Nibbles: Ug99, Heirloom & wild tomatoes, Opium, Healthy flavours, Quinoa descriptors, Wild yak community conservation, Phenotyping facility, Tree app, ABS & EU, C4, Barley in Ethiopia, Chinese coffee

  • Not totally wild genes protect wheat from Ug99.
  • Not really wild Texas Wild tomato brings Texan back to gardening. These in Peru are wild though.
  • Speaking of gardening, here’s Michael Pollan on his struggles with opium.
  • Wild, healthy fruit flavours becoming more popular on the soft drink market, but not clear to what extent they will come from actual plants, wild or otherwise. You know, plants with yield variation and other inconveniences. Plants that some people rely on for nutrition, by the way.
  • Descriptors for quinoa, including the wild species. And more, much more.
  • I wonder if there are descriptors for wild yaks.
  • New UK facility for phenotyping plants, including wild ones, I’m sure.
  • And if those wild UK plants are trees, you can use this app to identify them, before phenotyping them. Assuming you can dig them up and squeeze them into the new facility. Anyway, maybe one of them will be European Tree of the Year.
  • Of course, if you wanted access to the genetic resources of such trees, you’d have to deal with the Nagoya Protocol, which the EU is getting to grips with, don’t worry.
  • Not many C4 species among UK trees, I guess.
  • Teff is C4, but that isn’t stopping people trying to replace it with barley in injira.
  • Next thing you know the Chinese will be swapping tea for coffee. No, wait.

Nibbles: Cornell & Stanford videos, Harbarium data, Urban food, Wine and conservation, Gujarat community seedbanks, Big Shots, Davis breeding

Haiti turns to its local crops

The Economist had an article on food security in Haiti in last week’s edition. It’s worth reading in full, but I’d like to highlight two points here. First, the official in charge of “arable policy” at the ministry of agriculture, one Marcel Augustin, is said to think that

…Haitians should be encouraged to change their eating habits and adopt the diets of their grandparents. Locally grown crops such as yam, manioc, sorghum, sweet potatoes and maize were the staples of previous generations, who had rice [only] as a Sunday treat. They grow easily in Haiti and provide a nutritious alternative to rice… ((And there are also local crops with commercial potential, as a piece Cedric Jeanneret linked to on Facebook pointed out.))

Second, the article points out that USAID has changed its policy from simply handing out foodstuffs imported from the United States to distributing cash vouchers instead, which of course people can spend on locally produced food. Encouraging developments, the effects of which, on agrobiodiversity as well as food security, it will be interesting to follow.

Brainfood: Phenology & CC, Potato nutrition, Buckwheat honey, Visitors in parks, Urban gardeners, Introgression from wild sheep, Catholic conservation, Tomato domestication

Nibbles: Tea nomenclature, Medicinal plants, Robert Fortune, Gender gap, Japanese women farmers, AnGR conservation, Herbarium databases, India & Africa

  • Tea diversity 101.
  • Tea is medicinal, isn’t it? Certainly some other plants introduced to the West by the same person are.
  • I could tell you all about the gender gap in tea cultivation in Kenya.
  • And I bet there’s one in Japan too.
  • Not to mention in livestock-keeping. But I don’t suppose that will affect (ILRI’s) plans for a Kenyan livestock genebank.
  • Crowdsourcing herbarium data. Maybe there’s some specimens of wild tea species in there…
  • India reaches out to Africa. ICRISAT involved. Debal Deb, probably not so much. Chai, anyone?