- Man’s best friend helps out again.
- Intellectual Property Watch looks at the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. And they found that it was good. Well, kinda.
- More on predicting the results of climate change on species distributions.
- A nice summary of what agriculture has meant for human genetics. I vote we go back to hunting and gathering.
- New insectarium allows you to eat exhibits. Pass the mopane worms.
- New DNA chip picks out best cows. Daisy unavailable for comment.
- The world’s greatest soybean farmer speaks. Did they serve tofu snacks?
- Had milk?
Nibbles: Human migrations, Fungi, Madagascar, Green Revolution
- “Nilotic-language speakers … first brought herds of animals to southern Africa before the Bantu migration” about 2000 years ago.
- British truffles go berserk. And more.
- An interview with the guy who’s been mapping hundreds of Malagasy species.
- Not sure if I already drew your attention to the New Agriculturist’s Focus feature on A Green Revolution for Africa.
Nibbles: Qat, Tomato, Climate change squared, Documentation, Food diaspora, Mapping Africa, Gout, Chicken origins, HealthMap, Olive, Crop mixtures
- Catha edulis bad for Yemen economy. Having been waved a gun at by a qat-chewing Somali teenager, I can testify it’s bad for other things as well.
- Amy Goldman on the heirloom tomato.
- Biology Letters special feature on climate change and biodiversity.
- And more on climate change, this time its likely effect on livelihoods.
- All you ever wanted to know about plant genetic resources conservation in Germany.
- “Isn’t it crazy to think that everything we eat or use that comes from plants at one time grew completely wild?” Well, not so much.
- Africa: Atlas of Our Changing Environment. (Watch out, very large file.)
- Another reason not to drink sugary soft drinks: gout. Coconut water anyone?
- Pre-Columbian Chilean chickens could have come from anywhere, not just Polynesia.
- Mapping diseases.
- A 12th century olive genebank in Morocco.
- Traditional Ethiopian barley/wheat mixtures (hanfets) have some advantages over pure stands.
Nibbles: Olive oil, Soil, Heirloom varieties
- The Real Olive Oil Story. Via.
- Soil Atlas of Europe. Only images, though, it looks like. Via.
- South Carolina farmers embrace heirloom crops.
Nibbles: Sunflowers, Cherries, Red jungle fowl, Sheep, Russia, Kenya, GFU on NUS
- USDA boffins tour Aussie garbage dumps.
- Today’s “Save the British X” (where X=a fruit of your choice) story comes to you from The Times.
- And today’s multiple independent domestications story comes from India.
- And today’s how to boost urban biodiversity? From Brighton, UK.
- Mapping Russian crops and their pests.
- Kenyan government messing with prices to clear wheat market, boost neglected species.
- Our friends at the Global Facilitation Unit (for Neglected and Underutilised Species) have published a book.