- ICRAF are having their Science Week. Follow it on Twitter. And let us know if you’re there and want to write about anything agrobiodiversity related that comes up.
- Plant Genome Evolution 2013 has been and gone, alas, but Chris Pires has storified the whole thing, pretty much. Lots of crops in there. But it’s disappeared now, of course.
- Bioversity and FAO redesign their websites. Tell them what you think.
- Diane Ragone talks breadfruit. With video goodness.
- Aussie researcher talks about landing Gates grant to improve African livestock. Hopefully some conservation in there somewhere.
- Decentralizing data: to empower communities; and to empower geeks.
- Data, you said? Here’s data on why Kansas needs wheat breeders.
- The world’s chief agriculture scientists want to share genetic resources. Good of them.
- Europe used to have more melons.
- Enough with the Peruvian superfoods meme, please.
- I may have said this before, but it’s still valid: I need a drink.
Nibbles: Landscapes pod, Tartiness evolution, Diversity pix, Eve Crowley vid, Commons debate, Subsidies, Arabidopsis database, Beard beer, Kew herbarium vid, Minoan pests, FDish seeds, Extinction is forever
- CIFOR scientist talks about the much-vaunted landscape approach.
- The repeated evolution of lemony flavour.
- Nice infographic of breadfruit diversity in the Pacific.
- Better infographic of chili pepper diversity in Mexico. Both are on Facebook. Hope you guys can see them.
- FAO’s Eve Crowley is didactic and inspirational by turns about women, co-operatives and rural development.
- Hardin vs Ostrom. Walk-over.
- How much does production have to increase, really? Lobell deals the cards.
- What are the effects of input subsidies on maize prices in Malawi and Zambia? Small to none.
- Plant database to charge for access? Never a good idea.
- Ok, here’s a first, a beer I don’t altogether feel like tasting.
- Last days of the soybean homecoming show in Hong Kong. Anybody out there seen it?
- Video on the intricacies of Kew. Not as long as you’d think.
- Weevils in sweet pea jar pinpoint season of Santorini eruption. Has anyone tried to recover DNA from the seeds?
- Experts for ensuring quality fish seeds to enhance production. Say what?
- How should we mark the extinction of the passenger pigeon next year?
One more cup of coffee
For some reason, there’s been a sackful of coffee stories lately. Here’s a quick summary:
“Pistols for two, and coffee for one.”
“[Coffee] is of excellent Use in the time of Pestilence, and contributes greatly to prevent the spreading of Infection.”
“We just had to try at least a cup in every village we stopped at, and as they were small cups, sometimes more than one… The irony is that I am a ‘tea-only girl’.”
“Yes, Starbucks has announced it’s taking up shop in Bogota, Colombia. It says it wants to celebrate Colombian coffee.”
“Here, we do not work hard for survival, but we work hard to live a better life; that is what I’ve learned from working on this plantation.”
“In order to create these pre-breeding populations with enough genetic diversity for these economically important traits, WCR 1 will utilize genetic material from the current germplasm collections as well as new material coming from wild populations from the WCR GERMPLASM Project.”
Nibbles: Golden Rizzzzzz, Agronomy meet, Pricey poultry, Pricey Indian food, Target environments, NUS galore, G&T
- The Golden Rice thing rumbles endlessly on.
- I wonder whether it was discussed at the First International Agronomy Day. I bet that fertilizer thing in Malawi was.
- The world’s most expensive cock. Made you look!
- I wonder whether you can select sex in chickens like you can in cattle.
- Anyway, speaking of expensive agrobiodiversity, a celebrity economist rounds up links on Indian food price inflation. Must have seen our recent stuff on onions. But can you grow them on the roof?
- The secret of breeding? Location, location, location.
- List of “indigenous” fruits and vegetables of allegedly potential global importance without a damn scientific name anywhere. Annoying on many levels.
- Mind you, this piece on the threats faced by the wild herbs of Crete also doesn’t have any names.
- See, you can include a scientific name of an underutilized plant and not look unbearable geeky. Well, kinda. Although this press release on burgeoning collaboration on NUS manages to avoid mentioning even common names.
- Oh I so need a drink.
- And some cheese.
Nibbles: Atlantic potatoes, Andean feasting, Lupin biodiversity, Vegetable grafting, Agrobiodiversity survey, Seed lending library, Lathyrus factsheet, Wild horses, School feeding
- Tracing Canary Island potatoes back to the Andes.
- Lupin diversity, all in one handy place.
- Bangladeshi women are grafting away.
- Wanna take a survey of “lessons learned about ways and means to conserve and use genetic diversity to build resilience to climate change in food and agriculture systems“? Uhm.
- Maybe they should survey this guy.
- Kew takes on the grasspea.
- I have my freedom but I don’t have much time…
- FAO spots a win-win-win in school feeding programme linked to family farms.