- A Wheat Germplasm Database To Rule Them All. No, not from CGIAR.
- New livestock maps of the world. Yes, from CGIAR.
- Kashmir ponders an apple genebank.
- More from Game of Strawberries.
- Wanna study the population genomics of cheese fungi? Course you do.
- Domesticating local fruit trees good for nutrition, but need secure tenure and good planting material.
- Building better broccoli, the genome way.
- Early domesticated dogs helped in mammoth hunts.
- Current extinction rate about 1000 times higher than background. Databases can help with that, believe it or not.
- Building a national PGRFA system in Bolivia. When will they ratify the ITPGRFA, though?
Nibbles: Linux lettuce, Climate intelligence, European ag & CC, Italian forests, Sweet potato chains, Aroid podcast, Beer trifecta, CWR everywhere
- Totally forgot if we already linked to this latest pean to open source seed.
- Climate-smart agriculture described in three paragraphs.
- Hope someone explains it to European farmers, and soon.
- Italy is increasingly wooded. But only because farms are being abandoned. Maybe not climate-smart enough?
- If only those farms had better links to markets, like in E. Africa…
- Dutch food writer on the Jewish (maybe) origins of the Surinamese national dish. Gotta love edible aroids. Jeremy does his podcast thing.
- Step 1: Breed your hops.
- Step 2: Find a funky yeast.
- Step 3: Crack the Kenyan beer market.
- Back to real life: USAID’s brand new multisectoral nutrition policy. Now, then, what’s the betting that the agricultural interventions supported by USAID avoided the risks that such things often hold for nutrition (incomes, prices, types of products, women social status and workload, sanitary environment and inequalities)?
- SeedMap.org breaks down crop wild relatives.
- Somebody mention crop wild relatives? Yes, Sandy Knapp.
- Somebody mention parientes silvestres de cultivos? Yes, Nora Castañeda.
- How many CWR will go the way of Arabidopsis? Because southern populations of that species in genebanks are already doing better than local populations in northern sites.
- How many crop wild relatives in Kew’s meadows?
Nibbles: Genebanks list, Fish & trees, Indian seed fair, Junk food, Geographic indications, NZ & Canadian heirloom seeds
- A new Twitter list on ex situ plant conservation. Subscribe!
- Yeah we need a new Twitter list like fish need trees. No, wait…
- “64 traditional varieties of paddy, vegetables and millets will be exhibited.”
- Junk food worse than tobacco, UN says.
- An overview of origin-linked products. No junk food there.
- New Zealand heirloom seed collection in trouble.
- Canadian heirloom seed collection takes off. Maybe these two should talk?
Pigeon Foot sorghum unmasked
You may remember my quandary over the meaning of the name of the sorghum variety Gadam El Hamam. Well, I had the opportunity of asking real experts at the ICRISAT office in Nairobi yesterday. They confirmed, first of all, that the Gadam sorghum that is being so successfully used in beer brewing in Kenya is indeed a selection from the Sudanese variety Gadam El Hamam. And after a quick email to their Sudanese sorghum breeder colleague based in Addis Ababa, we solved the mystery of the name. It turns out the correct transliteration is Gadam Elhmam, which means “Pigeon Foot” in Arabic. This is apparently a trope that is used in Sudanese poetry and songs to describe a beautiful lady. So I more or less had the bits, but I could not put them together. Thanks to all at ICRISAT in Nairobi for helping me do that at last.
Incidentally, the photo is of a beautiful Faidherbia albida tree on the ICRAF campus in Nairobi, which is where the ICRISAT regional office is housed. You may be able to make out from that the Napier grass and mulberries are taller and more lush just under the tree as compared to further back. They don’t call Faidherbia the cornerstone of “evergreen agriculture” (big PDF) for nothing.
The Queen of Crop Breeding
Yes, I know blogging has been slow the past week or so, but I’ve been on leave and Jeremy way too busy with work for everyone’s good, though mostly his. But look, you got couple of big fat Brainfoods to keep you going, no? 1 Anyway, thought you might be interested in this piece in Kenya’s Saturday Nation newspaper a couple of days back. It’s a profile of AGRA plant breeder Dr Jane Ininda. The illustration is a (poor quality, alas) photo of the actual newspaper, which I took because it was such a treat to see a crop breeder splashed all over a major national newspaper. And the effect is just not the same in the digital version.