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November 19, 2014November 19, 2014

Moroccan medicinal mint tea

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That’s me on the right in Rabat last week, having a post-prandial drink with Dr Ahmed Amri, head of the ICARDA genebank. I post the photo (taken by my colleague Charlotte Lusty) by way of explanation for the lack of blogging lately, and also as an excuse to link to the beta version of Kew’s Medicinal Plant Names Service, which I have just become aware of. You see that bit of greenery on the tea tray? It’s a plant that’s sometimes added to mint tea in Morocco during the winter. It’s called “absinthe” there. If you want to know the Latin name, you can look it up here.

November 16, 2014November 23, 2014

Nibbles: Chocolate, MAS, Cash crops, Medicinal plants, Rice domestication, Cat genome, Banana research, Artichoke history, Root vegetables, Diabetes data, eMonocot, Paris herbarium, Appleseed, Seed saving, Potato safety duplication, Seed atlas, Botanical Jurassic Park, Mapping urban fruit, Midwest road trip, Iraqi marshes, World Digital Library, World Parks Congress, Plant demography

Ok here goes, there’s a week’s work of Nibbles we’ve got to catch up on.
World running out of chocolate! Tell that to Cologne.
Yeah well I prefer tea to cocoa.
Greenpeace: “Smart breeding” will save us, not GMOs. Breeders: All breeding is smart.
Guess the world’s biggest cash crop. Yeah, that one.
Alas, it’s not included in the recent strategy for conserving medicinal plants. Not that it would need conserving.
The domestication of the world’s biggest crop, period. Deconstructed. And if you want to drill down.
And of the world’s biggest fruit.
And of the world’s biggest pet.
And of the world’s most difficult to eat vegetable.
Root “vegetables” made simple. Because winter.
And why you must eat your veggies, including the difficult ones.
Videos on Kew’s monocot database and on the renovation of another famous herbarium.
The real Johnny Appleseed.
But you too can save seeds, just like Johnny.
But don’t forget to safety duplicate, like CIP has done, at Embrapa.
And this shows you what those seeds can look like.
You don’t necessarily need seeds to save plants, though.
Mapping fallen fruit. Because we can.
Road trip!
Boat trip!
Selected Techniques in the Art of Agriculture. From French to Turkish to Arabic. One of many nifty agriculture-related resources in the World Digital Library.
Oh yeah, the IUCN World Parks Congress has been on and its all over the intertubes. Including with neat visualizations, natch.
How many of the species in the COMPADRE database of plant demography information are in protected areas? How many are crop wild relatives? I need an intern.

November 6, 2014

Outstanding Papers in Plant Genetic Resources 2014

…early this month the Crop Science Society of America (CSSA) has selected the paper ‘Improving Hierarchical Clustering of Genotypic Data via Principal Component Analysis’ for the 2014 award for ‘Outstanding Papers in Plant Genetic Resources’.

The paper is the result of a collaboration between Biometris and the Centre for Genetic Resources, the Netherlands (CGN): “The result of these two worlds meeting is influential science and efficiently managed germplasm.” Congratulations to Thomas Odong and his co-authors.

November 5, 2014October 31, 2014

Lots of old book illustrations now online

A Yahoo research fellow at Georgetown University, Kalev Leetaru, extracted over 14 million images from 2 million Internet Archive public domain eBooks that span over 500 years of content. Because we have OCR’d the books, we have now been able to attach about 500 words before and after each image. This means you can now see, click and read about each image in the collection. Think full-text search of images!

Very cool. Interested in sheep breeds, say? Go crazy.

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November 5, 2014November 5, 2014

Nibbles: Prof Brian Cox is cool, GRAIN vs Gates, Fragaria law suit, Central Asian fruits, Ecoagriculture, Forage breeding risk, WPC 2014, Nutrition trifecta, MSB funding, European seedsters support IT

Final Human Universe episode features Svalbard Global seed Vault.
GRAIN objects to where Gates Foundation spends its money. Nobody much cares.
Latest on that UC Davis strawberry breeding programme debacle.
Yes, bears do shit (apple seeds) in the woods. And some context.
A conference for the hippy in all of us.
The dark side of pasture breeding. Super-weed, I am your father!
World Parks Congress on soon too.
No access to healthy food? Use your mobile! Watch a video! Grow traditional crops!
Toyota funds the Millennium Seed Bank.
ESA supports the ITPGRFA. Speak Up For Seed!