- CIAT crop wild relatives team announces 3 new papers on gaps in ex situ collections: potato, sweet potato & pigeonpea. Take a break, people, please.
- And CIAT genebank features in nice video on why we need genebanks. So also the IRRI genebank, which is relevant to the next Nibble. We do joined-up nibbling here.
- Fine dining with Filipino rice landraces. Go Manny!
- None of those rice landraces are perennial. Yet. If they ever are, it’ll be due to a wild relative.
- Fusarium head blight resistance in wheat dissected using a synchrotron. Avengers assemble!
- Oxyrhynchus papyrus identifies hangover cure. Or so the Daily Mail says, so, you know…
- Oh wow, the Mail is definitely on a botanical roll, now they’re all over a Kardashian-shaped tuber.
- New Edible Aroids Newsletter. Nothing Kim-shaped about these tubers.
- Wheat and barley replaced millet in E Tibet around 2000 BC after cooling period. This going into reverse now, I wonder?
- Some biodiversity you don’t want, trust me.
- Speaking of unwelcome biodiversity, there’s a new hope in the fight against malaria: hybrid artemisia.
- More on that potato that the Dutch are growing in sea water. Like they have a choice.
- Microbes are part of terroir.
- Q&A with The Triumph of Seeds author.
- The coco-de-mer is a pretty triumphant seed.
- You say ramòn nut, I say Maya nut.
- Kenya needs bamboo. Says the International Network for Bamboo & Rattan. Wow, two active crop networks in today’s Nibbles.
- Yesterday it was arabica that was in trouble, today tea. Damn you, climate change.
- They’re the lucky ones: they may be in trouble, but they’re not going extinct…
- More production does not automatically mean less stunting. Damn you, real world.
Nibbles: Grazing, Saving foodways, Amaranth, Fortification, Avocado threats, Kew job, Coffee photos, PhyloLink, Nutrition & ag, Remote sensing
- Grazing is good for grassland.
- Saving British food. And that of Ghana too, why not?
- Amaranth the next superfood? Maybe, but I vote we ban that silly term.
- The case for fortification: diverse diets are just too hard.
- And the latest fruit that’s in trouble is…the avocado.
- Wanna “[s]pend your summer in lovely Kew Gardens interacting with the public and opening people’s eyes and noses to the delightful world of spices”?
- Photographing the soul of coffee.
- Atlas of Living Australia adds nifty phylogenetic thingie.
- World Bank says “agriculture has a unique and critical role in improving nutritional status” so it must be true.
- Protecting forests from the air.
Nibbles: Ipomoea CWR, Toe cheese, Millets revolution, World diets, Brassica diversification, Diversity & productivity, Gossypium genome, MsDonalds, NNL & NPI
- Where should we collect sweet potato wild relatives?
- Cheese made from toe bacteria. Because we can.
- The sainted M.S. Swaminathan on millets.
- FAO brings together dietary guidelines from around the world.
- An infographic on kale origins.
- Diversity down, productivity down. At least in Alaska.
- Cotton’s got a genome.
- McDonalds commits to ending deforestation in its supply chain.
- IUCN report says commercial agriculture and forestry could could actually be good for biodiversity. Hope McDonalds read it.
Nibbles: Svalbard double, AgAtlas upgrade, Ornamental database, Wild apples, Genetic garden, Sandalwood trade, Amazon dams, Body bacteria, ICRISAT blog, African greens, Aquatic camel, Mujer empowerment
More of a proper catch-up Nibbles later, but these should hold you for a while.
- Le Figaro goes to Svalbard.
- But Wired goes into much more depth on the tragic situation in Syria.
- Many AgAtlas pages now include interactive mapping and data download, eg AEZ. About time :)
- Looking for information on varieties of ornamental plants? Look no further.
- Diversity in wild European apples: past, present and future.
- Genetic garden opens in Bangalore.
- The perils of sandalwood smuggling.
- Dam the Amazon, full speed ahead! What will happen to all that human body bacteria diversity?
- ICRISAT’s new DG has a blog. Looking forward to his first foray into the genebank.
- Lots of stuff on African traditional veggies in AVRDS’s latest newsletter.
- The swimming camels of Gujarat get protection. I’d pay money to see them, I really would.
- Patagonian women farmers are doing it for themselves, at last.
Nibbles: Old date, Cassava genomic selection, Citizen science double, Cover crops, Quinoa boom, Sorghum boom, Teff boom, Gluten, Malnutrition roundup, African veggies, Farmer2farmer, Double chocolate
- That 2000-year old date palm seed is all grown up.
- And since we’re talking ancient stuff: ornithology in the service of egyptology.
- Citizen scientists track phenology.
- Citizen scientists find new species.
- Let’s hear it for cover crops.
- Turns out it’s ok for hipsters to eat quinoa.
- Sorghum takes over the Great Plains. (Well, not really.) And not only… Who needs quinoa.
- Especially when you have teff.
- And while we’re on gluten: need to make up for that off-colour quip in the last Nibbles.
- Malnutrition. Mapped. Including that much-discussed Missing Middle? Hang on, wait, here’s another nutrition mapping thing.
- African leafy greens in Benin get a video. Map that!
- Farmers make good extensionists.
- Chocolate workshops at Kew.
- Caribbean chocolate to get a make-over. Somebody telling Kew?