- Q&A with an archaeobotanist looking into the domestication history of maize and gourds.
- Q&A with the curators of the University of California, Riverside Citrus Variety Collection.
- Q&A on the shea tree genome.
- CIP’s potato cryobank. There’s probably a Q&A somewhere too.
- Snippets of a review of an interesting-sounding book about the almost-forgotten Pignolo grape.
- Snippets of the Indigenous ecological knowledge used by traditional agriculturalists in India.
- A more systematic approach to documenting and protecting Indigenous ecological knowledge from Australia.
Nibbles: China agrobiodiversity, Hedge apple, Maize history, AI and extinction, Mapping pastures, Mapping foodscapes
- China makes progress in its agrobiodiversity census.
- Osage orange history deconstructed: “horse high, hog tight, and bull strong.”
- Maize history deconstructed.
- Using AI to assess the vulnerability of plant species. Vulnerability of landraces next?
- Not sure about landraces, but maybe pasturelands?
- Mapping food systems to save them.
Nibbles: OSGC, Satellites, IK, Craft beer, Livestock & CC
- Organic Seed Growers Conference, February 4–11, 2022. Don’t miss it.
- Mapping biodiversity from space. Agrobiodiversity next? I wish.
- How to cite Indigenous knowledge. Including in germplasm databases? I wish.
- An old Czech barley variety from an Austrian genebank makes a comeback in craft brewing. I dunno though, I need to look into this a bit more.
- Demonizing livestock is unjust. But will probably continue.
Nibbles: Edibles books, Yam farmer, JL Hudson Seeds, Italian landraces, Native American maize
- University of Chicago Press series on food & drink: Edibles.
- An Indian farmer who’s really into tuber diversity is featured in The Hindu.
- “We are a public access seed bank – not a commercial seed company. You will find that our presentation of information and how you access our seedbank is a bit different from ordering seeds from the usual on-line commercial enterprise.”
- Italian university maps agrobiodiversity.
- Maize data in USDA’s GRIN database includes Indigenous group.
Nibbles: Mesopotamian ag & gardens, Old dogs, Ethiopian church groves, High Desert Seed, Australian Rubus, Fuggle hop, New sweet potato, Naming organisms
- Jeremy’s newsletter deals with Sumerian grains, among other things.
- Which may have been grown in the gardens of Uruk.
- I suppose the Sumerians must have had weird dogs frolicking around their gardens?
- Maybe they even thought of their gardens as sacred places. You know, like in Ethiopia.
- Seeds for a desert half a world away from Sumeria.
- Meanwhile, half a world away in the other direction, a thornless raspberry takes a bow.
- The Sumerians had beer, right? Not with this hop though. Or any hops, actually.
- Pretty sure they didn’t have sweet potatoes either. Of any colour.
- They had names for whatever they grew of course. And such vernacular names can be a pain in the ass, but also kinda fun.