- Bamboo microscope used to document rice varieties at Indian village genebank. Want one.
- And more documentation and conservation of traditional knowledge in India: this time it’s medicines.
- Nigel Chaffey’s latest botanical buffet table at the Annals of Botany has stuff on nomenclature and genomes. Always worth following.
- Latest on saving agarwood. And more. Thanks to twittering by @AsiaForestry.
- Biofortified blogs research on geneflow between crops and their wild relatives.
- Kentucky bluegrass pix. Botany Photo of the Day is also worth following. You guys all use Google Reader, right?
- “Any serious discussion of biodiversity conservation must include the diversity of crops and livestock…” Right on.
- Vavilov hits Abyssinia. Another one for Reader.
- Pollinator trends in Europe and the world. It ain’t good.
- Your botanic gardens needs at least 15 individuals of that palm.
Corn-fed is grass-fed
See if you can spot the problems with this line of reasoning:
- Grass-fed beef is good for you, the environment, and everything.
- Corn (maize, and barley, and wheat) is a grass.
- Corn-fed beef is grass-fed beef.
- Corn-fed beef is good for you, the environment, and everything.
Over at Muck and Mystery Gary does a fine job of unpacking all that logic. Sample:
[T]his would make some sense if they fed the whole corn plant to their cattle rather than just the seeds, and did so while the plant was still alive and vegetative, so that then cattle would get some green with all of that yellow. Better still, grow corn varieties bred for grazing (they exist) that produced more leaf, more nutritious stalks, and less seeds.
There’s more too, on how exaggerated claims from one end of a spectrum call forth exaggerated claims from the other, rather than the nuanced interpretation they really need. Gary talks about backlash. I suspect anyone trying to make sense of the arguments, in beef as in just about anything, would suffer whiplash instead.
Research on healthier food systems
Food Systems and Public Health: Linkages to Achieve Healthier Diets and Healthier Communities is a special edition of the Journal of Hunger and Environmental Nutrition. Scads of research papers and articles, all free to download, at least some of which almost certainly will have a bearing on one of our main interests, the use of agricultural biodiversity to feed into dietary diversity, with all the benefits that can bring.
So many papers, so little time …
Nibbles: Irrigation squared, Saffron, Chickpeas, Coastal trees, Cucurbits
- Wanna grow plants in the Jordanian desert? Invest $250,000.
- Wanna grow plants in the Maharashtra summer? Invest $20.
- There’s a world saffron crocus collection. Who knew? A review is coming.
- Coloured chickpeas contain more antioxidants. Well, yeah.
- SciDev.net says scientists say coastal trees not much good against tsunamis, and may be bad news generally.
- Rhizowen crosses species barriers, develops ficifoliaphilia, poor chap.
Australia offers agriculture fellowship
Happy to broadcast this opportunity.
The Crawford Fund is now calling for nominations for its Crawford Fund Fellowship for 2010.
The Crawford Fund Fellowship has been set up to provide further training for an agricultural scientist whose work has shown potential. This prestigious Award provides an opportunity for the successful candidate to spend a period of focussed study and training in Australia, with resulting benefits to the Awardee as well as to their country’s agriculture and to Australia.
Candidates should be below the age of 35 and from a selected group of developing countries (Bangladesh, Bhutan, Burma, Cambodia, East Timor, Fiji, Indonesia, Laos, Nepal, Niue, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Is, Tonga, Tuvalu and Kiribati, Vanuatu or Vietnam).
Applications close 12 April 2010. More details, application forms, etc etc here.