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?
Nibbles: Blogs, Geographical Indicators, India, Benefits, Forest regeneration, Flypaper
- My favorite agriculture blogs. Can you say “parochial”?
- Want to track Geographical Indicators? Look no further.
- India’s agriculture magazine tackles Agro-Biodiversity For Food Security.
- And GFAR promotes a new initiative to realise the benefits of agrobiodiversity. Love is all around.
- National Plant Genetics Resources Laboratory (NPGRL) at the University of the Philippines at Los Baños checks in to rehab.
- Bioversity scientist plays with fire, for better and more diverse forest regeneration.
- Mutation breeding; Matt explains the lack of breakthroughs in a bit more detail.
- Fabulous, complex story of spiders, flies and microbes. Add ’em together for green flypaper.
Nibbles: AnGR genomic resources, Agroforestry fund, US climate map, Cassava rules
- Big new project on farm animal genomics. Gene-jockeys lick lips.
- Big new push to raise money for the Moringa Fund. Agroforesters lick lips.
- Big new hardiness zone map unleashed by USDA on unsuspecting world. American GIS people and gardeners lick lips.
- Bill Gates mentions cassava. CIAT licks lips.