Livestock

Nibbles: Wikipedia, Cheese labels, Chickpea genome, Snake gourd, Phenotyping services, Politics, Sustainability on NUS, Brassica review

Natural History Museum wants a wikipedian. So, in a different way, does Crops for the Future.
The poetry of New York cheese labels.
Another crop genome bites the dust.
Kew contemplates the snake gourd.
Now you can outsource your experiments.
Strange bedfellows: small organic farmers and the Tea Party, a marriage made in Nebraska.
Got research on underutilized species (or indeed sustainable food chains) you think you might like to publish?
The OECD publishes a huge study of the biology of Brassica crops. Yes, the OECD.

Patrick reckons black salsify (aka Scorzonera hispanica, or just plain scorzonera) will be “the next ‘powerfood’ in the US”. It certainly is delicious, but I reckon it needs some serious breeding to make it worthwhile.
CABI news on pests and diseases; there’s a new banana wilt in town that would worry me.
Oh no! Ammunition for the deforestation deniers. “[R]research flaw that has likely exaggerated the impact of logging in tropical forests“.
Oh yes! The yak is back.
Oh no! Elsevier launches new journal: Global Food Security. Freely available (for now).

Fox News discovers mopane worms. Oh hum. This comes around very regularly, doesn’t it.
More allegedly innovative solutions to tackling something called the food security nexus. Which apparently doesn’t include trade. How about mopane worms?
Or bamboo? Or jackfruit?
Horizon scan of emerging conservation issues discussed by author and tweep Prof. Sutherland in PlanetEarth podcast. No, mopane worms didn’t make the list.
Davos participants step away from buffet (no word on whether featuring mopane) long enough to disagree about obesity.
How long to a multilateral system for mopane? Or bamboo for that matter.
Do we need a wiki for information on GMOs? Have your say at Biofortified. I would personally like to see one on mopane worms.
Domesticating Allanblackia. Maybe you could grow mopane worms on it when you’re done?
Sick of mopane worms? How about an indigestable report on the First Asia Dairy Goat Conference?

Wow, that’s one huge pumpkin!
Genomic whiz-bangery, which was apparently not involved in producing the above pumpkin, continues to hold much promise for wheat yields. And your jetpack is in the mail. I would ban the use of the word promise in this type of article. But since I can’t do that, I promise not to link to them ever again.
Jess gets to grips with Timorese nutrition. Get those local landraces back from any genebank that has them, Jess. And don’t forget to collect any remaining ones.
Then you could do some cool Seeds-for-Needs-type stuff.
And maybe some local breeding too?
And don’t forget local fruit trees!
Because you know investing in nutrition is really cost-effective.
Though of course it’s not just about the money.
Especially when it comes to coffee.
Or cacao for that matter.
They shoot hogs, don’t they? Maybe even in East Timor. Goats, alas, have problems of their own.
And as for dogs, we forced them to digest starch. What even the dingo? I bet there are dingo-like dogs in East Timor.

Farmer suicides in India blamed most recently on high food prices. The BBC debunks the numbers, and about everything else about the claims, without mentioning IFPRI.
Reviving the ethnobotanic gardens at the University of Kent in England.
Zanzibari women are successfully farming seaweed.
Sweet potatoes came from all over.
Unpacking sustainable livestock, one slide at the time.
Sandy Knapp et al. chase Solanum all over South America.
Everybody’s developing their own sustainable cocoa strategies. Not ideal.