- Must be that time of year. We have pumpkin genomes
- A report from The Great Pumpkin Project, on cassava in Vietnamese rice paddies, and
- The obligatory treat: The 2017 International Cocoa Award Winners
Another Committee on World Food Security report
I knew I’d forget one:
- HLPE. 2017. Sustainable forestry for food security and nutrition. A report by the High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition of the Committee on World Food Security, Rome.
The webcast is live now.
Also, since I’m at it, here’s a useful blog post on the other CFS report, the one on “Nutrition and Food Systems,” from one of the authors, summarizing eight ways why the report is different. This is what resonated with me most:
Third, it is, subversively, a bit radical. Statements such as “The risks of making well intentioned but inappropriate policy choices are much smaller than the risks of using a lack of evidence as an argument for inaction” are fairly heretical for many nutrition investors guided by Lancet 2008 and 2013. For the more market based interventions within the food system the hard evidence is usually not present and one has to trust educated best guesses and calculated risks as a guide to action.
Sometimes, you just have to do it.
Nibbles: Digital lettuce, Dutch seeds, Durian genome, Jackfruit 101, Ag origins, Palestinian watermelon, Pumpkin evolution, Wine trade
- Dutch lettuce collection to be sequenced.
- Ah yes, the Dutch are real seed visionaries.
- Durian next?
- Maybe jackfruit?
- We should never have given up being hunter-gatherers.
- But then we wouldn’t have watermelons. Or, later in the year, pumpkins.
- Or wine.
Nibbles: Agrobiodiversity Index, PPB, Heirloom rice, CATIE genebank, Faberge potato, Val @CePaCT, Nigerian food, Ethnobotanical book, Hope Jahren quote
- Bioversity DG lobbies for the Agrobiodiversity Index.
- One of her staff lobbies for participatory plant breeding. And he’s not the only one.
- Maybe they could tackle Indian rice next?
- Protecting cacao at CATIE.
- Faberge had a potato, of all things, and it’s a beaut.
- Celebrating Valerie Tuia, until recently genebank manager at SPC. Faberge taro, anyone?
- The Nigeria food database includes taro, but only leaves.
- The Digital atlas of traditional agricultural practices and food processing weighs 10kg, but seems a stone-cold Faberge-level masterpiece. Not sure if it has much on taro, though.
- “Every replete tree was first a seed that waited.”
Nibbles: Millets galore, Human diversity & ag, Super farmers, Extinction is forever, Indian nutrition maps, Future Food competition, Banana viruses, Cassava in Brazil & Africa, Sugar book, Fairchild & Irma, Vegetable ROI, Embrapa beans, Certified coffee, Legal pot, Native American foods
- Today’s new genome is pearl millet. The most climate-smart of crops? Now, to process it more easily.
- Finger millet is not too bad either.
- Agriculture was good for human diversity, at least in Papua New Guinea. Elsewhere, maybe not so much.
- Julio Hancco Mamani grows 400 potato varieties up in the Andes (but how did it all start?). And Rahibai Soma Popere “15 varieties of rice, nine varieties of pigeon pea and sixty varieties of vegetables, besides many oil seeds” in Maharashtra.
- “West Bengal government encourages cultivation of extinct rice varieties.” Wait, what?
- Presumably not extinct like silphium.
- India’s first nutrition atlas will maybe tells us where more Rahibai Soma Poperes are most needed.
- Future Food includes seeds.
- Cleaning up bananas.
- Would love to have been on the “Brazilian Cassava Learning Journey.” Tanzania next?
- The bitter side of sugar.
- Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden damaged by Irma.
- Research on vegetables really pays off, vegetable researchers say.
- Brazilian bean catalog launched.
- Certifying coffee seeds.
- Pot next?
- Closely followed by Navajo tea.