- Burundi, Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda will invest $1.2 million each over the next three years to revive the Institute of Agricultural and Zootechnical Research. Local solutions to global problems.
Nibbles: Commons, Tom Wagner, CGIAR, Domestication presentation, Sophisticated urbanites, Vavilov’s potatoes in the news, Perennial crops, African drought, Aegean lathyrism, Heirlooms
- The vocabulary of the commons.
- An interview with Tom Wagner, a great tomato and potato breeder.
- The CGIAR Consortium has a newsletter, with bits in it about what they’re doing on agrobiodiversity, genebanks (such as this one), all that stuff. But I guess news of this big Africa-wide food security project came in too late. Oh, here’s another one, on ICRISAT’s new chickpea.
- Pat Heslop-Harrison on domestication. I am reliably informed he once extracted DNA from a fruit smoothie using nothing but household utensils and cleaning chemicals. Pat, is there a video?
- Urban ag in the Philippines. For some reason, there’s been a ton of this sort of urban food stuff on the tubes lately. Like this for instance. And this (compare current orchards in London with historical ones). I may just have to blog about it. Oh dear, I just have.
- The Glasgow Herald heralds the importance of Vavilov’s potatoes.
- Long post with lots of different bits of info on lots of perennial crops.
- Monitoring drought in Africa via pretty maps. And more pretty maps in search of a use.
- Ancient Aegean lathyrism? Dirk alerted.
- A keeper of seeds does his stuff near Pittsburgh.
What makes a good country?
Is it not ironic that on the same day that Bill Gates suggests national targets and reports cards for agricultural productivity, boffins are decrying the use of unidimensional indicators of country-level success in another sphere? Report cards for agricultural sustainability, anyone? For levels of agricultural biodiversity in situ and ex situ?
Nibbles: Cover crops, Barley tempeh, Irish biodiversity, Veg research, Landwirtschaft in einer anderen Dimension, Farmers Markets
- Higher maize yields? Plant cover crops between the rows.
- Barley tempeh! My kind of food exploration.
- Danny Hunter impresses Irish Times with need to conserve biodiversity.
- UK devotes millions to research for “bigger yields of better quality fruits and vegetables”.
- Germans embrace high-tech urban agriculture — cautiously.
- Put farmers’ markets near medical centres for added benefits. What happens when everyone’s so healthy they don’t need the doctor?
Nibbles: Mike Jackson blog, Philippines genebank fire, Ancient garden, USA maps, Horse domestication, Gnats, Livestock training, Chocolate, Epigenetics, Indian nutritional security, Kew fund, GM bananas, Reconciling databases
- Mike Jackson gets himself a pulpit. Welcome to the blogosphere, Mike!
- More on the Filipino ex-genebank.
- What they grew in an ancient Israelite garden. Can they really tell Citrus species apart from their pollen?
- More American maps to mashup with obesity and food insecurity: land use, renewable energy sources…. I do hope someone is keeping track. Even of the more esoteric stuff, of course, like the names of softdrinks.
- Yet more on horse domestication.
- Another organic farming externality for your consideration. Thanks, Robert.
- ILRI gets innovative on this whole training thing.
- “The future of chocolate” revealed.
- Boffins look at fossil bison epigenetics to investigate adaptation to climate change. What will they think of next. Well, applying it to chickens, for a start.
- Other boffins move potato anti-nematode genes into bananas. No word on the epigenetics of it all.
- Indian report on how to strengthen role of agriculture in nutrition.
- Kew has money for fieldwork.
- Cleaning messy taxonomic data. Useful in Genebank Database Hell?