This picture contains more layers of meaning than you can possibly imagine. Nicola Twilley unpacks some of them at GOOD. Has she left any out?
Nibbles: Egyptian mysteries, Svalbard, Pineapple fabric, Chinese alcohol, Seed Saving
- “Readers, florists, Egyptians, can you help?” Maybe some of them are crops.
- Seeds move from South to North for safety. Australia backs up to Norway.
- Tired of your hair shirt? Try pineapple fibre.
- The history of alcohol in China; Happy Rabbit.
- How to save heirloom seeds (for people near Central Arkansas).
- Food and War (not what you think; a book review)
Nibbles: Taro, Organics, Chickens, Cuba, Fishfood,
- How to build a taro garden; the straight dope from Queen Emma (1836-1885).
- Organic agriculture in Kibera, Kenya; the straight dope from the BBC (slideshow)
- Chinese chicken merchants undercut locals; welcome to the market, Zambia.
- UN to preserve Cuban agrobiodiversity? Who knows, no straight dope to be had.
- Research proves new soybean meal sources are good fish meal alternatives. So that’s alright then.
More lessons from Egypt
For no other reason than that I like playing with Google Earth, here’s a map of Egyptian germplasm in the Millennium Seed Bank (red dots), which are duplicates of some of the material at the recently looted Deserts Gene Bank, and in Genesys (which covers the CG Centre genebanks contributing to SINGER, the European genebanks contributing to EURISCO, and the genebanks of the USDA system). The red markers are wild material, the green cultivated.
Now, do you see that row of green markers in the middle of the desert in the south of the country?
Those turn out to be various vegetables from three different genebanks in the USA and Europe. Which nicely illustrates the usefulness of bringing datasets together. And playing with Google Earth.
Documentary on rice and climate change goes online
It’s a bit apocalyptic in tone, but it’s always good to see a genebank featured (starting at about 7:00 minutes in) in a popular documentary, in this case IRRI’s. But there’s much more, so watch the whole thing. Well done, Ruaraidh. And thanks, History Channel.