Information

July 23, 2008July 23, 2008

Useful plants of tropical Africa databased

PROTA is an international, not-for-profit foundation. It intends to synthesize the dispersed information on the approximately 7,000 useful plants of Tropical Africa and to provide wide access to the information through Webdatabases, Books, CD-Româ€™s and Special Products.

I knew that, but hadn’t checked out progress on the centrepiece database in a while. Until today. I couldn’t get the “word wheel” thing to work, whatever that is, but the search function seems to work fine and the actual content is great. Now, why not link to GBIF?

July 22, 2008August 20, 2008

A tomato museum. In Tomatopolis of the World, MS

If you added together the weights of all the apples, bananas, grapes, and oranges the world eats in one year, it wouldnâ€™t come close to the weight of all the tomatoes we consume.

July 21, 2008July 21, 2008

Nibbles: Desert garden, Funding, Vegetables, Communication, Ecosystem services, Bees, Native grasses, Soil, Raspberries, Ancient ag trade, Soybeans, Ag origins

“See how beautiful you can make with small water!”
IRRI redux.
The problems of vegetable production in Africa, in microcosm.
“This is a local production, storage and distribution system, a huge exhibit of biodiversity.â€™â€™
PNAS special issue on ecosystem services.
Bee books.
Switch to switchgrass.
More than you probably want to know about earthworms.
Evil Fruit Lord questions Scotland-China raspberry deal.
Ancient crop DNA recovered from underwater amphorae. Totally amazing.
Nutritionist introduces soybeans to Afghanistan.
Early PNG agricultural site added to UNESCO World Heritage list.

July 20, 2008July 21, 2008

The miombo woodlands on Google Earth

A video on capturing, sharing and interacting with spatial information on the miombo woodlands of Malawi. Via.

July 19, 2008July 19, 2008

Agricultural economist put on the spot

Over at the Freakonomics Blog, there’s a Q&A with an eminent agricultural economist, Daniel Sumner of Davis. A timelyÂ idea, and some of the questions are actually pretty good, with a few even concerning agrobiodiversity, albeit obliquely. Problem is, I can’t see the answers. What am I missing? We’ve been thinking about doing something similar here, actually. Except not with an agricultural economist. Nor, in fact, with anyone eminent. Just Jeremy and I, at your disposal for a day, to answer questions on agricultural biodiversity, live. What do people think? Worth a try?