- Professor wants to copyright the name biltong, should be forced to eat nothing else until he takes it back.
- Getting to the bottom of coco de mer.
- PGRFA course at Wageningen. Expensive, but worth it, and you can apply for a NFP/MENA Fellowship, check on the course overview PDF.
- The IRRI genebank manager has seen the future of genebanks: “…we need to work on building the system to estimate breeding value from genotype, and then we will be able to feed more detailed knowledge to the breeders.” He probably means DivSeek. Now IRRI really need to get a different stock image of him and his genebank.
- The UK now has a National Black Poplar Clone Bank. Not quite as big as the above.
- A different take on Bill’s Big Bet. And more along the same lines.
- Hybrid Kuroiler chickens a big hit in Uganda. Bill may be onto something after all.
- “As American as apple pie” is just the beginning. I want to see Kuroilers at KFC.
Nibbles: Conservation course history, Language and DNA, Entomophagy blog, IPBES help, Phenomics methods database, Sustainable Nestlé, Got other milk?, NCYC
- University of Birmingham conservation course alumnus/a? This one’s for you.
- Phonemes follow human genomes. Kinda. No word on crop and livestock genomes. Yet.
- A whole blog on eating insects.
- Interesting: “Each IPBES assessment must include reference citations to indigenous knowledge, and every review panel must include experts in this.”
- Curated list of methods in Plant Phenotyping and Phenomics.
- Nestlé’s sustainable agriculture guy visits CIAT, plants coconut, talks supply chains.
- Camelcino, anyone?
- UK yeast genebank reaches totally arbitrary milestone.
Nibbles: Taro recipes, Pawpaw Kickstarter, Pica, Slow seeds, Forest foods, Pork rises, Landscapes, Best friend, Cooking & CC
- Ok, now you have no excuse not to eat taro.
- Do your bit to help pawpaws (Asimina triloba) go viral. No, wait, that didn’t come out right.
- “Pica is an unexplainable food curiosity—the overwhelming desire to eat the inedible.” Or, as we say in my house, German food.
- Tuscan seed journey.
- Living off forest foods can be fun.
- Pork beats beef.
- Picturing the Earth. Some of it ain’t pretty. But even then it’s pretty.
- Picturing working dogs. All of them pretty.
- Kenyan chef Ali L’artiste tucks into Rwandan bananas and beans before it’s too late.
Nibbles: History of beer, St Bridget, Gaulish bread, Ancient cocktails, PGR course, ECHO, Breakfast pix, Development vs biodiversity, Fairtrade African veggies, Indian medicinals, Phytoliths, CC adaptation
- I say ale, you say beer.
- Ireland has a patron saint of beer. Well of course it does.
- The bread of the Gauls was made from beer foam.
- Reviving ancient beers. Wait, what’s with all this beer today?
- Genetic Resources in Plant Breeding: Conservation, Characterization and Utilization, 17-28 August 2015, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU), Alnarp, Sweden: More detailed information on this course coming soon…
- Not that these guys in Florida need it.
- Pix of kids’ breakfasts from around the world.
- Development and biodiversity can coexist: here come the data.
- African leafy veggies have truly arrived, haven’t they, if they’re getting the Fairtrade treatment.
- But it might be too late for some medicinal plants.
- Phytoliths 101.
- What’s that you say? You want to integrate agrobiodiversity in your climate adaptation plans? Got just the thing for you.
Wheat roundup
Great to get an email update from Andy Forbes yesterday on the latest developments at Brockwell Bake. They’ve been busy with their Nordic colleagues of late, as you can read in the latest edition of True Loaf. 1 But the big news is they’ll be on the BBC’s Food Programme later today, along with lots of other heritage wheat enthusiasts.
And the wonderful Wheat Gateway has had a couple of tweaks over Christmas:
Wheat *hub *pages such as for Hen Gymro are intended to link up available historical references, morphological descriptions and modern imagery to germplasm data and in due course current cultivation and usage reports for landrace and other heritage lines of specific interest.
“*with image*” searches on the database has been added so the various image resources (USDA, INRA, BBA, NordGen) can be targeted by users – inspired to do so by the immaculate image collection of the Nordic Genebank.
Brockwell seem to be cornering the market in wheat genetic resources information systems.
Oh, and since we’re at it, here’s philosopher Julian Baggini on our duty of stewardship towards einkorn.