- Intriguing: how about a sliding scale for fertilizer taxes?
- Dubious: sustainable brewing in Bogota.
- Surprising: naked oat seeds in Canada.
- Challenging: new coloured potato varieties are nutritious and pest-resistant.
- Illuminating: white veggies are nutritious too.
- Important: EU seed vote coming up.
- Belated: CGIAR goes open access.
- Intoxicating: Japanese drink fermented hydrangea leaves.
- Obvious: Cars move grassland seeds.
- Freaky: interspecific grass hybrid for flood prevention.
- Tasty: Fine carnivorous dining in Bolivia.
- Metaphysical: granivory is murder.
- Political: UK government supports agroecology.
Nibbles: African food, Cattle grazing, Young farmers, Seed policy, Traditional medicine, Litchis, Land use, Perennial sorghum
- Today’s Nibbles is a Kenya edition. Just because.
- But we’ll start with an African foodie revolution that is passing that country by.
- Cattle need diverse foods too, so don’t neglect those forbs, Kenyans.
- A young Kenyan turns to vegetable growing. Not, alas, of the traditional kind. Yet.
- Well, he better get a move on, because it says here people are after his seeds.
- Seeds are what the traditional medicine industry could do with.
- I guess there’s always litchis.
- Wonder what they’ll do to land use patterns.
- But will there ever be perennial sorghum?
Brainfood: Viruses, Allium genomic size, Acacia adaptation, Local carp, Chinese onions, Bull genetic info, Ecosystem services, Sahelian ag
- New threats to endangered Cook’s scurvy grass (Lepidium oleraceum; Brassicaceae): introduced crop viruses and the extent of their spread. Introduced crop virus threatens endemic.
- Role of adaptive and non-adaptive mechanisms forming complex patterns of genome size variation in six cytotypes of polyploid Allium oleraceum (Amaryllidaceae) on a continental scale. It’s not the environment.
- Evolution and ecology meet molecular genetics: adaptive phenotypic plasticity in two isolated Negev desert populations of Acacia raddiana at either end of a rainfall gradient. It’s the environment.
- Using biodiversity to valorise local food products: the case of fish ponds in a cultural landscape, their biodiversity, and carp production. It could work, if only people liked to eat carp and knew what biodiversity was.
- Phenotype and genetic diversity in potato onion cultivars from three provinces of northeast China. In other news, there’s something called a potato onion. Otherwise, this is actually a deeply boring paper.
- The value of genetic information to livestock buyers: a combined revealed, stated preference approach. Low to none, for now.
- Ecosystem Services. Latest issue includes a bunch of interesting reviews, and an editorial summarizing each in like a paragraph. Great service, great value. See what I did there?
- Scientific documentation of crop land changes in the Sahel: A half empty box of knowledge to support policy? There is no data, not really.
Nibbles: DIY plantains, Poppies, Fruit portions, EU seed law workshop, Sustainable intensification, Nutrition & ag, Traditional medicine, Soil maps, US biodiversity maps, Genomics & genebanks, Indian seed film, Food preservation
- Someone needs to tell the Los Angeles Times that plantains are not the “tropical cousin of the banana”.
- Someone else needs to tell “British and American agricultural advisers” that poppies are generally going to be a better bet than cotton in Helmland Province. Like they were in Ghazipur.
- Is there anyone who can tell schools not to serve whole fruit, when children prefer bite-sized pieces?
- And who will tell us what happens at the Workshop in the EU Seed Law, in Vienna today and tomorrow?
- In which we are once again told that sustainable intensification is the answer, but not how to do it.
- A tool for helping agricultural development types figure out what to do about nutrition.
- Let the Times of India tell you about how wild fruits and seeds are used in traditional medicine.
- ISRIC tells the world about its new soil maps of Africa.
- And the US government about its biodiversity, also in maps.
- Lots of people recently told their stories of how genomics is going to revolutionize genetic resources use to a meeting in ICRISAT, and now ICRISAT tells us.
- A new film tells the story of rice savers in India. Not, presumably, though, Bihar.
- Are you really telling me Genghis Khan was a food waste champion?
Nibbles: Carnivory, Insectivory, Pearl farming, Development grants, CWR mapping, Cassava genes, Permaculture in Malawi, Sustainability book, Sustainability conference, Commission, Morality & conservation, Beer from genebank
- Eat steak!
- No, eat cicadas!
- Farm pearls!
- Get a grant!
- CIAT got one, to map crop wild relatives!
- Not sure if any of these drought tolerance genes in cassava are from wild relatives, but I wouldn’t be surprised.
- I would likewise not be surprised if both cicadas and cassava featured in Malawian permaculture.
- Punjab’s 1st investigative e-paper doesn’t allow visitors to highlight and copy text, which means that the potentially interesting book about agricultural sustainability it mentions will go ungoogled.
- Which is a pity because I was really hoping for a nice segue into this conference on, ahem, agricultural sustainability, to take place in a few months in China.
- Which I could then have followed with a plug for the FAO Commission on GRFA, which many of us will be attending next week here in Rome.
- No, wait: Agricultural Sustainability: Progress and Prospects in Crop Research.
- But of course the best argument for sustainability is the moral one, right?
- That. Or beer.