Nibbles: Micro-gardens, Bananas, School farm, Tourism, Conservation, Cancun, Rice, DNA, Rice again, Obesity, Coconut

3D trees in Google Earth

The latest version of Google Earth has 3D trees! Just a few cities’ parks, a couple of wild sites (rainforest, mangroves…) and a reforestation project for now, but surely more to come.

I look forward to seeing the world’s great field genebanks in 3D in due course, such as the coconut genebank in Ivory Coast or the Breadfruit Institute’s collection in Hawaii. And maybe eventually even smaller ones, such as this fruit collection I visited last week in Tajikistan.

But maybe we could start with Pavlovsk?

Crop Genebank Knowledge Base launched to not nearly enough fanfare

The Crop Genebank Knowledge Base (CGKB) is the first online resource for genebank managers and conservationists that provides easy access to crop specific knowledge and best practices for germplasm management and a vast collection of publications and training manuals in one place.

Agreed, it’s a great resource, and deserves to be much more widely known. It really impressed the staff of the Tajikistan national genebank when I demonstrated it to them during my visit last week. Too bad their internet connectivity is limited. Can all this stuff be put on a CD?