- iSPOT to map common names to Latin names. Jeremy says “Good luck with that.”
- International Conference on Biodiversity Informatics. Jeremy says “Good luck with that too.”
- Online discussion forums for the ICBI, above. Agriculture! Forestry! Fisheries!
- Uganda joins the rush to Svalbard global genebank.
- Scientists to clone pashmina goat. Er … why?
- Adopt-an-Italian-olive-tree.
- International Plant Protection Convention (IPPC) meets so we can eats.
- Inverted root grafting of canistel at the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden.
- In vino veritas.
Non-wood forest products digested but not fed
The new NWFP-Digest is out. At least if you get the alert from FAO by email. If you go to the “Current issue” page on the website you still get the last issue. It should change in the next few days. But why no RSS feed? I’m beginning to think it’s just me that thinks RSS feeds can significantly boost ease of use at no cost.
Bye bye Bug Girl, be back soon
Bug Girl has pulled the plug on her blog, which is a crying shame. As a tribute, and to show you why I enjoyed it (even though I didn’t often link to it) here’s a link to the post that first brought Bug Girl to my notice: Cochineal: it’s a bug AND a feature. Enjoy it while you can, and join me in hoping Bug Girl can be tempted back.
Desert botany
As we’ve said before, we like blog carnivals. They expose us to new things, and they expose new people to our things. And that is why, despite the frequent lack of direct agricultural interest, we’re always happy to point you to the carnivals that have been good enough to feature our posts.
Berry Go Round no. 14 is up at Gravity’s Rainbow, where there is a bouquet of posts on topics ranging from Darwin’s tree ferns to baby’s breath ((Another accursed common name; Gypsophila elegans, if you please.)) If you fancy submitting something for next time, when the carnival will be hosted at A Neotropical Savanna, you’ve got till the end of the month.
The second edition of Carnival of the Arid is up too, at Coyote Crossing, which is where it started. Some wonderful photographs at Gossamer Tapestry. Maybe some of those are wild relatives? And maybe one of the desert rats over there in the American southwest can shed some light on the true history of Luigi’s mysterious millennial Anasazi beans.
We’re shameless enough to have sent our Sudanese trees to Festival of the Trees No. 33, which is also up at local ecologist. There’s enough there to satisfy the craziest tree hugger, including a little something on alder cones. I hope Michael Bell, who commented recently on his plan to develop alder as a grain crop, is watching. Again, submitting is easy, and again you’ve got till the end of the month.
Breeding news galore
The latest Plant Breeding News is out. There’s a huge number of interesting tidbits in it this month, including announcements for a number of major international conferences. But I’ll just highlight a web site that I think I may have linked to before but certainly bears mentioning again: PlantStress:
…the purpose of this web site is to serve as a brokerage of information, a meeting place, a consultation facility and a source for professional update on the most important issues of plant environmental (abiotic) stress. While the site is dynamic and constantly updated it also offers basic educational materials to newcomers into this area who wish to use the site for learning. The most important goal of this web site is to promote interaction among those interested in solving the problem of plants under stress in agriculture, be it scientists, extension specialists, business people, administrators, policy makers or farmers.
It includes a useful page of news, announcements and events, although unfortunately it does not have an RSS feed.