Information

April 20, 2015April 20, 2015

Nibbles: Svalbard double, AgAtlas upgrade, Ornamental database, Wild apples, Genetic garden, Sandalwood trade, Amazon dams, Body bacteria, ICRISAT blog, African greens, Aquatic camel, Mujer empowerment

More of a proper catch-up Nibbles later, but these should hold you for a while.

Le Figaro goes to Svalbard.
But Wired goes into much more depth on the tragic situation in Syria.
Many AgAtlas pages now include interactive mapping and data download, eg AEZ. About time :)
Looking for information on varieties of ornamental plants? Look no further.
Diversity in wild European apples: past, present and future.
Genetic garden opens in Bangalore.
The perils of sandalwood smuggling.
Dam the Amazon, full speed ahead! What will happen to all that human body bacteria diversity?
ICRISAT’s new DG has a blog. Looking forward to his first foray into the genebank.
Lots of stuff on African traditional veggies in AVRDS’s latest newsletter.
The swimming camels of Gujarat get protection. I’d pay money to see them, I really would.
Patagonian women farmers are doing it for themselves, at last.

April 4, 2015April 2, 2015

Monitoring plant diseases

I think we may have blogged about ProMED before, but I don’t feel at all guilty about another shout-out. I have no idea to what extent the whole thing is automated, but if there’s anything in the press about a disease — of plants, livestock or humans — it gets a little write up on the website, and a dot on the map. And you can sign up for email alerts or subscribe to an RSS feed, or indeed to their Twitter feed or Facebook page if that’s your vice. I sometimes dream of doing something similar for all kinds of threats to agrobiodiversity.

Screen Shot 2015-04-01 at 2.11.05 PM

And while we’re on the subject, just a reminder that there’s a new new app for Pacific pests and pathogens, courtesy of those nice people at Pestnet.

April 4, 2015April 2, 2015

Nibbles: Local earthworm, Public-private, Cassava double, Food prices, Amazonian rubber, Mongolian ag, Pacific roots, Potato CWR, Ugandan plantain, Galician brassicas, Contesting agronomy, Silver bullet

Lamb ham: an easter tradition we can all get behind.
Indian researchers market a new earthworm. Not to bring you down or anything.
PPP are the new black. It says here.
Cassava gets Big Data treatment. That’s kinda biotechnology too. But then you have to commercialize the stuff, right?
“Food price shocks are both a determinant and effect of conflict.”
Recognizing the “rubber soldiers”.
Chinese experts tell Mongolians how to be more resilient to climate change. I hope it works out for them.
New potato and sweet potato varieties for the Pacific come to CePaCT.
Any of those potato varieties benefit from wild relatives?
New plantain variety for Uganda.
Galician genebank gets old brassicas. National genebank unavailable for comment. Actually, national genebank unavailable.
“We can see the blinkered promotion and systematic ‘bigging-up’ of individual agricultural technologies, and their real or imagined impacts, as a direct result of the uncritical acceptance of the language of ‘impact at scale’.”
Biotechnologist says we need biotechnology to feed world. QED.

March 31, 2015March 31, 2015

Nibbles: Rabbit origins, New beans and rice, New maize, Fermentation, Grape bugs, Kenya supergoats, Peruvian edible insects, Betelmania, Sustainable cacao, Making cider, Land rights, Kew funding, Avocado origins, German genebank, Oman roadshow, Chinese agriculture then and now, Underground farm, Irish potatoes, Lactase history, Nutrition report, Breeding wheat, Pulse year, Perennial cereals, Shaker agriculture, Food conference, Lupin breeding, Tanzanian ag landscapes, Coffee film, American food, Breakfast around the world, Indian wild figs, Baobab, Fragmentation, History of breeding, MARDI fruits, IARI head, Wild pig genome, Breed typology

Yeah, I know, been slacking with the blogging again of late. Lots of travel. Will try to post about it a bit now I’m back. Here’s the usual back-in-the-office game of catch-up.

We start with something topical for Easter. The origin of the bunny: it’s not the genes, it’s the gene control control.
CIAT’s heat-resistant beans are all over the internet. IRRI’s new rices, not so much.
I hope they get names like Bill Tracy’s new open-pollinated maize variety.
Bugs come in communities, and they do best when they stay that way.
Even on grapes.
Gotta get me one of these Kenyan supergoats.
Are bugs next on Peru’s gastronomia menu? Probably not.
Ban the betel!
More on that we-need-GMO-to-save-chocolate thing. Because this?
Some like it hard.
Three steps to secure land rights.
“If the seeds are never grown, they will fizzle out. Who is going to sow them and harvest them to keep them fresh?”
The avocado shouldn’t be here. So sue me.
The Ghana News Agency (and nobody else) says there’s a new genebank in Berlin.
Oman’s biodiversity (including agricultural) goes on the road.
Chinese agriculture goes sustainable. Well, in theory. Including for buckwheat, presumably.
Maybe you can work out what this early Chinese flour was actually of: millet, barley and/or wheat?
Meanwhile, in Japan, the opposite of sustainable farming beneath a Tokyo street.
The Irish and the potato: in need of a reset?
Want to develop? Learn to metabolize lactose.
Ten research questions on nutrition.
Well at least this gluten nonsense ¹ is helping bring back some funky grains. And is spurring breeders. Who should perhaps be focusing on more important problems?
Pulses will get their 15 minutes in 2016.
The Land Institute is still at it, and still getting press.
The United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing established one of the earliest seed companies in the US.
No, getting to the bottom of food ain’t easy.
Lupins better than soya in the UK, because breeding.
A Tanzanian mash-up: Farmers need the landscape. I’m not kidding. And yet…
There’s a film about coffee called “A film about coffee.”
“In the future, the American dream of big cars and burgers will need to be adjusted to more active transport and sustainable, healthy eating. Better is the new bigger. The world needs a new diet. And it is waiting for the US to take the lead.” Good luck with that.
Maybe start with breakfast?
Indians need their wild figs.
As much a African need baobabs, probably.
A fragmented forest is no forest at all. Well, almost.
BHL does domestication. As ever, great pix too.
Malaysia protects its fruits.
Who will head the Indian Agricultural Research Institute?
The pygmy hog has been sequenced.
A typology of livestock breeds.

March 30, 2015March 31, 2015

Listening to the fizmer

A couple of weeks ago we Nibbled an article by the writer Robert Macfarlane on his decade-long effort to rescue local words for features of the British landscape from oblivion. Macfarlane also has a piece on this obsession of his in the latest alumni magazine of the University of Cambridge — he’s Senior Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary Literature there, after all. This includes evocative photographs of some of the terms he’s collected. Worth a look (p. 35).

Screen Shot 2015-03-30 at 12.07.14 PM