- The Russian sunflowers are coming! The Russian sunflowers are coming!
- Holy cow! Can’t do better than The Hindu’s headline. And more.
- CIMMYT says groundnut varieties good for income. ICRISAT unavailable for comment.
- But are they climate-proof?
- Because it could be worse than we thought for many species. And more. And what it means for in situ.
- The latest on what’s killing bees.
- The fig, in all its recondite glory.
- Apples of France, Part Deux.
- All you ever wanted to know about growing your own luffa.
- IRRI DDG tries his hand at growing a rice crop. And blogs about it to boot. A nice idea, which should be widely emulated in the CG.
A new year dawns for the British apple
The famous British apple collection at Brogdale in Kent, which has been through some vicissitudes this past year, and could do with some good news, is being replanted, and the BBC has a video. Incidentally, I recently learned that the composer Gerald Finzi assembled a selection of heirloom varieties at his country house, Church Farm, Ashmansworth, near Newbury, Berkshire, and that these are included in the national collection at Brogdale, or at least they were. I hope they still are, because Church Farm has been on the market and who knows if the new owner is interested in the likes of Russet, Roxbury Russet, Welford Park Nonsuch, Baxter’s Pearmain, Golden Non Pareil, Mead’s Broading, Norman’s Pippin and Haggerstone Pippin.
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.
Mike Jackson OBE
And we interrupt our holidays again for an important announcement. Dr Mike Jackson, who worked at IRRI for some two decades, much of that in the genebank, has been awarded an OBE in the New Year Honours List. Congratulations, Mike!
Italian rice at IRRI
An article about Italian rice sent me scurrying once again to the International Rice Information System. That suggests, as you can see from the diagram at left if you click on it, that the rice variety Carnaroli is in fact the result of a cross between Vialone and Lencino. Vialone Nano is also mentioned in the article, along with Arborio. You — and no doubt Italian rice farmers — will be pleased to hear that all three varieties are safely conserved in the IRRI genebank.