- Genejockeys say they have sorted that global food supply problem everybody’s been so antsy about lately. No, wait, maybe it’s this.
- China has 23 indigenous horse breeds. At least.
- Latest crop to get the orange treatment is soybean.
- Diverse ways of doing agriculture: Could CropMobs go global?
- Choose foods, not nutrients. Heck, yes.
- Globally warmed beetles threatening your coffee crops? Bring on biodiversity!
- Brit breeds bees for better grooming.
- How to get the most out of your wild blueberries. Maybe we should tell Medvedev?
- Emerging Crops is a new NUS project, and it has a website.
Nibbles: Oca etc, Diseases, Pigs, Dzud, Sex, Rice
- There’s a Facebook group for that: unusual root crops, sponsored by the inimitable Rhizowen.
- ILRI says herders are important to identify disease outbreaks in livestock. Makes sense to me.
- ILRI also says local breeds should be included in Indian pig-breeding programmes. Again, no argument.
- More on livestock: what Mongolia’s harsh winter has wrought. BTW, there’s also a discussion at DAD-Net of the effect of Pakistan’s floods on livestock.
- Aspen trees need occasional sex. Don’t we all.
- Climate change not good for rice. I knew that, I think.
Fruit diversity in SE Europe
Fuad Gasi tells us about an interesting effort to document the diversity of fruits in the former Yugoslavia.
A new regional collaboration between the Faculty of Agriculture and Food Sciences, University of Sarajevo and the Faculty of Agriculture, University of Zagreb has been established in the field of fruit (including Vitis) genetic resources. This collaboration is being strengthened through the SEEDNet project (South East European Network on Plant Genetic Resources) financed by SIDA (Swedish International Development Agency). So far, we have had a publication on apple genetic resources in Bosnia and Herzegovina as a result of this collaboration. We are currently preparing a similar publication on plum genetic resources that will present results of a study made on autochthonous plums from B&H, Croatia and Serbia, focusing mainly on different synonyms of Pozegaca, but not exclusively (molecular and morphological data, as well as some food processing qualities). Similar work has been done on the chestnut and is currently being done on the pear.
Diversity of tastes
A long article from The New Yorker last November is all about the world of artificial flavours — but it does contain a fascinating section on the diversity of citrus fruits that the taste-makers explore in search of inspiration.
Nibbles: Bent, Rice, Cheez, Pavlovsk, Millennium Seed Bank, Livestock, EUCARPIA
- Fine memoir of Sir Bent Skovmand. Thanks Dag.
- Rice yields falling — and not just in experimental stations. The paper.
- In all the eulogies to the inventor of the Cheez Doodle, a note of truth.
- You could buy the Pavlovsk genebank site for just USD3.3 million, it says here. Is that even doable?
- Meanwhile, over in England, Researchers Rush to Fill Noah’s Ark Seed Bank While Politicians Bicker.
- Meanwhile, in Australia, worries about declines in livestock diversity.
- EUCARPIA’s meetings calendar. Handy.