Information

August 22, 2009August 22, 2009

Five Farms: documentary series

It’s been a busy week, so although I noticed a BBC World documentary series about Five Farms, I thought, I’ll save that for the weekend. And I forgot to bookmark the page at the BBC. Now, when I actually go looking for it, I’m covered in confusion. Truth be told, the BBC, domestic and World, provides magnificent service, but it isn’t always easy to find what you’re looking for in its web sites. Anyway, I had enough nuggets of information to go searching for the motherlode. And here it is: www.fivefarms.org.

If you want to hear the programmes, which were made by the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, they’re most easily available in a variety of formats from WUNC, North Carolina Public Radio. And there are multimedia video clips.

I didn’t find it easy to subscribe to the podcasts, but I have downloaded the programmes to listen to as I find time. This page makes it relatively easy to do so.

August 22, 2009August 19, 2009

Agrobiodiversity timelines roundup

While looking for something else, I came across an interesting food timeline. Perhaps a bit selective, but definitely worth exploring. Then by coincidence I stumbled on another timeline, this time of gardening around the world. Again, not a bad way to waste some time, although way too many links seem to be broken. Anyway, I naturally tried to go for the trifecta, but I could not find an even half-decent timeline of agricultural history. Maybe you can?

August 21, 2009August 21, 2009

Nibbles: Caucasus, Quillaja saponaria, Cococnut picker

Endangered Caucasian plants discussed. Presumably that will include CWR.
Bark of Chilean endemic Quillay tree preserves chicken meat.
“We call upon anyone to develop a product that can be used to pluck coconuts [while] standing on the ground. Anyone wanting to go ahead with this should submit a design and if it is approved they will be given Rs 1,000,000 to develop this product.”

August 20, 2009August 20, 2009

Nibbles: Pluots, Village chickens, Axolotl, Artisanal fishing, Fruit and climate change, Stamps, Hornless cattle, Artemisin for malaria, Aquatic agroecosystems characterization, Speciation and ploidy

What’s the difference between pluots and plumcots? By the guy who wrote the book.
ACIAR publication on village chickens, and another. Thanks, DAD-Net.
Modeling the axolotl, the edible Mexican salamander, before it’s too late.
Artisanal fishing data. Via.
USDA looking to expand its fruit collection to cope with climate change. NOt the only ones, I imagine.
Danes stamp on allotments. No, wait. Allotments on Danish stamps.
Aussies find genetic marker for hornless cattle that will jump on barbie by themselves.
Breeding better Artemisia annua.
The diversity of farmer-managed aquatic systems in SE Asia.
15% of angiosperm speciation events are accompanied by ploidy increase. Much more in domesticated species, I bet.

August 19, 2009

Mapping Argentinian pests and diseases

The Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria in Argentina has a new online pest and disease atlas out. It’s in Spanish, but pretty intuitive to use. You can search by host or by pest/disease organism. And you get a bunch of references, descriptive notes, photos and a map, albeit a static one — not sure how updating will be done. Below is the distribution of Setosphaeria turcica, the causal agent of Northern Leaf Blight in corn, for example. Would be interesting to mash this kind of thing up with the distribution of tolerant material. Must look into that. And of course one could do some climate change prediction modeling too. Thanks to IIALD.

argentina