- CIAT crop wild relatives team announces 3 new papers on gaps in ex situ collections: potato, sweet potato & pigeonpea. Take a break, people, please.
- And CIAT genebank features in nice video on why we need genebanks. So also the IRRI genebank, which is relevant to the next Nibble. We do joined-up nibbling here.
- Fine dining with Filipino rice landraces. Go Manny!
- None of those rice landraces are perennial. Yet. If they ever are, it’ll be due to a wild relative.
- Fusarium head blight resistance in wheat dissected using a synchrotron. Avengers assemble!
- Oxyrhynchus papyrus identifies hangover cure. Or so the Daily Mail says, so, you know…
- Oh wow, the Mail is definitely on a botanical roll, now they’re all over a Kardashian-shaped tuber.
- New Edible Aroids Newsletter. Nothing Kim-shaped about these tubers.
- Wheat and barley replaced millet in E Tibet around 2000 BC after cooling period. This going into reverse now, I wonder?
- Some biodiversity you don’t want, trust me.
- Speaking of unwelcome biodiversity, there’s a new hope in the fight against malaria: hybrid artemisia.
- More on that potato that the Dutch are growing in sea water. Like they have a choice.
- Microbes are part of terroir.
- Q&A with The Triumph of Seeds author.
- The coco-de-mer is a pretty triumphant seed.
- You say ramòn nut, I say Maya nut.
- Kenya needs bamboo. Says the International Network for Bamboo & Rattan. Wow, two active crop networks in today’s Nibbles.
- Yesterday it was arabica that was in trouble, today tea. Damn you, climate change.
- They’re the lucky ones: they may be in trouble, but they’re not going extinct…
- More production does not automatically mean less stunting. Damn you, real world.
Good news from the Nepalese national genebank
We have received news from various people working at the National Agriculture Genetic Resources Center of Nepal, the country’s national genebank, that the staff are all fine and the building suffered only minor damage.
Nepal is in many ways a pioneer in the development of community seedbanks, linked to participatory plant breeding, and the back-up, support and leadership provided by the national genebank is an integral and vital part of the joined-up system of crop diversity conservation that is emerging in that country.
Long may it continue to serve as an example to others.
Nibbles: Gender myths, Cabbage myth, Deforestation, Urban ag, School gardens, Avocado disease, Tourism & conservation, African trees, European biofuels
- Hoary zombie gender myths bite the dust. Wish the same could be said of agrobiodiversity myths…
- The first cabbage, according to the ancient Greeks. A myth we can all get behind.
- WWF maps deforestation hotspots. Like the whole of Sumatra.
- Profits not the (only) point of urban farming.
- Maintaining food culture by gardening in a Native American community. See what I mean?
- After citrus greening, now comes laurel wilt. Poor Florida.
- Biodiversity conservation through tourism in Latin America. Including agrobiodiversity?
- The trees and shrubs of mopane woodlands, illustrated.
- European biofuels hit the buffers.
Nibbles: Heirloom apples, Cowpeas, Lettuces, Livestock, Taste, Soil, Nutrition, Meat, Malaria tea, SIRGEALC, ABS
- Is “heritage” just “heirloom” for “birds and animals”? I for one don’t think so. These apples are heritage, for example.
- Saving the Sea Island Red Pea. Which is a heritage cowpea, I think.
- 43 different types of heritage lettuce illustrated.
- Eat those heirloom pigs or lose them.
- Taste and nutrition go hand in hand.
- Soils are part of traditional agricultural heirloom systems.
- Heirloom shmeirloom, those food systems need some work if they are to deliver nutrition.
- The case for meat, heirloom or otherwise. And a whole series of posts on how to best feed all those cows.
- A herbal tea against malaria.
- The 10th SIRGEALC is on the horizon.
- A lot of people going to that will probably need these resources on implementing both the International Treaty and the Nagoya Protocol at the same time.
Nibbles: Grazing, Saving foodways, Amaranth, Fortification, Avocado threats, Kew job, Coffee photos, PhyloLink, Nutrition & ag, Remote sensing
- Grazing is good for grassland.
- Saving British food. And that of Ghana too, why not?
- Amaranth the next superfood? Maybe, but I vote we ban that silly term.
- The case for fortification: diverse diets are just too hard.
- And the latest fruit that’s in trouble is…the avocado.
- Wanna “[s]pend your summer in lovely Kew Gardens interacting with the public and opening people’s eyes and noses to the delightful world of spices”?
- Photographing the soul of coffee.
- Atlas of Living Australia adds nifty phylogenetic thingie.
- World Bank says “agriculture has a unique and critical role in improving nutritional status” so it must be true.
- Protecting forests from the air.