- U. of Minnesota has a poster of the pedigree of hop varieties which I covet.
- Cool catalogue of the native potatoes of a bit of Ecuador. Via Red Electronica de la Papa.
- Stark photos of a few heirloom apples, with descriptions.
- Meanwhile, Brockwell Bake sows some heritage wheats. With stark photo
- Report on the state of UK capacity in taxonomy. How many countries have reports on the state of their taxonomy? Anyway, here’s some of that capacity at work.
- Farrago on some old olives in Jerusalem.
- CIAT celebrates 45 years of existence.
- Meanwhile, IITA pushes soil fertility management and cassava.
- Arca-Deli Awards awarded.
- Defra’s latest Biodiversity News has stuff on the importance of insect biodiversity to pest control and pollination in orchards.
- The International Year of Quinoa, which is next year, has a website, and all sorts of associated social networking goodness. And here’s a nice little student video on the crop, for a somewhat different perspective.
Nibbles: ICRISAT genebanks, Agricultural history, Weeds, Gowda, Fruit symposium, Chaffey, Open pollinated seeds, Breeding institute, Ash dieback, Perennial grains, Marshall strawberry, Neanderthal cuisine, Colorado beetle control
- World Bank goes inside ICRISAT seed bank and finds in vitro plantlets.
- “Did mongrel grains serendipitously meld together and sprout from the sewage dumps of sedentary fishing tribes (a current theory), or was the domestication of wheat grasses, pomegranates, and fig trees a willful act of genius?” Scientific American excerpts a bit of purple prose from from Frederick Kaufman’s “Bet the Farm: How Food Stopped Being Food.”
- And a book on how (some) food (i.e. weeds) started being food.
- ICRISAT legume breeder bags award.
- One of the more interesting symposium titles I’ve come across: International Symposium on Fruit Culture and its Traditional Knowledge along Silk Road Countries.
- Plant Cuttings.
- And plant seeds. Of the open-pollinated sort.
- Donald Danforth Plant Science Center establishes Institute for International Crop Improvement (IICI). CGIAR unavailable for comment.
- CABI gets to grips with ash dieback.
- Perennial grains in practice.
- Recovered rare strawberries as art: Marshall Duchamp.
- Intrepid journo discovers secrets of Neanderthal cuisine.
- Crimson clover cover crop protects aubergines as well as insecticide against Colorado beetles.
Nibbles: Complementary conservation, Ash dieback, EUCARPIA meeting, AnGR, Green Revolution history, Fellowship, Canadienne cows, Sustainable intensification
- So apparently field genebanks are “monotonous orchards packed with tropical trees spanning as far as the eye can see.”
- Any ash genebanks, I wonder, field or otherwise?
- EUCARPIA pre-breeding pre-meeting.
- FAO moans about progress in conserving livestock.
- The Green Revolution deconstructed.
- Good news for procrastinators: the deadline for Vavilov-Frankel Fellowship applications has been extended to 18 November. Ignore the date of 11 November.
- Saving the endangered Canadienne cow. In other news, there’s a Canadienne cow.
- Friends of the Earth doesn’t think much of “sustainable intensification“.
Nibbles: Potato blight, Ag statistics, Biofortification, Biofortified potatoes, Insect food, Genuine mozzarella, Agricultural history
- Breeder of blight-resistant potatoes stands up for gardeners who grow blight-susceptible potatoes.
- Hungry for better ag statistics? FAO hears you.
- “Biofortification is an obstacle to food justice”. Just an opinion, obviously.
- And not necessarily one shared by the USDA: Breeding better fruits and veggies, including vitamin-A enriched potatoes.
- Women, gardens, community health … we’ve heard this all before. So why is it still news?
- Diana Buja shares tips on how to catch flying ants, and other goodies, the better to savour their deliciousness.
- A beginner’s guide to everything called pepper.
- A new test for cow’s milk in mozzarella di bufala, can also separate the sheep from the goats. Can I get a pocket version?
- The transition to agriculture in North America.
Nibbles: Agroforestry history, CBD COP, Social GCARD, Dog symbiosis, Indian databases, Beans means iron, Swedish climate change, Italian agrobiodiversity documentation
- Reminiscing at ICRAF about the history of (some of) the intellectual underpinnings of land sharing.
- The latest agrobiodiversity musings from Hyderabad.
- More reminiscing, this time from a GCARD2 social reporter.
- Dogs, the first domesticates?
- India links up its biodiversity databases. Including NBPGR’s?
- Iron-rich beans hit Rwanda. Rwanda reels from the impact. How long before someone thinks of dumping them into the ocean?
- “There will be no nice wine from Sweden this year.” Oh, dear.
- Documenting agricultural biodiversity. In Italian. Maybe Italy will now follow India (see above)?