. Because I may be spoilt by my time in the tropics, but this “Avozilla” doesn’t look like such a big avocado to me. I was hoping I’d be able to be more precise about this, but I couldn’t find systematic characterization data on the world’s avocado collections, not even in GRIN. And no, I’m not impressed that Avozilla has its own Twitter account either:
“@DailyMailUK: AVOZILLA, world's largest avocado goes on sale at Tesco http://t.co/8wCZl4WiNA pic.twitter.com/gLEV98M0It” Yes, I'm here!
— Avozilla (@Avozilla) September 2, 2013
And likewise, 14-15 grams is not bad for an olive, but there’s bigger, and not all of them are from Italy.
Nibbles: Kenyan millet, Nutritious fruits, Homegardens, Schools, CIAT genebank funding
- Millet helps sends Kenyan to college. Which millet though?
- Some fruits, but not juice, good against diabetes. Coconut not included, alas. Nor bananas, for all their recently revised taxonomic goodness.
- Which both seem as good reasons as any to grown your own.
- And teach about them in schools.
- And conserve them in genebanks. Ok, this piece from CIAT is about neither millets nor fruits, but it’s friday, gimme a break.