- Wheat disease understood; sequence of leaf blotch fungus.
- Wheat disease conquered? “Super varieties” resistant to UG99 and yield 15% more. What could go wrong?
- Zambian farmers urged to dry vegetables for fun and profit (and better nutrition).
- Gates Foundations has spent US$1.7 billion on agriculture in Africa, so far.
- Swaminathan Foundation scores Canadian support for research on agriculture, poverty and nutrition. h/t PAR.
- Bioversity Seeds for Needs distributes preselected genebank wheat varieties to Ethiopian women farmers to adapt to climate change.
Nibbles: Hunger foods, Pollinators, Sacred Seeds, Neglected species, Grasses, Yields, Hawaiian History
- Mining Mungo Park for info about famine foods. Bamboo seeds and, perhaps, baobab pods.
- The big prerequisite for EU funding is a good acronym. STEP — status and trends of European pollinators — gets the go ahead.
- Sacred Seeds project at Missouri Botanical Garden announces new partners in India.
- New Bioversity project to extend importance of work on neglected species in India, Nepal and Bolivia.
- How to manage diverse grasses.
- More on climate change and maize yields. “[I]f anything heat tolerance is declining.”
- Ancient agriculture in Hawaii.
Small farmers are the answer
This may not be quite what Bill Gates had in mind when he announced that he was crowdsourcing ideas for a speech he has to give on 24 May.
But the competition is real enough. So hop on over to the BMGF blog, read all about it, and share your ideas with the brightest and the best. And us, if you’re so minded. And if the terms allow.
Nibbles: SEARICE, R&D, Sustainable intensification, Biofortification, Chillies, Safe movement, Mangoes, Weeds, Berries, Blueberries, Cerrado
- SEARICE explains its approach to seed sovereignty and farmer participation.
- Nature on IFPRI’s report on agricultural R&D in Africa. Not pretty.
- Resilience Science on the UN Special Rapporteur’s sustainable intensification thing.
- The Gates Foundation is on a nutritional roll; most of yesterday’s posts are available from this round-up.
- New Mexico gets all protectionist about its chillies.
- IITA explains how it provides healthy germplasm. Various different interesting stories in there, stick with it.
- Farmer conservation power in India.
- How to control invasive species. Eat more weeds.
- Presentation on Trends in global nutrition and health: Local fruits and their potential importance for nutrition and health as seen at Pavlovsk berry meeting.
- Speaking of berries…
- The cerrado (and its crop wild relatives) is in trouble. We talked about this, weren’t you paying attention?
Nibbles: Gardening, Seed Swap, Mapping, Animal Genebank, Rice, Seed Treay, Nanocellulose, Camels, Bread, food Security
- Gardening is good for you. It’s official. And they didn’t even measure nutrition.
- European seed swap in Brussels.
- More fun for mappers; Training Kit on Participatory Spatial Information Management and Communication. h/t CAPRi
- Australian animal genebank under threat.
- Filipinos ♥ IRRI.
- Big write up of Seed Treaty‘s recent Governing Body meeting in Bali.
- Wired magazine goes nuts for bananas and other fruits as sources of better plastics.
- Camelicious! The worlds first large-scale camel dairy farm.
- Food strikes in ancient Egypt. They’ve been revolting for more than 3000 years.
- Nice round-up of how indigenous communities in Colombia are protecting their food security.