- Maize geneticist and forage breeder among USDA’s Agricultural Research Service Scientist of the Year winners.
- BBC man lands top Kew job.
- Elinor Ostrom RIP.
- If the wormwood don’t get you, the groundsel will. A tale of two wild Asteraceae.
- Foxtail Millet Offers Clues for Assembling the Switchgrass Genome. So that’s what millet is good for.
Nibble: South Sudan seed fair, Seed cinema, Dandelion diversity, Nature’s value graphic, Cocaine synthesis, Livestock farming, Visualizing conservation trade-offs, Vertical farms, Sequence fungi
- A seed fair in South Sudan. Good idea, but why only certified seed?
- Maybe they should watch Seeds of Freedom. Well, maybe.
- Genetic diversity is important! Settle down, we’re talking dandelions.
- Nature’s value includes crops. Phew. Dandelion is a crop, isn’t it?
- Talking about value… She don’t lie, she don’t lie, she don’t lie…
- And again. Award-winning research on livestock farming’s value to developing countries. And its dark side.
- Both of which could of course be usefully visualized by the people involved.
- Vizualise this! Nightmare skyscraping vertical farms, for real.
- Today’s jetpack request comes from Sophien Kamoun, stimulated by ravishing fungi.
Nibbles: Aquatic mapping, Biofortified millet, Indian agriculture, African agriculture, Restoration, Online flora, Farm Bill, Right to Food, Elk farming, Forestry fellowship, Breadfruit, Foods and climate change
- OBIS maps marine organisms. But does it include this data from China?
- Private sector delivers biofortified millet. But will it make it to the wiki for Indian agriculture?
- New paper by APRODEV and PELUM on why CAADP should follow IAASTD. Glossary not included. And more on African agriculture from Gates. Not like this, though.
- Millennium Seed Bank in ecosystem restoration. And a study on ecosystems that are actually going to require less restoration than others.
- Monsanto supports online world flora. What could possibly go wrong? Meanwhile, in the public sector…
- Olivier de Schutter’s recent Right to Food shpiel for IFPRI. LOTS of words. I guess you had to be there.
- Small-scale elk farming primer. Not as crazy as it sounds, but pretty crazy.
- And if you’re a young scientist, from sub-Saharan Africa, and interested in forest genetic resources, well, here’s a fine forestry fellowship opportunity.
- The Bounty Redux. The whole bringing-breadfruit-to-the Caribbean thing seems to be going more smoothly this time.
- Huffington slideshow on the world’s endangered foods.
Nibbles: SusAg, Buffalo beef, SAVE Newsletter, Northern seeds
- June 18th. If you’re tired of the Copacabana, why not go to the seminar on Achieving and measuring sustainable intensification, and tell us how they did it.
- India is the world’s largest “beef” exporter. Why the scare quotes? Read the No 2 story here.
- I wonder how much beef of the dwarf cattle in Albania and Greece is exported. The SAVE Newsletter is always great fun.
- Alaskan importing heirloom seeds from equally frigid parts of the world.
Nibbles: CGIAR, Breeding, Shamba Shape-up, Beach, Plant Cuttings, Cabbage pic, Leaf monitor, European AnGR and PGR, Dutch CWR post-doc, Allium on the Highline, Brazil forest code, Japanese rice in Oz, Indian genebank sell-off, Jersey apple genebank, Hazelnut milk subsitute, SPGRC, Urban veggies roundup, Spicy tales, Agroecological zonation
- Frank Rijsberman aims to build a “strong Consortium.”
- Teaching tools aim to improve capacity in plant breeding. And no, I didn’t mean anything by the juxtaposition, settle down.
- Kenyan reality show aims to enhance rural livelihoods. What, are you trying to be funny? No, I tell you, it’s all a massive coincidence.
- You know what, why don’t we just all go to the beach and relax? Nothing like combining work with pleasure…
- You could read the new Plant Cuttings there.
- Or look at 3D photos of cabbages.
- Or fiddle with the latest geeky plant gadget.
- PDF of the European dictionary of domesticated and utilised animals. From the folks at the European Regional Focal Point for Animal Genetic Resources (ERFP). Which is news to me. Relationship to the equivalent on the crops side unclear.
- Speaking of Europe, someone at the Dutch genebank studying gaps in the conservation of crop wild relatives. Welcome to the club.
- Well this sort of thing is not going to help with any gap analysis, is it? Qualifies as assisted migration though, perhaps, which is kinda cool. And may well be needed.
- I wonder what the Brazilian forest code means for crop wild relatives.
- Traditional Japanese rice variety grown in Queensland to help Fukishima victims. Well, yes, but it’s not exactly charity we’re talking about here. And what’s it going to do to all the wild rice there? Which I’m willing to bet is a gap of some kind.
- Speaking of altruistic gestures, the idea to, er, sell the Indian genebank encounters some, er, opposition.
- No plans to sell anything from this new Jersey apple genebank. Except maybe the cider? I wonder, any hazlenut genebanks out there? No, don’t write in and tell me.
- The genebank of the SADC Plant Genetic Resources Centre given a bit of a face-lift on VoA. At least in the trailer, starting at 0:45. Not sure how to get the full thing, but working on it…
- Latvian government plants small veggie patch in meaningless gesture. Paparazzi promptly tread all over it. Not that such things can’t be nice, and indeed useful. Oh, and here comes the history. But maybe they should have taken a slightly different tack.
- “Orange is the colour of curry.” Why spice is nice. And here comes the science on that.
- And speaking of heat, FAO very keen to tell you what zone you’re in. Oh, hell, there go another couple hours down the drain as I try to navigate the thing.