- Move over Juan Valdez. Cacao farmers want to emulate a marketing icon.
- Urban agriculture not all it’s cracked up to be. Living up to that urban ag icon, Cuba, is hard.
- Bali’s iconic, traditional subaks are a complex adaptive system, and much better than modern rice farming alternatives. Makes you wonder why they need protecting, though.
- GM bananas will save us. Not by themselves they wont. I don’t know why I keep linking to this stuff. Nothing at all iconic about it.
- Iconic taxonomic revision tools online.
- Something else that’s online is a bunch of tools for analyzing genebank data. Soon to be iconic, no doubt. As soon as people use them. So get cracking.
- Huge BBC documentary on Kew coming up. I bet the iconic Millennium Seed Bank will feature.
- Speaking of iconic genebank buildings, today’s one comes from Australia.
- The history of an iconic Middle Easter tree?
- The philosophy of an iconic Italian delicacy. Well, Neapolitan, really.
- And in honour of the World Cup (I refuse to put FIFA in front, let them sue me), an iconic Brazilian dish. And don’t worry, those beans are safe. Somewhere iconic.
Nibbles: Climate change & yields, Eucalyptus genome, Pacific breeders, Iranian barley breeders, Food Policy Report 2013, Titan, Gluten allergy, FGR podcast, Rice culture, NERICA and gender, WCC2014, CWR article, Malnutrition myths, Halophytes
- Yeah, on this climate change thing? We’re doomed.
- Oh crap, there’s another genome: eucalyptus this time. Here’s the paper, you geeks. Great news for koalas, whose genome we still await, incidentally. Yeah, where are we with that?
- SPC trains some breeders with Treaty money.
- I wonder if they were told about Evolutionary Plant Breeding.
- IFPRI has its new food policy report out. More on this later from us, I suspect.
- The Bonn Titan Arum blooms! Well, I’m calling it a crop wild relative.
- That gluten allergy? Don’t blame modern wheat varieties.
- Podcast on the importance of genetic resources to sustainable forests.
- Why rice? The Filipino view.
- And the African view. NERICA’s good for women. And bad.
- Bioversity blogs about World Cocoa Conference 2014, gets dates wrong. It’s on now.
- Crop wild relatives in The Scientist. But I’m biased…
- Busting malnutrition myths. Because they’re there.
- There’s probably a few myths out there about halophytes too.
Brainfood: Homegardens, AnGR genomic conservation, Forest services, Desert wheat, Wild artichoke, Enset ethnobotany, Turkish sheep, Eggplant evaluation, Bolivian maize, Cattle & fire
- Biodiversity conservation in home gardens: traditional knowledge, use patterns and implications for management. Most cliches about homegardens are valid in Benin, apart from the one which suggests old people know more about them.
- Genomics applied to management strategies in conservation programmes. How gene jockeys can help you maintain enough diversity within breeds, but no more.
- Living close to forests enhances people׳s perception of ecosystem services in a forest–agricultural landscape of West Java, Indonesia. And agroforests perceived as being best providers of services, even better than actual forest.
- Saharan wheats: before they disappear. Surprisingly, they have not been much studied.
- The wild gene pool of globe artichoke. Four wild species lack studies of crossability with the cultigen, but look interesting and could actually be in GB2.
- Indigenous knowledge, use and on-farm management of enset (Ensete ventricosum (Welw.) Cheesman) diversity in Wolaita, Southern Ethiopia. Maybe 100 varieties, 10 dishes, lots of knowledge.
- Genetic diversity in nine native Turkish sheep breeds based on microsatellite analysis. Most variation within breeds, but not much higher that that of European breeds.
- Genetic Diversity, Population Structure, and Resistance to Phytophthora capsici of a Worldwide Collection of Eggplant Germplasm. 99 accessions, 4 species, 5 continents, 32 countries, 1 resistant genotype.
- Conserving agrobiodiversity amid global change, migration, and nontraditional livelihood networks: the dynamic uses of cultural landscape knowledge. Things are changing, but maize diversity abides.
- Fuel, fire and cattle in African highlands: Traditional management maintains a mosaic heathland landscape. Sustainable management of vegetation (including some CWR?) in Ethiopian highlands means using fire and cattle in consort.
Nibbles: ICARDA barley, Trade wars, Aquaculture risks, Local vs organic, Chicken genetics, Dog origins, SSEx health, Diversity loss
- ICARDA DG breaks down barley research. Surprisingly without mentioning the germplasm collection.
- Great interactive infographic of all the world’s trade disputes, many of which of course involve agricultural products.
- Intensifying aquaculture comes with some risks.
- Local doesn’t mean organic. And vice versa.
- “Chickens are polymaths.” A new project will scratch around into the genetics of that.
- Only Alaskan dog breeds are truly American.
- Seed Savers Exchange busy making their seed happy.
- Forest and language diversity go together. Literally.
Nibbles: Neolithic farmers, Minoan DNA, Cretan food, Olive history book, Organic dreams, Fairtrade experiment, Value chains, Jamaican breadfruit exports, Climate smart successes
- Neolithic farmers spread into Europe by sea.
- And it looks like the ones who got to Crete eventually gave rise to the Minoans.
- And ate food not unlike what Cretans ate up to a hundred years ago.
- Well of course the olive is important to all that.
- Ten thousand years later, we find that organic is an impossible dream.
- And Fairtrade may or may not work.
- But value chains will make you free. Although that’s easier said than done.
- And you have to be climate-smart to boot. Really, who’d be a farmer, in the Neolithic or now.