- You can make beer from fonio.
- ICRISAT providing Niger and Chad with sorghum and pearl millet seed kits. Fonio next?
- No, Echinochloa turneriana next. In Australia. I love the Dark Emu Hypothesis, and not least for its name.
- CIP is helping China improve its potato crop.
- Won’t be long before China’s genebank has 3D images of all its holdings. I’d love to see the potatoes.
- Want to see the earliest known site of domestication of teosinte?
- UK builds first crop biome cryobank.
- How the private sector can help with a more nutrition-sensitive agriculture. Should it want to.
- You can grow kiwi in Michigan. Should you want to.
Nibbles: PlantSearch, Ranking apples, Pumpkin pix, Fruit pix, Livestock maps, Impact
- Searching for plants in botanic gardens.
- Searching for the best apple.
- Searching for pumpkins and squashes.
- Searching the Pomological Watercolor Collection.
- Searching for livestock.
- Searching for varietal turnover. And other kinds of impact.
Nibbles: Heirloom mixology, Renaissance breeding, Heirloom watermelon, Heirloom apples, British horses, Ancient grapes & wine, Potato cryo, Arboretum, Svalbard Global Seed Vault, Rice breeding
- A self-described seed mixologist calls for a science fiction, rather than historical, approach to growing heirloom varieties. Excellent reading.
- The Renaissance approach to genetic mixology explained in a new book The Perfection of Nature.
- Sometimes, though, you just want a good old watermelon.
- Or a good old apple.
- Or indeed ‘the Swiss army knife of equines.’
- Or you want to know what ancient people ate and drank.
- So it’s a good thing we have genebanks, genebanks, genebanks…
- Including for rice.
Nibbles: Crop diversity, Coloured rice, Saudi genebank, WorldVeg genebank, Mango genebank, USDA apple genebank, Green Revolution, Organic agriculture
- IFAD says we need diverse crops.
- KAUST says we need coloured rice.
- I hope it will go into Saudi Arabia’s new genebank.
- Genebank scientists says we need more collaboration.
- Goa thinks they need a new mango genebank.
- The USA already has an apple genebank.
- But will all these genebanks lead to a new Green Revolution…
- …or organic farming?
- Maybe both.
An apple a day…
Good question. The answer?
It’s all part of a very nice exhibit at the Museum Koenig in Bonn on biodiversity research.
Great to see agricultural research get a look-in.
But pity there was nothing on genebanks, and indeed no call to action. There’s a whole website in Germany about “edible landscapes” that offers ideas about what to do to help preserve fruit diversity. And also shops in and around Bonn that boast about selling lots of apple varieties, including less well known one.