- Make way for Dovyalis hebecarpa, aka the Ceylon gooseberry, your new favourite superfood for the week.
- US$6.5 million to breed better cucurbits. Maybe.
- Rise and fall of agrarian states influenced by climate volatility. Those who do not understand history etc.
- Bioversity urges crop wild relatives to avoid the fate of the dodo.
- Name that grape! An extraordinary online resource for Italian ampelography.
Wheat scientists descend on Sydney
The International Wheat Congress kicks off in Sydney this week, with its stellar lineup of speakers, and social media accoutrements, to remind us that, despite all the talk of gluten intolerance and the like, wheat is a big deal…
Countries where wheat provides more than 1/3 of daily calories: Braun #IWC9 pic.twitter.com/SRjCegCBkW
— CIMMYT (@CIMMYT) September 21, 2015
…it’s under threat, but CGIAR is on it:
About 70 percent of spring bread and durum wheat varieties released globally over the 20-year period between 1994 and 2014 were bred or are derived from wheat lines developed by [CGIAR]… Benefits of CGIAR wheat improvement research, conducted mainly by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), range from $2.8 billion to $3.8 billion a year…which highlights the economic benefits of international collaboration in wheat improvement research.
Women and agrobiodiversity photo competition “winners” announced
Yeah, well, in the end I didn’t win. But I’m not bitter. Not much.
Nibbles: Beautiful downtown Burbank, Oz rice weed and nuts, Teff embargo, Kew Gardens, Cherokee seeds, Vegetables semantics, MLN progress, Fishy chart, Inuit fishy diet, Bioversity photo fix, African food security, ICIPE cashes in, Root & tuber congress, Smallholders, EU agroecology, Sackville Hamilton, Kiwifruit history, USDA pathogen collection
- Luther Burbank “…was willing to cross just about anything that had leaves…”
- No, rice did not originate in northern Australia. Not in the sense those words are usually used.
- Aussies to embrace cannabis. But not in the sense those words are usually used.
- Australian exporters nuts for more than just macadamia. Ah, interdependence…
- Meanwhile, Ethiopian teff exporters licking their lips in anticipation.
- Kew is bigger than the sum of its parts.
- Cherokee Nation genebanker gets award.
- Yes, BBC, vegetables exist, let’s move on.
- Maize Lethal Necrosis on its last legs? Well, “progress is being made” at any rate.
- The Economist’s daily chart is on declining fish stocks. Why have they gone all warm and fuzzy lately? Something in the zeitgeist?
- Inuit are genetically adapted to their fishy diet.
- Damn it, I lost! Probably fixed.
- Africa sets up a new institution for food security. Which is not the same as hunger, we are told. But is it malnutrition.
- ICIPE scales up and out. More impact than any “new institution” is going to achieve.
- World Congress on Root & Tuber Crops has a new website.
- It’s the smallholders, stupid. Like the ones growing tea in Kenya, frinstance.
- The EU to discuss agroecology. Yesterday, alas.
- IRRI and Plant Treaty to share an IT-savvy genebank manager.
- How kiwifruit became kiwifruit.
- Microbes have collections too.
Nibbles: Drought maize, Forage Man, Coffee rescue, Herbarium workflow, Nutrient decline, Hybrid vines, Forest foods, Agrobiodiversity double, Bittman moves on
- So, how well did that Drought Tolerant Maize for Africa project do, anyway? Meeting to be held to find out. In the meantime, here’s the infographic.
- My friend Bob Reid gets an award for his contribution to forage genetic resources conservation and use.
- Finally doing something about arabica’s lack of diversity.
- Digitizing herbarium collections? There’s a workflow for that.
- Remember the good old days of nutritions veggies? “[A]ny real declines [in nutrient content] are generally most easily explained by changes in cultivated varieties.”
- “…what if hybrids were farmed as carefully & conscientiously as the finest vinifera grapes in a historical vineyard?”
- Wild foods from dry forests are good for you. Wet forest not totally useless either though.
- Bats, earthworms, enough of this biodiversity, we get it already.
- Bittman puts his money where his mouth is.