- Need soil info? There’s an app for that!
- Like pH, for instance?
- Photographing Egypt’s farms.
- Frozen Samoan taro, anyone? Only the beginning…
- Also from Samoa, a landmark breadfruit deal.
- Alas, breadfruit is not one of the tree fruits included in the website Tree Fruit Genome Database Resources (tfGDR). Maybe they should get together with DivSeek? Or the guy growing 40 different fruits on one tree.
- Soybean genetic modification 101, with video goodness.
- While both Jeremy and I are otherwise engaged, blogging in general and Nibbling in particular might be a bit slow, but you can keep up with us on Twitter. If you dare.
We’re outta here
Story goes that Santa used to be green, and that he was recoloured by that soft-drink company. Too true to be good?
We’re recharging our solar-powered batteries for a couple of weeks, back around 6 January 2014. And, however and wherever you are, whatever you are doing, we wish you well. 1
Nibbles: Crop rotation, Nutrition, Rice podcast, Climate change meet, Sustainable diets seminar
- “Always rotating, regardless of prices, is close to optimal.” Not what you think. Or maybe it is. Robust economic reasons for not planting the same annual crop two years running.
- Got any data about nutrition and biodiversity? FAO wants them.
- Fuller and McCouch on the origins of rice. Audio goodness only.
- The first of many video updates on #COP19. Gonna be a long couple of weeks.
- And no, I don’t think a UN Nutrition and Sustainability Seminar will help much in that respect, but you can follow that too at #sustfoodsystems. Or is it #sustdiets?
A very special day
Today is Ada Lovelace Day, an annual celebration of women in science, technology, engineering and maths. It is also, I am reliably informed, Cake Decorating Day. No room, then, for sentimentality, but I must note that today is also the 7th anniversary of this website.
As we reported in 2006, Typhoon Xangsane had damaged the National Plant Genetic Resources Laboratory in the Philippines, but left IRRI’s genebank unscathed.
Seven years on, genebanks are still at risk, although there are also safety duplicates in the frozen wastes. And we’re still trying to keep up with agricultural biodiversity in all its many manifestations.
A few things have changed, too. Behind the scenes, we’ve had our ups and downs with our web host, who unilaterally terminated what we thought was a lifetime contract. And, as you might expect, we’ve both moved on in one sense or another from where we were back in 2006.
Let me, though, ask one favour of you, dear reader: is there anything you either like or dislike, that you would like to see more or less of? Leave a comment. We can’t promise, but we can try.
And thanks for reading.
Annnnd … we’re back
Thanks everybody for your patience. We’re back, and I really hope that all those little niggly things that I never could get to the bottom of will no longer be niggly. So go ahead, poke around, and if you see anything that’s broken, yell.
Also, if you were dying to comment on something and couldn’t over the weekend, now’s your chance. C’mon, somebody defend the Gates Foundation.