- Fiji looking for better sugarcane. Not a moment too soon, with the EU subsidies going and all.
- Collecting the very valuable caterpillar mushroom in China’s protected areas. Illegal, but whachagonnado?
- The honeybees of the Saharan oases are isolated. Well, actually, not all of them, which I guess qualifies as a surprise.
- Can you tell different vodka brands apart? Here’s why. Maybe. Sounds a bit flaky to me.
- A global review of cotton genetic resources.
- Ploughing up the African savannah is gonna solve all our problems, apparently.
- Organic Seed Alliance launches a youtube channel. Oh goody, there’s how to breed organic carrots!
Looking for Niu Afa
You have been following the Adventures of Roland in Samoa, have you not?
Nibbles: Roses, Stripe Rust, Cuba, Carnival, India, GCARD, Urban ag, Genetic diversity and herbivory, Biocultural diversity
- The wages of Kenyan rose growers increase 22% — to $59 a month. Sinful.
- Wheat stripe rust uses sex to break down barriers.
- Q&A with Cuban whiz Humberto Ríos.
- Latest Carnival of Evolution is up; we’re the only ag, alas.
- Proposed agricultural biodiversity heritage sites in India. (Is this new?)
- Investing in Underutilised Crops to Achieve Food Security. A report from the CGARD conference in March.
- The Hanging Gardens of Kenya.
- Living in genetic mixtures helps plants against herbivores. No, really.
- “Restoring human cultures to the web of life.”
International Day for Biodiversity in Nairobi
If you’re in Nairobi, Kenya, next Saturday 22 May and you feel like celebrating the UN’s International Day for Biodiversity in this, the UN’s International Year for Biodiversity, you could do worse than pop along to the National Museum of Kenya’s Louis Leakey Auditorium for the first Nairobi Agrobiodiversity Debate. Kick off is at 11.30 a.m., and this is what you can expect, according to the organizer’s website:
Hans R Herren, an internationally recognized scientist and current president of the Millennium Institute (Washington, D.C., USA), will be the key note speaker. Hans’s fellow panelists will include Professor Steven Gichuki, Dean, School of Environmental Studies Kenyatta University and Patrick Maundu, an Ethnobotanist with National Museums of Kenya and Honorary Research Fellow with Bioversity International (Kenya and Dr Balakhrishna Pisupati from UNEP along with a few more special guests. The Nairobi Agrobiodiversity Debates will be moderated by our very own Dr Toby Hodgkin, Coordinator of the Platform for Agrobiodiversity Research and Principal Scientist with Bioversity International (Italy).
We’ll gratefully accept any first-hand reports.
Nibbles: Poppies, Breeding, American panmixis, Hemp, Bra, AnGR
- Breeders called on to save key Afghani crop. No, not really.
- GMOs not incompatible with organic, round 2.
- The Columbian Exchange. People though, not crops.
- USDA chief botanist was into Cannabis shock.
- Novel way of growing rice unveiled.
- Two livestock pdfs: What 2010 means for farm animal genetic resources conservation. And a book on European local breeds.