- Liberation: Proof, if proof were needed, that what you really need to snaffle EU funding is an acronym.
- Not just yields but nutritional value of staple crop threatened by climate change.
- Bee crisis still bad news for agriculture.
- Bee crisis still good news for researchers.
Nibbles: Mango, Money, Holy guacamole
- “Top 8 Wonderful Things You Can Do With A Mango.” Kenyan clickbait. I bought it.
- “Third Call for Project Proposals under the Treaty’s Benefit-sharing Fund.” Seed Treaty clickbait. I’m not qualified.
- “Guacapocalypse” — a headline to reckon with. Here’s the back story to climate change and avocados.
Nibbles: ICRISAT award, CGIAR funding, Chinese medicine, Gut bacteria, Bee research, Sri Lankan law, Wolf Prize, Field Guides, Tapa exhibition, GFFA2014
- Today in dodgy journalism, part 1: ICRISAT gets a new mandate crop? What was the picture editor thinking. And smoking.
- Today in dodgy journalism, part 2: Two typos in the obsolete name of the CGIAR.
- Dissecting Chinese traditional medicine. Or would that be puncturing?
- Hunter gatherers have special gut bacteria.
- Bees: “That’s the beauty of the research. Because we’re still short on info, everything’s worth knowing about.”
- Maple syrup tasting. Nice gig if you can get it.
- Activist objects to proposed new seed law in Sri Lanka.
- UC Davis wheat geneticist Jorge Dubcovsky wins 2014 Wolf Prize in Agriculture. Congrats.
- Sandy Knapp on what she does all day.
- The future of field guides. Yes, they have one.
- Tapa cloth, in Cologne of all places. Don’t think there were any from Palau, though.
- Abschlusskommuniqué of the Global Forum on Food and Agriculture 2014 supports conservation and use of agricultural biodiversity. Phew.
Nibbles: Agroecology, Genomics meet, African botany meet, Gardens, ISHS, Market chains, KFC in Africa, Wine terroir, Vanilla research, Dye mushrooms, French agrobiodiversity research, Indian genebank, Policy newsletter, Eels, Neolithic grain
- USDA should think about agroecology more. Or at all?
- The latest from PAGXXII. Lots on domestication, genebanks, crop improvement, all that cool stuff.
- There’s also AETFAT going on, and it’s just as cool. Maybe more so. Though less socially networked, I guess.
- How public gardens should build up living plant collections. You’d have thought they’d know.
- An update on plant genetic resources from ISHS. Lots happening…
- How to support agrobiodiversity through sustainable sourcing.
- KFC must have read that slideshare above.
- Breaking down the terroir. And not for the first time.
- Does vanilla have terroirs? I bet it does. Should ask the world’s expert.
- Dye mushrooms? Are you kidding me?
- ARCAD, DIADE: No matter how you spell it, lots of French interest (and money) in crop and livestock genetics.
- Likewise in India, it looks like from this piece on NBPGR.
- The Bioversity Policy Unit is apparently still alive and kicking.
- European eels a conservation success story?
- Let the ancient DNA sequencing begin!
Nibbles: Pig evolution, Genomics field guide, Genome editing, Chilean agroecology training, Oxford Farming Conferences, Grape variety database, Food prices database, Amazonian history, Debunking tomatoes, INFOODS NUS list, Coptic gardens, Aid agencies map
The catching up continues:
- “Genomics is a powerful tool…”: Pigs speciate, admix, fly.
- But in the wrong hands…
- I wonder which types of hands these genome editors have.
- Ok, enough of that. Women, agroecology, capacity building, a fashionable country: what’s not to like?
- I wonder if any of the ladies are at the Oxford Real Farming Conference. Or were. They were probably NOT at the Oxford Farming Conference. Oh the wit of these alternative farming types. You could have followed both on Twitter, were you so minded, and less confused than I.
- Chile — for it is she — of course grows a lot of grapes. Want to know which varieties? Course you do.
- Damn, grapes not included in this World Bank crowd-sourced food price dataset. Which I think we may have linked to before, but what the hell.
- I know we’ve linked to ancient Amazonian civilization stuff before, but this is a predictive model, no less.
- Busted: The tomato.
- The INFOODS “List of underutilized species contributing to the Nutritional Indicators for Biodiversity” is out. Prices not included.
- I somehow thought there would be more underutilized species in this Ethiopian monastery.
- Who pays for (some of) this? Check out the Guardian’s interactive map of European development agencies.