History

Nibbles: Eyzaguirre speaks, Hunger, India in Africa, Aquaculture, Mutation breeding, Climate info, Micronutrients, Peanuts, Crops from space, CIMMYT in Africa, Cassava beer, Heirloom onion, Coffee research, Newton’s apple, Gastronomica

An anthropologists speaks about landscapes.
ILRI says: “Landscapes, I’ve got your landscapes right here.”
India makes its play for African agricultural landscapes. I hope there will be scorecards and women. And access to Indian genebank holdings…
Will there be fish though?
And will India be pushing its mutation-bred varieties in Africa? Not that there’s anything wrong with them.
Or using climate information?
Or mining technology for that matter.
Surely there will be dual-purpose groundnuts.
Doesn’t India have a satellite?
~~Meanwhile, CIMMYT is making its own African play. Maybe some of the stuff it is doing there could be useful in India too?~~ Two dead links
~~Africa could teach India some other stuff too.~~ Dead link.
Pretty sure this nearly-extinct-onion-rescued story is totally irrelevant to both India and Africa.
Unlike coffee research.
I don’t suppose I can interest anyone in a not very nice tasting, disease-prone but historical apple?
And speaking of historical connections… Well that was quite a journey.

Gates just gave AGRA $56 million to make new seed varieties available. PASS still not collecting the diversity it hopes to displace.
Hang on though. Africa needs a “Green renaissance, not revolution”.
Saving seeds the ancient Egyptian way.
Eating sweets the ancient Papuan (and others) way.
Odd to hear an agrobiodiversity dude talking about silver bullets – even with a question mark.
SeedZoo site offers a space to give and to receive “traditional and indigenous food plants from around the world”.
Today’s forthcoming genome of agricultural interest: water buffalo.
Farmer to farmer films – gender sensitive, natch – “fight against striga”.
Assessing the Potential of Insects as Food and Feed in assuring Food Security, from the FAO document repository.
Much sound, less light, on black Sigatoka disease, from the BBC (natch).
Vaviblog rounds up the latest skinny on Pavlovsk.
And speaking of Vavilov, the latest genome to be sequenced has a VIR connection.

The vocabulary of the commons.
An interview with Tom Wagner, a great tomato and potato breeder.
The CGIAR Consortium has a newsletter, with bits in it about what they’re doing on agrobiodiversity, genebanks (such as this one), all that stuff. But I guess news of this big Africa-wide food security project came in too late. Oh, here’s another one, on ICRISAT’s new chickpea.
Pat Heslop-Harrison on domestication. I am reliably informed he once extracted DNA from a fruit smoothie using nothing but household utensils and cleaning chemicals. Pat, is there a video?
Urban ag in the Philippines. For some reason, there’s been a ton of this sort of urban food stuff on the tubes lately. Like this for instance. And this (compare current orchards in London with historical ones). I may just have to blog about it. Oh dear, I just have.
The Glasgow Herald heralds the importance of Vavilov’s potatoes.
Long post with lots of different bits of info on lots of perennial crops.
Monitoring drought in Africa via pretty maps. And more pretty maps in search of a use.
Ancient Aegean lathyrism? Dirk alerted.
A keeper of seeds does his stuff near Pittsburgh.

GRAIN found and shared a 1986 Canadian documentary that includes interviews with Erna Bennett.
“Critical minds and ‘vegetal life’.” Plants and philosophy. Wacky, yes. But perhaps of interest.
Are you near Port Townsend, WA? Go hear a lecture on “Farming with Nature: Agroecology for the Olympic Peninsula” on Monday at 7.30.
While the EU potentially gives diversity a break, the US judge rejects organic suit against Monsanto.
Open sesame (yeah, I know). Oxfam documents how best to use sesame to lift Ethiopians out of poverty.
Nominate someone who has “made outstanding contributions for the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity at global, regional or local levels” for the Midori Prize. We’re available.
The Atlantic and NPR do the Svalbard thing. Gotta hand it to the Trust.

Modern Chinese agronomist praises ancient Chinese agriculture, possibly gets in trouble.
Domesticating trees is still the next big thing.
Transform agriculture for a greener economy, says SciDev.net.
VoA on genebanks, including Svalbard.
Gerbil enthusiasts tackle millets. Yes, gerbils.