Information

February 1, 2015February 1, 2015

Wheat roundup

Great to get an email update from Andy Forbes yesterday on the latest developments at Brockwell Bake. They’ve been busy with their Nordic colleagues of late, as you can read in the latest edition of True Loaf. ¹ But the big news is they’ll be on the BBC’s Food Programme later today, along with lots of other heritage wheat enthusiasts.

And the wonderful Wheat Gateway has had a couple of tweaks over Christmas:

Wheat *hub *pages such as for Hen Gymro are intended to link up available historical references, morphological descriptions and modern imagery to germplasm data and in due course current cultivation and usage reports for landrace and other heritage lines of specific interest.

“*with image*” searches on the database has been added so the various image resources (USDA, INRA, BBA, NordGen) can be targeted by users – inspired to do so by the immaculate image collection of the Nordic Genebank.

Brockwell seem to be cornering the market in wheat genetic resources information systems.

Oh, and since we’re at it, here’s philosopher Julian Baggini on our duty of stewardship towards einkorn.

January 31, 2015February 1, 2015

Nibbles: CWR conservation, Small farms & food security, iPlant, Forgotten edibles, James Wong, Google Earth Pro, Wageningen course, Journalism fellowship, Vavilov-Frankel

Draft technical guidelines from FAO on conserving crop wild relatives at national level.
Small farms are beautiful.
Finding the climate adaptation needle in the genomic haystack. Hint: supercomputers needed. DivSeek alerted?
Emma Cooper asks: “…have you got a favourite ‘forgotten’ edible plant that you’d like to champion?”
James Wong talks about that kind of thing too, and much else garden-related besides, on his new website.
Rejoice, Google Earth Pro is now free!
Wageningen UR course on Food For All.
UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism is offering ten $10,000 postgraduate Food and Farming Journalism Fellowships. ‘Nuff said.
Speaking of fellowships: the 2015 call for Bioversity’s Vavilov-Frankel Fellowship is open.
Possible new Cannabis species from Australia: watch them do the DNA work and spoil it. Gap analysis, anyone? … As you were, didn’t need DNA after all.

January 29, 2015January 30, 2015

Nibbles: FAO Commission, Private genebank, DivSeek duo, Biofortified sorghum, African supermarkets, Enset, Health crops, Breadfruit conference, Denison podcast, Saving chocolate, Paramo app, CIMMYT genebank video, Pig milk

FAO says genes are good for climate.
India’s first private sector genebank established.
Well, at least one person is really excited about DivSeek.
And one major journal.
DuPont video on increasing sorghum Fe and Zn levels in Africa.
Will they sell it through local vendors or supermarkets?
Let them eat enset. Which is not, however, on this list of today’s top healthy crops.
Neither is breadfruit, but that shouldn’t stop you going to this conference in Trinidad.
Ford Denison writes about his appearance on Eat This Podcast.
Enough with the scary chocolate stories already.
Here, go play with this app about the flora of the paramo from Missouri Botanical Garden.
The CIMMYT genebank in the news.
Pig milk in your tea, vicar?

January 21, 2015January 21, 2015

Nibbles: CGRFA, Kew crop job, CC and PGRFA, MAGIC, SDGs, Bushmeat, Biofortification, Protecting trees, Wild coffee, Money honey, Nutmeg story, Colonial cooking, Armenian food

The Platform for Agrobiodiversity Research breaks down this week’s Fifteenth Regular Session of the Commission on Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture for ya.
Kew looking for a crop person! I wonder if the successful candidate is in Rome today.
Mauricio Bellon on why smallholder farmers need crop diversity to adapt to climate change. He’s in Rome.
Multi-Parent Advanced Generation Inter Cross (MAGIC) deconstructed. Compare and contrast with above.
The SDGs in one cool interactive infographic. But where’s nutrition?
Where is overhunting for bushmeat occurring? Gotta get your nutrition where you can…
Want to invest in a biofortified crop like iron beans? Here’s how to work out where you should do it. Interesting to cross-reference with that bushmeat thing above?
Ancient Greek tree preservation order.
Ethiopian forest dwellers protect wild coffee. No preservation orders needed.
Tracking honey. Follow the money.
Could say the same about nutmeg.
Meat stew with garden eggs. Sounds yummie. Not much used in Kenya these days any more, alas.
Delving into Armenian Ottoman foods. Because we can. No sign of garden eggs.

January 20, 2015January 17, 2015

European livestock breed conservation assessed

A further addition to the mass of online information on livestock genetic resources around the world. It’s the final report of the SUBSIBREED project, providing and “Overview and assessment of support measures for endangered livestock breeds” in Europe. It was put together by the European Regional Focal Point for Animal Genetic Resources (ERFP), which is hosted by the Information and Coordination Centre for Biological Diversity (IBV) of the Federal Office for Agriculture and Food (BLE)
in Bonn, Germany. I suppose the information will eventually find its way into the relevant databases?

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