A user gets stranded in Genebank Database Hell looking for Vavilov’s collections in Tunisia. Not for the fainthearted.
Diversity improves waste recycling
The stuff that comes out of olive mills after the oil has been extracted is difficult to deal with. It ought to be a good addition to soils, increasing organic matter and other good qualities. But because it is a rather slimy sludge, it doesn’t decompose well. It is often composed by mixing half and half with sheep litter, and in a recent experiment, grape stems were added too. The result was faster, better compost. Olio, pecorino e grappa. Good for you, good for the land.
Nibbles: Monsanto, Carnival, Recycling, Kelp, Land lease, Pinole
- Monsanto under anti-trust investigation in US. h/t Our man in the policy maelstrom, Michael.
- Scientia Pro Publica, latest edition.
- From the SPP carnival, a recycled doormat saves edible marine biodiversity.
- Kelp farming in Maine. h/t Sadie Jane.
- “Is there such a thing as Agro-Imperialism?” we’ll let you know when we’ve read this long article. h/t Resilience Science
- This is the jerky of the plant kingdom. For those who don’t know, this is the jerky of the animal kingdom.
Nibbles: Climate change, Blog, Language, Language Again, IT,
- Indigenous people take video evidence to Copenhagen. The big site. (Cool map.)
- Congratulations to Biofortified, winners of an interview with foodie god Michael Pollan (and $1500).
- What colour is a banana? Linguist understands diversity, everyone else fails.
- And an orange?
- Google rescued my potato harvest. Long, dull article about a short, sharp story.
Bent Skovmand remembered
A Facebook post by Dag Endresen of NordGen alerted me to the recent publication of the biography of Bent Skovmand, entitled The Viking in the Wheat Field: A Scientist’s Struggle to Preserve the World’s Harvest. Bent Skovmand (1945-2007), a student of Norman Borlaug, was a very influential figure in the world of conservation and use of crop genetic resources in general, and of wheat in particular. The director of the Nordic Gene Bank (now NordGen) when he died, the books he kept in his office are touchingly maintained at NordGen’s Alnarp headquarters as a separate collection. I’ll be trying to get hold of the book.