Category: History

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Bean there, done that

Back in the day, together with co-authors Nigel Maxted and Edwin Chiwona, I used maps from the Atlas of Common Bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) Production in Africa ((Wortmann CS, Kirby RA, Eledu CA, Allen DJ. 1998. CIAT, Cali, Colombia. pp. 133)) in a little thing called A Methodological Model for Ecogeographic Surveys of Crops. I don’t remember what software we used, and how difficult it was to do, as it was getting on for 25 years ago, but I suspect it was a bit of struggle mashing up the maps with genebank accession locality data.

Well, there’s a new edition of the atlas out, and, thanks to Genesys and Google Earth, it’s not quite so difficult (the colours represent ecologically distinct bean production areas).

Which is not to say it couldn’t be a bit easier. I mean, why not allow people to import their own data on the atlas’ nifty online interactive maps?

Oh, and BTW, only a tiny percentage of bean accessions from Kenya are geo-referenced, so that hasn’t changed much in 25 years.

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Nibbles: Transformation, Livestock pod, Coffee pod, GHUs, Viz double, Yaupon, Wild foods, GRIN, Korean vegetables, Oz Indigenous bakers, Warwick vegetables

  1. IAASTD ten years on. Not many people hurt.
  2. Interesting new ILRI podcast hits the airwaves.
  3. And here’s another new podcast: A History of Coffee. So far so pretty good.
  4. Meanwhile, CIP rounds up recent webinars on germplasm health.
  5. Fun visualizations on the seasonality of food.
  6. Speaking of visualizations, RAWGraphs is a pretty neat tool.
  7. North America used to have a native caffeinated beverage, the attractively named Ilex vomitoria.
  8. Maybe South Africa’s local wild foods have a better chance.
  9. Using USDA’s genebank database, GRIN.
  10. Not sure if this Korean-American farmer does (access USDA’s genebank database, do keep up), but probably.
  11. I wonder if any of these Australian wild foods will find their way into a genebank, just in case.
  12. Genebanks like the UK veggie one at Warwick.
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Nibbles: Costich, GHUs, Locusts, Brachiaria, Fruits & veggies, Ag data, Agroecology

  1. Dr Costich’s Odyssey.
  2. CGIAR Germplasm Health Units: Between the Scylla of spreading pests and diseases and the Charybdis of getting stuff out to genebank users too slowly.
  3. Turning insects into food
  4. Feeding cattle under the Congolese sun.
  5. Plenty of intoxicating fruits out there besides lotus.
  6. Weaving a web of data for food security.
  7. Europe heeds the siren song of agroecology.
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Brainfood: GBIF, CWR hotspots, Feralization, Gene editing, Japanese seeds, Campesino maize, Tunisian wheat, Dietary diversity, Seed storage, GHUs