- Picture guide to West African plants. Includes agrobiodiversity!
- Iowa State Agronomy podcasts. Some cool stuff. Check out the one on “Modeling Seed Germination Over Time to Decide When to Regenerate Seed Lots in Long-term Storage.”
- A “formal global program to develop subnational agricultural land-use statistics“? Riiiiight.
- GFAR meeting on sustainable use of agrobiodiversity says “[w]e need to initiate solid and inclusive actions to build concerted and practical actions on sustainable use.” Well they do say actions speak louder than words.
- Researcher “trying to remove the perception that hackneys are ‘half-crazed.'” I’d rather pay to save them if they were crazy, but that’s me.
- Romaine: germplasm to breeding lines. But to cultivars? Private sector to pick up the slack.
- Crops not mentioned among species that save our lives.
- Saving sacred groves in Ethiopia. By building pit latrines. Well why not?
- Brazil nut spread by people.
- A trade-off between species and genetic diversity? Say it
ain’t so! - Today’s iconic species threatened by climate change is the baobab.
- An Egyptian archaeobotanical blog.
- Botanic gardens can threaten biodiversity.
- Nature has (or had, it’s a couple months old) a supplement on nutrigenomics.
Nibbles: Plant Cuttings, Truffles, Diseases, Vegetables, Capsicum, Calestous Juma
- Nigel Chaffey’s roundup of botanical news is out.
- Learn how to grow truffles. For Canadians.
- ILRI policy brief on how agriculture and human health are connected. Bottom line: it’s complicated.
- AVRDC introduces you to Mali’s Magnificent Cube.
- Biofortified on pepper breeding.
- Calestous Juma in the New Agriculturist on why he’s optimistic about African agriculture.
Nibbles: Buckwheat, Dates, Book, Apples, Geographical indications
- Buckwheat yields boosted by diversity in nearby forests.
- Date (press) with the past, in Qatar.
- Sustainable Intensification: Increasing Productivity in African Food and Agricultural Systems. A bit steep at GBP65 for 30 papers; we’ll be reading and sharing what we find.
- Apples, endangered? Well, yes.
- What’s so good about geographical indications anyway?
Nibbles: Cassava, Brazil, Taro, Tobacco
- High-protein, vitamin-A enriched cassava. It’s GM, but it doesn’t have to be. Apparently.
- Resilience Science shows us the modernist face of intense and diverse agriculture in Brazil.
- The Scientist Gardener gives taro, and our pal the TaroMeister, some respect.
- A tobacco festival! Celebrating the diversity of cigars! In Cuba! (Where else?)
Botanic gardens get the treatment
We probably don’t give botanic gardens the attention they deserve. So it’s a pleasure to point out that Biodiversity and Conservation has a special issue out on Botanic Gardens in the Age of Climate Change, with a focus on Europe. Lots of interesting stuff in there, including from some old friends.
And since we’re on the subject of published papers, I’d like to say what a good idea it is to include an illustration in the abstract of a paper. I had not come across this before I stumbled on the example here on the left in a recent Scientia Horticulturae paper on Citrus phylogeny.