The latest Plant Breeding News is out, though only if you’re registered for email alerts. However, in a couple of days you should be able to get October’s digest on the archive page, where you can also subscribe. Lots of stuff about breeding for climate change in this issue. It’s a great resource, brought to you by the Global Partnership Initiative for Plant Breeding Capacity Building (GIPB). And I’m not just saying that because they gave us a namecheck this month.
Nibbles: Toms, Virus, Svalbard, CIRAD
- More on those purple tomatoes. And there’s lots more where that came from.
- Virus weakens the response of genes that normally boost defense against pest.
- “Superman had it right.”
- Yeah, but France has genebanks too.
- Dispatches from Terra Madre: “How are you fighting racism in your food community?”
Nibbles: Wild food, Sisal, Cucurbits, Carnival, Rice blight
- Zimbabwean take to wild foods, and not in a good way.
- “It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday, and I was in bed with my catamite when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see my sisal flooring.”
- Gourds+Halloween=Jawdropping Creativity.
- Tangled Bank 117.
- “Terror agent” listing for Xanthomanas oryzae blights US rice research.
Global Source Book on Biocultural Diversity
Terralingua’s Global Source Book on Biocultural Diversity is out and available for download as a pdf. And very impressive it is too. It looks at “worldwide experiences in an integrated approach to sustaining cultures and biodiversity” through some 50 or so case studies, of which one, from Peru, is on agrobiodiversity. Better than nothing, I guess.
Berry go Round
The latest Berry go Round — Number 10 — is up at 10,000 birds, whose proprietor, Mike, definitely gets it:
I love plants. You do too, whether you’re in touch with your vegephilia or not. Everything you eat or smoke and practically everything you drape on your body or put in your car to make it go derives directly or indirectly from the vegetable kingdom.
And for once, I’m not going to winge about the paucity of agricultural interest. There’s masses. Neglected species, citrus taxonomy, wild relatives, recipes, the whole enchilada. Check it out.