- Ah, summer and its funny medieval holidays.
- Making bread in Tajikistan.
- Making pizza in Sussex.
- Making cheese in (one village in) Sweden.
- Diversifying bananas in Queensland.
- Diversifying banana products in Kenya.
- Diversifying with trees in China.
- Better diversify coffee.
- I see your responsible soy and raise you responsible oil palm.
- Cocks of the walk.
- I’m so annoyed the New Scientist article on breeding less bitter veggies is behind a paywall that I won’t even link to it. Google it, if you must.
Nibbles: Barley domestication, Apple pie, Mexican food & drink, CABI, Old seeds, IT
- Secret of barley brittle rachis revealed. In other news, there’s a Centre of Excellence in Plant Cell Walls.
- Bramley apple pie filling protected. But from who?
- Participatively bred Oaxacan maize finds a market niche.
- Have some tequila with that participatively bred Oaxacan maize.
- “We can call a government and tell them our data is telling us that a pest is on the way.”
- The coolness of seeds.
- Yeah but “[g]ood seed in the wrong place is no longer good seed.”
Nibbles: Native American foods, Responsible soy maps, Ocean blue, Social academics, Kenyan vendors, Coffee pix, Local food takedown, Ancient horses, Kava bar, Plantae, Root fungi
- Traditional foods fight Native American obesity.
- Round Table on Responsible Soy makes some nice maps.
- The Decade for African Seas and Oceans is off to a blue start.
- Face it, academics, social media are good for you.
- You think Pres. Obama checked out some Nairobi street food?
- Pics of coffee value chain. Wow, that makes it sound really boring.
- Calling bullshit on farm to fork.
- A day in the life of an archeologist of Iron Age horses.
- Kava reaches NYC hipsters.
- Plantae is coming!
- Rice plants colonized by mychorriza express different genes and have more lateral roots.
Nibbles: High science, Methane-friendly rice, Gender, Indian priestesses, Banana extinction, Inka legacy, Diversity in ag, Yerba genome, Cucumber chains, Tomato relative, Agrobiodiversity in art
- High-level agricultural scientists thinks high agricultural science will feed the world. Oh, and smart policies.
- This new rice would qualify, I suspect.
- Participatory varietal selection manual revised to take women into account. Someone mention high science?
- No such manual needed in India, it seems.
- The banana-is-doomed story sure has legs. Or hands.
- What did the Inkas ever do for us?
- Is agriculture diverse enough? That is the question.
- Yerba mate gets sequenced. Because it can be.
- Following an Indian cucumber down the value chain.
- Thank your lucky stars for this weedy-looking tomato wild relative.
- “We’re interested in the color, shape and sizes of the vegetables from 400 years ago, compared to modern cultivars of the same vegetables: the deep sutures on cantaloupe in Italian art of the Renaissance or the lack of pigmentation in pictures of watermelon compared to today.”
- Quite a bit of agrobiodiversity featured in Day of Archaeology. Nice idea.
Nibbles: Oz vineyard apocalypse, California vineyards redux, Ethiopian genebank, Maya collapse revisionism, SunBlack tomato, Nutritious staples, Citrus endowment, Sheep pix
- In Australia, they’re ripping up vineyards.
- Whereas in California, they’re going to breed 10,000 new grape varieties and make a new wine. Go figure.
- Interview with the director of the Ethiopian national genebank, Dr Gemedo Dalle.
- Deforestation et al. not responsible for Maya collapse after all. Jared Diamond unavailable for comment.
- Black tomato a hit in Italy. Looks crap on pizza though.
- The case for biofortification.
- University of Florida sets up endowment to protect its research groves in face of citrus greening.
- Googlesheepview. Nuff said.