Information

June 22, 2011June 22, 2011

Vote early, vote often…

Many thanks to the World Vegetable Center for running a poll on Jacob’s seeds-with-yoghurt idea. Head on over to their Facebook page and vote!

Alternatively, because we are such Social Media Mavens that we serve even people who aren’t on Facebook, head on over to our own sidebar, over there on the right, and vote here instead. Or as well. Do people who vote here vote differently from people who vote at the other place?

You’ll note that we’ve modified the question ever so slightly, as we’re not sure how many subsistence farmers in, say, Mali, eat store-bought yoghurt. Even with free seeds.

June 22, 2011June 22, 2011

Nibbles: Median strips, Vitamin A, Mapping in Kenya, Chaffey, Small farms, Rennell Island coconuts, Sweet potato breeding, Acacia nomenclature, Crop models, Pulque, Fruits

Planting roadsides with natives, including crop wild relatives. And here comes the database.
Orange Maize: The Movies.
VirtualKenya really here. Mother-in-law beside herself.
Plant Cuttings is out. And all of a sudden I’m in a much better place.
Small is beautiful, farm edition. And as chance would have it, coffee farm edition. And urban edition.
Dispute at iconic coconut plantation resolved. Apparently there are some really unique varieties there.
I say boniato. For the first and last time.
Acacia on the brink. Easy, tiger. The name, not the genus.
We’re going to need a better model.
Pulque comes back. Never knew it had gone away.
Domesticating fruit trees in Kenya. Something for VirtualKenya?

June 21, 2011June 21, 2011

Nibbles: Cryo, Tree diversity, Agroforestry, Seed industry, Trigonella, Ancient MesoAmerica, Niche models

CIP’s high-tech genebank.
“The project’s eventual aim is to plant several thousand trees at sites across Perthshire to act as a ‘living gene bank.'” What, because normally genebanks are dead?
Millennium Seed Bank joins ICRAF’s BusyTrees thing. Which you can follow in about a million different social networking ways.
Conservation Magazine does a number on crop improvement. Wait, what? Conservation Magazine? Yep, and with teaching resources.
Fenugreek, barkeep, and make it a double.
Ancient chocolate and corn routes.
What species distribution models do you like?

June 19, 2011

The diversity of Andean diversity festivals

Hot on the heels of the Fifth Potato Festival in Peru, which we mentioned a few days ago, comes the Festival Nacional de la Agrobiodiversidad Frutos de la Tierra, also in Peru, 24-26 June. And, not to be outdone, Ecuador weighs in with the I Seminario Internacional de la Papa, also on 24 June. One has to wonder what is driving this proliferation of agricultural events in the region. And since we’re on the subject of Andean diversity, does anyone else think that some of the potato varieties illustrated by National Geographic are nothing of the sort?

June 14, 2011June 14, 2011

Protect and survive; building better-defended wheats

The United States Department of Agriculture broke ground yesterday on a new facility at the University of Minneapolis in St Paul, for studying stem rust and other fungal diseases in wheat.

“By expanding our commitment to research that targets crop diseases like Ug99, we can strengthen food security and reduce hunger and poverty in countries like Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Ethiopia and Pakistan,” said Robert Bertram, head of USAID’s Office of Agriculture, Research and Technology. “This research concurrently helps U.S. scientists protect America’s wheat crops.”

The groundbreaking ceremony was part of a four-day research conference sponsored by the Borlaug Global Rust Initiative. Not coincidentally, a report from a recent wheat-rust meeting at ICARDA is winging its way towards the experts attending the conference. You can download your own copy direct from ICARDA.