Livestock

September 10, 2008September 11, 2008

Nibbles: Favas, Olives, Insects, Beer, Hallucinogen

UK breeders scour ICARDA’s fava beans for better genes. What next? Chianti?
Olive cultivation then and now. An archaeologist speaks.
Entomophagy.
Lager yeast origins.
Salvia divinorum: underutilized no longer.

September 9, 2008September 9, 2008

Nibbles: Yeast, Weeds, Bioprospecting, Iraq, Pine wilt, Vietnam, GM, GM, Insects, Bees, Sheep, Fowl

Boffins to brew Jurassic Park beer.
Boffins fingerprint weeds.
Boffins scour arctic for antifreeze proteins.
Boffins to reclaim Garden of Eden.
Boffins fight to save pines in Europe.
Boffins improve production of rice and fruits in Mekong Delta.
Boffins to spend $US3.5billion on GM in China.
Boffin “disgraces himself”.
Boffin says insects are agrobiodiversity too.
Boffin wants you to plant sunflowers and count bees. Other boffins dig up evidence of bliblical beekeeping.
Boffins find endogenous retroviruses in sheep different to ones in wild relatives. Via.
Boffins kill beautiful theory about pre-Columbian chickens with ugly fact.

September 5, 2008September 5, 2008

Nibbles: ICTs, Dance, Information, Animal genetic resources

Video on Web 2.0 applications in the development sector in Africa.
Dancing with agrobiodiversity. Via. Thanks, Kev.
New Agriculturist is out.
China will “ban the export of genetic resources of newly-discovered, unidentified livestock and poultry breeds that are unique to the country.” Unidentified?

September 4, 2008September 4, 2008

Nibbles: Banananomy, El Tratado Internacional, Water, Quinoa, Bananamama, Rice, Goats

Wilson Wong raves about banana name book. We say: “Banana? Plantain? What’s the difference?”
Â¿Hablas espaÃ±ol? Â¿Quieres aprender sobre el Tratado Internacional? Sigue este link.
Nice take on food shortages; realistic water pricing will cut waste.
(North) American farmer loves quinoa.
Africa’s “banana mama” tells Linda Nordling how winning the YARA prize has been the fulfilment of a lifelong goal.
IRRI receives $500,000 handout; wonder what the true cost to the donor was.
“Let’s extensively raise goats in all families.”

September 1, 2008September 2, 2008

Nibbles: Veal, Anatomy, Taro, Schwenkler, Genebanks

“You have to find a wacky person when you are trying to rescue something in danger of extinction“.
Fruit porn video from BBC.
Hawaii sets up task force to save taro. Yeah that’ll work.
John SchwenklerÂ potpourri.
Malaysian PM set right on seedbanks. Thanks, Choo.

1. What has agrobiodiversity ever done for us? Kent Nnadozie of the Plant Treaty lays it out.
2. Michael Frei of the HealthyDiets4Africa project doesn’t need it laid out.
3. Neither do the people who awarded a prize to Charlotte Allender of the UK Vegetable Genebank.
4. What has the US National Plant Germplasm System ever done for anyone? The Guardian, the NY Times and NPR News lay it out. I guess someone in D.C. needs it laid out, but will it make any difference?
5. Everyone: Potatoes in Florida! Breeders: No problem. NPGS: You called?
6. Here’s The Guardian again, but this time thinking it is making the case for not putting seeds in the fridge, whereas in fact it’s making the case for the complementarity of ex situ and on-farm conservation.
7. Speaking of on-farm conservation, here’s a couple of pieces on community seed banks in Guatemala.
8. Speaking of on-farm conservation, here’s the heart-warming story of Welsh organic farmer Gerald Miles.
9. Meanwhile, the World Vegetable Centre opens a new genebank.
10. And Türkiye hosts an international, no less, olive genebank.
11. And genebanks can be so beautiful, like works of art. Former Tate Modern director Vicente Todolí lays out his citrus samples. I wonder what he could do with olives.
12. Botanic gardens are beautiful and often act a little bit like crop genebanks. Here’s an example from Portugal I stumbled onto recently, I forget how.
13. You know what I’d like to see? An international pepper genebank, that’s what. No, not the kind that might be in those Guatemalan community seedbanks or the WorldVeg genebank. This sort of pepper. Piper pepper.
14. I bet the ancient Egyptians had pepper. Egyptian archaeologist Mennat-Allah El Dorry lays out what else they had.
15. Maybe you could lay out world history using pepper. You can definitely do so using cacao and chocolate.
16. No, not using ancient DNA, but actually…
Published on April 4, 2025