- Conserving heirloom rice in the Philippines.
- A seed production company run by farmers.
- Tapping toddy. With audio goodness.
- Lots of goodness in Jeremy’s latest newsletter.
- Australia gets serious about coconut conservation in the Pacific and beyond.
- Australia’s own genebanks are very serious. Oh yes indeedy.
- Will sweet potatoes get young people into farming in Kenya? If my nephews are anything to go by, the answer, alas, is no.
- Maybe they should try mungbeans.
- Or NERICA.
- The Bing cherry didn’t help Ah Bing much though.
- Whatever the crop, it’s total factor productivity that you have to watch for.
- And then don’t forget to include whatever intervention you come up with in subject-wide evidence synthesis.
- Prize for best title of the week: “Nordic cooperation on genetic resources – what’s the point?” Nice video.
Nibbles: Phenotyping drones, Citrus history, Potato museum, Mango database, Florilege, Endicott Pear, Landrace booze, Neolithic Revolution, Easy mapping
- Breeding grass while high. Probably not what you’re thinking.
- When life gives you ancient lemons.
- Potato Museum gets new website.
- Mango gets a database.
- So do France’s genebanks.
- The oldest living cultivated fruit tree in North America? I think not, but interesting nevertheless.
- Whiskey goes heirloom.
- Excerpt from Spencer Wells’ Pandora’s Seed on the Neolithic Revolution.
- Our occasional contributor Robert Hijmans sings the praises of mapping with R.
Where is Utrecht blue wheat from?
We have this beautiful wheat in our collection, received from Sharon Rempel. However, we cannot trace it coming from the NLD. Utrecht area was not a wheatgrowing area. In the early 1900s durum and emmer was not grown in NLD. If any one knows its origin, please let us know!
— Centre for Genetic Resources, the Netherlands (@CGN_Wageningen) June 12, 2018
Can you help our friends at CGN? There is a wheat of this name in Genesys whose origin is given as Canada, but I can find no Utrecht in that country.
Botany schooled about crop genebanks
So, thanks to an invitation from graduate students, I was able to give a lecture in the University of Cambridge Botany School (as was) auditorium about 35 years after last listening to one there. A somewhat emotional experience. Here’s the talk, minus a cute though entirely superfluous Google Earth zoom into the Svalbard Vault because that made it too big for SlideShare.
Where to plant chokeberry
Readers who were excited by the announcement of a new Plant Hardiness Zone Map from USDA will probably like the interactive version we’ve just been pointed to. Have fun!