- Planting roadsides with natives, including crop wild relatives. And here comes the database.
- Orange Maize: The Movies.
- VirtualKenya really here. Mother-in-law beside herself.
- Plant Cuttings is out. And all of a sudden I’m in a much better place.
- Small is beautiful, farm edition. And as chance would have it, coffee farm edition. And urban edition.
- Dispute at iconic coconut plantation resolved. Apparently there are some really unique varieties there.
- I say boniato. For the first and last time.
- Acacia on the brink. Easy, tiger. The name, not the genus.
- We’re going to need a better model.
- Pulque comes back. Never knew it had gone away.
- Domesticating fruit trees in Kenya. Something for VirtualKenya?
Nibbles: Cryo, Tree diversity, Agroforestry, Seed industry, Trigonella, Ancient MesoAmerica, Niche models
- CIP’s high-tech genebank.
- “The project’s eventual aim is to plant several thousand trees at sites across Perthshire to act as a ‘living gene bank.'” What, because normally genebanks are dead?
- Millennium Seed Bank joins ICRAF’s BusyTrees thing. Which you can follow in about a million different social networking ways.
- Conservation Magazine does a number on crop improvement. Wait, what? Conservation Magazine? Yep, and with teaching resources.
- Fenugreek, barkeep, and make it a double.
- Ancient chocolate and corn routes.
- What species distribution models do you like?
Nibbles: Seed savers, Lemons, Assam Rice, Striga control, Amaranth, Bearded pigs, Banana, Early nutrition
- Seed savers: everyone’s got an angle, from Seeds of Hope and Change to Seed Bank Bingo.
- Italian lemons enjoying a renaissance. In California, natch.
- India registers Assam farmers’ traditional rice varieties. In other news, rice water “is also used as shampoo, according to community elders”.
- US$9 million to “implement and evaluate four approaches” to controlling Striga in Africa. One day we’ll know.
- Denver Botanic Gardens does amaranth.
- Evolution of bearded pigs. Good to know. Good to eat?
- Bioversity banana team guest blogs at Annals of Botany. But surely they have a blog of their own. No, wait…
- Agriculture is bad for your health.
Brainfood: Soil, Seed aging, Organic sustainability, Yaquis, Garlic, Rice bean, Ethiopian livestock, Sweet potato intercropping, PES
- Long-term effect of tillage, nitrogen fertilization and cover crops on soil organic carbon and total nitrogen content. No till is better than conservation tillage.
- Catalase is a key enzyme in seed recovery from ageing during priming. It sure is. Good to know.
- Sustainable agriculture: A case study of a small Lopez Island farm. The authors conclude: “the need for future targeted nutrient inputs cannot be ruled out for sustainable long-term production”.
- Evolution of the knowledge system for agricultural development in the Yaqui Valley, Sonora, Mexico. They’re innovative, and diversity promotes agility.
- Changes in phenolic compounds in garlic (Allium sativum L.) owing to the cultivar and location of growth. Don’t hold your breath; only 10 varieties.
- Morpho-physiological and nutritional characterization of rice bean (Vigna umbellata). Now that’s what I call science; 30 varieties.
- Rural livestock asset portfolio in northern Ethiopia: a microeconomic analysis of choice and accumulation. Many, many factors come into play.
- Sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas L.)-based strip intercropping: I. Interspecific interactions and yield advantage. Almost every intercrop improves yield and bottom line.
- Should payments for biodiversity conservation be based on action or results? A model says: “It depends.”
Nibbles: Bramleys, FAO vs Big AG, Biofuels, Honduras, Indigenous food
- Awesome apple tree awes impressionable TV reporter shock.
- Food fight!
- Food fight referee?
- Recent developments in the world of biofuels; CABI sorts the good, the bad and the indifferent.
- A blogger asks: “What is the appropriate mix of policies regarding agriculture in Honduras?“
- Watch a video on an indigenous food festival in Thailand by following instructions here. Note to film-makers: there are simpler ways to share a video.