- Boffins to rice: Pump it Up!
- Saving the nuts of Central Asia.
- Nepali women abandon hybrids for landraces and community seedbanks. Weird thing is that it’s a WWF project. But where are the extensionists? If only they had listened in Bhutan. Ok that packed a lot of links in there.
- Never saw an invasive I didn’t like.
- Architectural theorist tackles wine. Not many people hurt.
- Turns out 57 insect species can play host to that famous medicinal fungus that led to war between Tibetan communities a couple of years back. Which helps how?
- An envelope is opened at FAO.
- Seeds come to South Sudan. One hopes they are of the right kinds. And that somebody is collecting what was there before. Maybe someone should call WWF.
- You want vegetables with your fish?
- Crops for the Future says not all middlemen bad.
Home of the potato
Home of the potato, a set by PRI’s The World on Flickr.
Today’s PRI piece on how an old potato is helping Andean farmers cope with climate change also points to some fun spud photos (see above) which are in fact all of potatoes, unlike in the recent NatGeo disaster. And to a great video of CIP Director General Pamela Anderson eating chips (crisps), which she really shouldn’t do because they’re not very healthy (the chips, not the potatoes), but what the hell.
Nibbles: Ethnobotany talks, Cannabis taxonomy, Ag blogging, Breadfruit in Hawaii, Heirloom auction, Iron Age boozer, Andean potatoes, Minor crops conference, Insects as food
- And if you can’t get to Kew, how about an ethnobotany talk in Denver, Colorado? Or maybe one on GPS and plants, same venue? Can’t make either? Watch a lecture on Schultes in the Amazon. He’s the Father of Ethnobotany, after all.
- Misclassification of Hemp Holds Back Industrial Applications. Duuuuuuuuuude.
- Write a blog on youth and agriculture, win big money. Yeah, right, I’ve heard that one before… I’m still here, Sergey.
- Hawaii’s Breadfruit Festival is coming! So get in the mood.
- Sotheby’s auctions heirloom. No, really. Alas, probably no breadfruits.
- Now, what can I say about Scotsmen and pubs that won’t be construed as a racist slur? Probably nothing.
- Old potatoes helping Andean farmers cope with climate change. And, no doubt, obesity too.
- Conference on pesticide use on minor crops. Oh, to live-tweet that one.
- Micro-livestock makes it into the New Yorker. Can the backlash be far behind?
Nibbles: Drought tolerance, Cassava pests, Sorghum beer, Frankincense, Permaculture in Asia, RDA
- “…drought-tolerant species are not necessarily following the general “stress-tolerator” syndrome.” Meaning?
- More on that cassava-problems-will-get-worse-with-climate-change thing from CIAT.
- More on that beer-will-save-East-African-agriculture-from-drought thing.
- Two of the Wise Men to rescue “poverty-stricken Ethiopian communities.”
- F. H. King’s Farmers of Forty Centuries or Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan: The backstory. Via.
- Presenting South Korea’s genebank.
Brainfood: Community forestry, Chinese Paleolithic, Peanut wild relatives, Pepper taxonomy, Fruit tree domestication, Allelopathy, Olive evaluation
- Back to basics: Considerations in evaluating the outcomes of community forestry. You don’t need fancy indicators.
- Plant exploitation of the last foragers at Shizitan in the Middle Yellow River Valley China: Evidence from grinding stones. Remains of starch and patterns of wear on grinding stones show that Paleolithic people in China used a lot of plants, in a lot of ways.
- Phenotypic diversity and identification of wild Arachis accessions with useful agronomic and nutritional traits. Our friends at ICRISAT identify the top 20 wild peanut accessions.
- Taxonomy and genetic diversity of domesticated Capsicum species in the Andean region. AFLPs and SSRs clarify some taxonomic issues, but show high diversity not just in Bolivia, the putative centre of origin. No top 20 though.
- From forest to field: Perennial fruit crop domestication. They’re like annuals in some respects, different in others. Perhaps most interestingly, their domestication bottleneck wasn’t so much of one.
- Allelopathic potential of Triticum spp., Secale spp. and Triticosecale spp. and use of chromosome substitutions and translocations to improve weed suppression ability in winter wheat. Low in wheat, but high in some rye accessions, and transferrable.
- Genotyping and evaluation of local olive varieties of a climatically disfavoured region through molecular, morphological and oil quality parameters. Eight minor varieties could be less so.