Mainstream

May 11, 2015May 11, 2015

British crop wild relatives on show

I fear we may have omitted to mention that a selection of Britain’s crop wild relatives would feature in one of the gardens on show at the Royal Horticultural Society’s Malvern Spring Festival. This was the brainchild of the McLaughlin sisters, Caitlin and Tessa.

Well, the show has come and gone, and the Genetic Conservation Garden, as it is called, has come away with the silver medal. Very well done, Caitlin and Tessa!

The @StanbrookAbbey @amazing_venues #RHSMalvern sponsored garden achieved Silver medal today! Over the moon! pic.twitter.com/6Ehs8f5uK0

— Tessa McLaughlin (she/her) (@Tessa_teaching) May 7, 2015

May 8, 2015May 8, 2015

Nibbles: Chontaduro, Pandanus, African seeds, Bangladesh veggie seeds, Black locust, Agroecology, Food security research, Deforestation, Ancient Caribbean

Colombia plants a bunch of peach palms. Hope they had some genetic diversity in there.
Crop wild relative can tell you where diamonds are.
Africa might need better seeds.
Bangladesh certainly does.
The black locust made America. The tree, not the insect.
Another pean to agrobiodiversity.
Towards a Research Agenda for Global Food and Nutrition Security: meeting at Expo 2015 organized by the EU. It’s today, though, and this is the first we hear of it. Sorry. Will genebanks even get mentioned? Well, if this tweet is from that meeting, it seems not.
Cutting down forest bad for more than trees. How many crop and livestock wild relatives endangered by deforestation?
Cubans ate cultivated plants a thousand years earlier than thought.

May 7, 2015May 7, 2015

Nibbles: Food supplies, Food fotos, Forest foods, Diverse foods, Caribbean cassava, Wild foods, Expo 2015, Gates & SDGs, Nanoparticles

What the World Eats: The Infographic.
What the World Eats: The Photo Competition.
What the World Doesn’t Eat: Forest Foods.
What the World Should Eat More Of: The Presentation.
What Grenada Eats: Cassava
What Christopher McCandless Should Not Have Eaten: Not ODAP After All?
Gulf states big stars in Milan. So that’s all right then.
Gates Foundation really doesn’t like the SDGs.
Boffins find promiscuous Phytophthora killer. Breeders surrender.

May 5, 2015May 6, 2015

Nibbles: Forced exercise, Monoculture, Nutrition, Afghan poppies, USDA pears

Get fit, before you visit Expo 2015 in Milan.
Monoculture has a good side? Say it isn’t so!
Too busy farming to cook nutritious meals.
Another triumph for crop improvement.
Genebank goes pear-shaped.

May 3, 2015May 3, 2015

Nibbles: CWR gaps, Genebanks vid, Landrace cuisine, Perennial rice, High-tech evaluation, Egyptian cure, Weird tuber, Aroids news, Tibet transition, Worms & development, Hybrid artemisia, Sea potato, Grape microbes, Seed book, Seychelles parks, Brosimum hype, Kenya & bamboo, Tea & CC, Extinction and CC, Nutrition paradox

CIAT crop wild relatives team announces 3 new papers on gaps in ex situ collections: potato, sweet potato & pigeonpea. Take a break, people, please.
And CIAT genebank features in nice video on why we need genebanks. So also the IRRI genebank, which is relevant to the next Nibble. We do joined-up nibbling here.
Fine dining with Filipino rice landraces. Go Manny!
None of those rice landraces are perennial. Yet. If they ever are, it’ll be due to a wild relative.
Fusarium head blight resistance in wheat dissected using a synchrotron. Avengers assemble!
Oxyrhynchus papyrus identifies hangover cure. Or so the Daily Mail says, so, you know…
Oh wow, the Mail is definitely on a botanical roll, now they’re all over a Kardashian-shaped tuber.
New Edible Aroids Newsletter. Nothing Kim-shaped about these tubers.
Wheat and barley replaced millet in E Tibet around 2000 BC after cooling period. This going into reverse now, I wonder?
Some biodiversity you don’t want, trust me.
Speaking of unwelcome biodiversity, there’s a new hope in the fight against malaria: hybrid artemisia.
More on that potato that the Dutch are growing in sea water. Like they have a choice.
Microbes are part of terroir.
Q&A with The Triumph of Seeds author.
The coco-de-mer is a pretty triumphant seed.
You say ramòn nut, I say Maya nut.
Kenya needs bamboo. Says the International Network for Bamboo & Rattan. Wow, two active crop networks in today’s Nibbles.
Yesterday it was arabica that was in trouble, today tea. Damn you, climate change.
They’re the lucky ones: they may be in trouble, but they’re not going extinct…
More production does not automatically mean less stunting. Damn you, real world.