- iSPOT to map common names to Latin names. Jeremy says “Good luck with that.”
- International Conference on Biodiversity Informatics. Jeremy says “Good luck with that too.”
- Online discussion forums for the ICBI, above. Agriculture! Forestry! Fisheries!
- Uganda joins the rush to Svalbard global genebank.
- Scientists to clone pashmina goat. Er … why?
- Adopt-an-Italian-olive-tree.
- International Plant Protection Convention (IPPC) meets so we can eats.
- Inverted root grafting of canistel at the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden.
- In vino veritas.
The spread of the ass
Great find by Mathilda: “The history and spread of donkeys in Africa,” by Roger Blench. It’s from the book Donkeys, people and development, edited by Paul Starkey and Denis Fielding. That came out of a 2004 Animal Traction Network for Eastern and Southern Africa workshop. There’s lots of other interesting stuff on the network’s site, including a donkey bibliography.
In brief:
- domesticated probably in Egypt/Nubia at the beginning of the Neolithic in Africa, 6,500 years ago
- but perhaps several times in regions of its former range no longer represented by its present-day distribution
- expansion paralleled that of cultivated sorghum
LATER: And a thousand year later, on another continent, it’s the horse’s turn.
Nibbles: Urban agriculture, Rural agriculture, Assisted migration, FAO prize, Traditional medicine, Diseaese
- IDRC reports on Agriculture in urban planning.
- French end subsidy hypocrisy. Mais non? Mais oui! Via .
- More on assisted migration.
- Chinese pig farmer wins FAO plaudits.
- India puts traditional remedies into public domain for their own good.
- Kenyan crops in trouble from diseases.
Aquaculture podcast
Doug Burdette talks about the history of aquaculture over at Agricultural Innovations, Inc. More to come next week, apparently.
Nibbles: Fraxinus, Sheep, Fish, Potato, Chickens, Eden, Microlivestock, Saliva, Mashua, Vine
- Chinese ash seeds go to Ft Collins (et al.) to fight emerald ash borer.
- And also colonial sheep.
- One fish goes up, another down. That’s life, I guess.
- Potatoes fried by climate change?
- What chicken breed is right for you?
- Agrobiodiversity bears fruit at Eden!
- Fish and snail farming in West Africa.
- “The saliva microbiome does not vary substantially around the world.â€
- Mashed mashua, anyone?
- Earliest evidence of vine cultivation in China.