- More on how the baobab is coming to Europe.
- Review of breeding for nutritionally improved crops.
- Book on the origins of British gardening.
- Earthworms “modulate the competition between grasses and legumes.”
- ACIAR publishes book on taro pests in the Pacific.
- UNEP launches global pollinator conservation initiative.
- Unusual use for livestock fetuses.
- “And she grows more than 100 types of trees…“
- “Along the equator, without access to refrigeration, you could be dead pretty quickly unless you can find a way to protect yourself against the microbes you ingest every day.”
Nibbles: Dog genetics, ITPGRFA, Mapping, Neolithic, Insects, Markers, Soybeans, Milk
- Man’s best friend helps out again.
- Intellectual Property Watch looks at the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. And they found that it was good. Well, kinda.
- More on predicting the results of climate change on species distributions.
- A nice summary of what agriculture has meant for human genetics. I vote we go back to hunting and gathering.
- New insectarium allows you to eat exhibits. Pass the mopane worms.
- New DNA chip picks out best cows. Daisy unavailable for comment.
- The world’s greatest soybean farmer speaks. Did they serve tofu snacks?
- Had milk?
Nibbles: Human migrations, Fungi, Madagascar, Green Revolution
- “Nilotic-language speakers … first brought herds of animals to southern Africa before the Bantu migration” about 2000 years ago.
- British truffles go berserk. And more.
- An interview with the guy who’s been mapping hundreds of Malagasy species.
- Not sure if I already drew your attention to the New Agriculturist’s Focus feature on A Green Revolution for Africa.
Nibbles: Qat, Tomato, Climate change squared, Documentation, Food diaspora, Mapping Africa, Gout, Chicken origins, HealthMap, Olive, Crop mixtures
- Catha edulis bad for Yemen economy. Having been waved a gun at by a qat-chewing Somali teenager, I can testify it’s bad for other things as well.
- Amy Goldman on the heirloom tomato.
- Biology Letters special feature on climate change and biodiversity.
- And more on climate change, this time its likely effect on livelihoods.
- All you ever wanted to know about plant genetic resources conservation in Germany.
- “Isn’t it crazy to think that everything we eat or use that comes from plants at one time grew completely wild?” Well, not so much.
- Africa: Atlas of Our Changing Environment. (Watch out, very large file.)
- Another reason not to drink sugary soft drinks: gout. Coconut water anyone?
- Pre-Columbian Chilean chickens could have come from anywhere, not just Polynesia.
- Mapping diseases.
- A 12th century olive genebank in Morocco.
- Traditional Ethiopian barley/wheat mixtures (hanfets) have some advantages over pure stands.
BBC takes on urban agriculture
The BBC’s One Planet programme visits Hyderabad to talk to urban vegetable growers and buffalo keepers. This seems to be part of a series. A previous programme visited Kampala. The podcasts are here. But it’s weird. I can’t find a decent, detailed description of the programme(s) online, much less a place to get transcripts. That can’t be right.