The great How Stuff Works website has a whole series of videos on how to make chocolate. If only the World Cacao Federation had got in touch with them!
Genebanks not (yet) trendy
WorldFish has a new blog, focusing on spatial data. It’s only been going a few months, but it looks like it may well have some interesting stuff of relevance to agrobiodiversity. One of its early posts reminded me of something I’ve wanted to do for a while, and that is use Google Trends to look at interest in genebanks. In particular, I wanted to know whether all the news about the Svalbard Global Seed Vault has excited people about genebanks in general. Apparently, not.
The various spikes in interest in Svalbard do not seem to have resulted in increasing searches for “genebank” or “seed bank.” At least not that you can yet see clearly. Here’s hoping…
Sweet potato diversity identified
Amazingly, there are people out there who can name a sweet potato variety at twenty paces. And in a photograph. Check out the comments to a recent flickr upload of mine showing a market in Rabaul. Now, if only I had geo-referenced it…
Michael plays Virgil
Bioversity’s Michael Mackay was recently interviewed on Radio Australia about plans to lead us all out of genebank database hell. Good luck to him!
Nibbles: Spices, Tequila, Tea, Potatoes, Archive, Africa, Carotenoids, Calcium, AGR, Ethiopia, Wheat blast
- Where do spices come from, mummy?
- Even “good” tequila can be bad for you. Well I never.
- Sparkling tea? Call it a microwine. Via.
- More potatoes. …
- … but the kicker is the historical archive she links to.
- AGRA and Earth Institute to collaborate. Africa not available for comment.
- More Pacific food crop nutrition goodness from Lois et al.
- Children may not like their veggies because of the Ca content.
- Canada down to 95% Holsteins. Oh dear.
- “The large crop genetic diversity that already exists in Ethiopia will make adapting agricultural systems to the locally changing conditions relatively easy.” Well, maybe…
- Screening Kansas wheat varieties for resistance to wheat blast.