Fruits and nuts

Nibbles: GMO promises promises, African livestock outside & in, Vegetables galore, Farmer videos from US & Sri Lanka, Fermentation beery & otherwise, Yam people & traits, Botanic garden diversity, ECPGR, CWR in US & Benin, Herbarium data, Baobab info, Olean info, Pix, Indian cooking

Nature “celebrates” 30 years of GMOs.
African pastoralists know how not to destroy their livelihoods shock.
African urban dwellers keep livestock shock.
Vegetables can be perennial too. Oh yes indeedy. Not bitter gourd though, alas. Nor cucumber. And in other news, there’s a Bitter Melon Council. And also a campaign to promote zucchini in Iowa.
Climate change reaches farmers in the Pacific NW. Can their Sri Lankan colleagues be far behind?
Always good to have a beer story. Well, maybe not.
Speaking of fermentation, this WSJ piece looks interesting, from the two sentences of it I can read. No, wait. Oh crap, try this.
A hummus dip goes really nicely with beer. Is this the quinoa story again?
A yam conference for the ages. Will they discuss the new trait ontology?
Botanic gardens reach out. Genebanks next? Maybe not.
You mean like the European ones, perhaps?
That US CWR paper from the horse’s mouth. And a similar thing from Benin. But where does all that data come from?
Baobab notes to go with all those factsheets.
The Saharan olive needs a factsheet too. IRD obliges.
Cool set of agriculture photos.
A couple of different views of Indian food. Thanks to Cara de Silva and Diana Buja.

Chickpea harvest more than doubled last year – in the US. Whatever happened to garbanzos?
Introduction to cassava and cyanide.
Conserving maize diversity in Guatemala.
And potato diversity in Peru.
Historical insights into Kew’s museum display of an economically important palm.
Mainstream media still confused about Svalbard and all that.
Asparagus is topologically artichoke. The Botanist in the Kitchen continues her exploration of bracts.
Linguist ramps up his knowledge of the Alliums. (See what I did there? Nothing remarkable, almost everyone else succumbs too.)
It takes real research to grow food locally, ask the scientists in Arkansas. And their supporters.

Today’s Nibbles is a Kenya edition. Just because.
But we’ll start with an African foodie revolution that is passing that country by.
Cattle need diverse foods too, so don’t neglect those forbs, Kenyans.
A young Kenyan turns to vegetable growing. Not, alas, of the traditional kind. Yet.
Well, he better get a move on, because it says here people are after his seeds.
Seeds are what the traditional medicine industry could do with.
I guess there’s always litchis.
Wonder what they’ll do to land use patterns.
But will there ever be perennial sorghum?

Summary of that 14th Session of the CGRFA we were all following last week.
Conferences on “Changes in alpine and arctic flora under climate change” we’ll all be following in September. If you’re from Balkans, Caucasus, Central Asia, the organizers need you in particular. But hurry, before it’s too late!
In other news, young scientists are into beer.
India’s Directorate of Sorghum Research gets a genebank. Relationship with NBPGR unclear.
Media portrayals of pastoralists in Kenya, China and India: The Report. The Brief. The Press Release. ILRI reaction?
Neglected crops get the genomic treatment. And why that might be a good thing.
CIAT wades in on quinoa.
Call for information on Physalis peruviana cultivation in Europe.
Biodiversity databases have errors! Shock! Horror! Probe!
The nutritional difference between organic and conventional tomatoes deconstructed.
Your maple sugaring questions answered. Nice idea.
Double crop for development. I guess that’s the sustainable intensification everyone is talking so much about.
If in doubt, clone it!
Wait, wait, wait, we missed Earth Day?
And also a bunch of UK plant science conferences. (I had of course linked to the storifications here originally, but they’ve gone now of course.)

Someone needs to tell the Los Angeles Times that plantains are not the “tropical cousin of the banana”.
Someone else needs to tell “British and American agricultural advisers” that poppies are generally going to be a better bet than cotton in Helmland Province. Like they were in Ghazipur.
Is there anyone who can tell schools not to serve whole fruit, when children prefer bite-sized pieces?
And who will tell us what happens at the Workshop in the EU Seed Law, in Vienna today and tomorrow?
In which we are once again told that sustainable intensification is the answer, but not how to do it.
A tool for helping agricultural development types figure out what to do about nutrition.
Let the Times of India tell you about how wild fruits and seeds are used in traditional medicine.
ISRIC tells the world about its new soil maps of Africa.
And the US government about its biodiversity, also in maps.
Lots of people recently told their stories of how genomics is going to revolutionize genetic resources use to a meeting in ICRISAT, and now ICRISAT tells us.
A new film tells the story of rice savers in India. Not, presumably, though, Bihar.
Are you really telling me Genghis Khan was a food waste champion?