Fruits and nuts

January 2, 2012January 2, 2012

Leftovers: Coconuts, Genebank, Vegetables, Famine, Danish, Bissap, Brazil nuts, Dates, Papas y mas, Fruit, Rice, Everything

We found these nibbles at the back of the fridge, and they’re not too mouldy, so lets fry them up before we get anything fresh.

Boss of India’s agricultural research exhorts international coconut genebank to do more and be heard.
And, first out of the gate for 2012, Nepal says it will create a new genebank for plants “on the verge of extinction”.
Immigrant urban agriculture — in Cleveland, Ohio.
Aid man Edward Carr interviewed: “drought does not equal famine”
Meetings on “biodiversity” in Europe, under the Danish presidency. Indigestible?
Hibiscus tea, what a tonic.
Resources Research goes crazed for book about brazil nuts, and other Amazonian agrobiodiversity.
A cure for Bayoud disease of dates? And it’s based on medicinal plants!
Pueblos andinos reciben ejemplares de tubérculos nativos. Otra vez?
Guerilla grafting? Now there’s an idea for “covert agriculture”. Wonder what the graftees think.
“The giant panda of the botanical world”? Blimey. A new reserve for real wild rice.
Huge Satoyama-style paper from Bioversity on THE USE OF AGROBIODIVERSITY BY INDIGENOUS AND TRADITIONAL AGRICULTURAL COMMUNITIES IN: ADAPTING TO CLIMATE CHANGE And they’re the ones doing the shouting.

December 19, 2011December 19, 2011

Nibbles: Wild rice, Food forests, Domestication

It isn’t rice, but it is wild. And threatened, by disease, dams and climate change. h/t Sustainable Nutrition.
Food forests. All you can eat blog post, with video goodness.
Archaeology International goes more-or-less open access. Read all about The Early Rice Project, among other treats.

December 19, 2011February 17, 2014

Brainfood: Cassava in Colombia, Tubers in Peru, Breadfruit diversity, Hominins and elephants, Evolution, Domestication, Mongolian sheep, Roads, Econutrition, South Asia food composition

Informal “Seed” Systems and the Management of Gene Flow in Traditional Agroecosystems: The Case of Cassava in Cauca, Colombia. Farmers move cassava around a lot.
Ecological and socio-cultural factors influencing in situ conservation of crop diversity by traditional Andean households in Peru. Farmers should be supported in moving tubers around more.
Nutritional and morphological diversity of breadfruit (Artocarpus, Moraceae): Identification of elite cultivars for food security. There’s a lot of it.
Man the Fat Hunter: The Demise of Homo erectus and the Emergence of a New Hominin Lineage in the Middle Pleistocene (ca. 400 kyr) Levant. Disappearance of elephant led to replacement of Homo erectus. Quite a difference from the more recent hominin-elephant dynamic.
Fitness consequences of plants growing with siblings: reconciling kin selection, niche partitioning and competitive ability. All agriculture is about reconciling kin selection.
Cultivation and domestication had multiple origins: arguments against the core area hypothesis for the origins of agriculture in the Near East. Revisionism rules.
Tracing genetic differentiation of Chinese Mongolian sheep using microsatellites. Five populations clustered by fancy science into, ahem, five populations.
Road connectivity, population, and crop production in Sub-Saharan Africa. Fancy science reveals better roads would be good for agriculture. Hell, my mother-in-law could have told them that.
Econutrition: Preventing Malnutrition with Agrodiversity Interventions. Home gardening is the way to go.
Carotenoid and retinol composition of South Asian foods commonly consumed in the UK. Palak paneer is not just good, it’s good for you.

December 17, 2011November 29, 2017

Nibbles: Coffee cryo, Potato catalogue, Chickpea Revolution, Community seed bank, Livestock gifts, Mexican grinding, Agroforestry in Pakistan, CGIAR, Japanese mint

The value of conserving coffee diversity? Actually more like the cost, but anyway.
CIP publishes a hardcopy variety catalogue. How quaint.
The latest installment of the Consortium’s pean to the CG at 40 is all about chickpeas.
Indian farmer to set up “collective seed bank for climate emergencies and future generations.” No word on whether he’s using Climate Analogues.
I All African Horticultural Congress proceedings online.
The case for and against livestock handouts.
Mexican men do not grind.
World Livestock 2011 out online as bunch of PDFs. How quaint.
Pakistanis told to turn to agroforestry before it’s too late.
Head of CGIAR says we need agricultural research to feed the world. Well he would, wouldn’t he.
There’s money in them thar mints.

December 15, 2011January 15, 2014

Nibbles: Law book, Sheep breeding, Pig breeding, Pink mushrooms, Coconut genome, Cassava genome, Apples in the Big Apple, Street food, Irish corner, Peach palm tissue culture, Seed saving, Kenyan farmers, First farmers, Tenure, Peppermint facts, Mountains, Taro network, Shea

Juliana Santilli guest-blogs on the book Agrobiodiversity and the Law over at Agrobiodiversity Grapevine.
ICARDA tells communities how to set up a sheep breeding programme.
While an Indian institute breeds pigs, with Canadian help.
Another Indian institute does the same for mushrooms, with no help.
And yet another sequences the coconut genome.
While BGI sequences a whole bunch of CIAT cassava stuff. Only yesterday they were doing rice. Yeah, but only 50, and you gotta keep those sequencers going, don’t you? Would be nice to know how much the CGIAR is paying BGI annually. Do they get frequent flyer miles? Have they negotiated a corporate rate?
A Kazakhstan apple tree grows on the East River. A forest, actually. If it had been in England, it might eventually feature here. Ok, ok, our quest for connections is occasionally overdone. Made you look, though.
Ah, kimchi! Ah, fish empanadas! So much interesting food, only one stomach lining…
Danny tells us about Ireland’s CWR database. In other news, Ireland has CWR. Oh, and then he goes crazy on the Biodiversity for Nutrition mailing list. Did he get his goat is what I want to know.
AoB on in vitro peach palms. Why read the paper, when AoB abstracts the abstract?
Bifurcated Carrots on seed saving in Canada. Video goodness galore.
And while we’re talking cinema, here’s news of a movie on a year in the life of four Kenyan farmers.
From Kenyan farmers to First Farmers. The Womb of Nations. I like that. And more. Agricultural hearths. I like that too.
Four days of discussion about land tenure. May not be enough, actually.
“…70 per cent of the peppermint sold in the US is descended from a mutant in a neutron-irradiated source.” Good to know.
I missed International Mountains Day. Again.
That EU-funded taro mega-project from a PNG perspective.
What I like about this Worldwatch series on neglected plants is that they’re not factsheets. Yet.