- Grazing is good for grassland.
- Saving British food. And that of Ghana too, why not?
- Amaranth the next superfood? Maybe, but I vote we ban that silly term.
- The case for fortification: diverse diets are just too hard.
- And the latest fruit that’s in trouble is…the avocado.
- Wanna “[s]pend your summer in lovely Kew Gardens interacting with the public and opening people’s eyes and noses to the delightful world of spices”?
- Photographing the soul of coffee.
- Atlas of Living Australia adds nifty phylogenetic thingie.
- World Bank says “agriculture has a unique and critical role in improving nutritional status” so it must be true.
- Protecting forests from the air.
In memory of Mitsuaki Tanabe
Sad news from our friend Ruaraidh Sackville Hamilton, IRRI’s genebank manager.
With sadness I [share] this news about the death of Mitsuaki Tanabe, famed for his lifetime of work promoting the conservation of rice diversity through sculpting and drawing huge grains of wild rice. Many of you frequently, perhaps daily, see the works that he donated to IRRI, FAO, the Crop Trust, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault and others. He is surely unique in the way he used his artistic talents to further the cause of rice conservation, and the dedication he showed to both.
My own strongest memory of him is his enthusiastic participation in a scientific meeting organized by the Green Energy Mission in Nepal in 2002 on the conservation of wild rice. He donated a 10 metre long drawing of a wild rice grain, which all participants signed. An exceptional person.
Mr Tanabe was 76. He established a museum for his work last year in Yokohama. This is him seated by the sculpture he donated to the Crop Trust in 2006. It’s on the second floor of the FAO building in Rome, facing the Viale Aventino.
Nibbles: Ipomoea CWR, Toe cheese, Millets revolution, World diets, Brassica diversification, Diversity & productivity, Gossypium genome, MsDonalds, NNL & NPI
- Where should we collect sweet potato wild relatives?
- Cheese made from toe bacteria. Because we can.
- The sainted M.S. Swaminathan on millets.
- FAO brings together dietary guidelines from around the world.
- An infographic on kale origins.
- Diversity down, productivity down. At least in Alaska.
- Cotton’s got a genome.
- McDonalds commits to ending deforestation in its supply chain.
- IUCN report says commercial agriculture and forestry could could actually be good for biodiversity. Hope McDonalds read it.
Nibbles: SDGs, Seed book, Magic millets, Medieval diets, Obsessive botanist, Cocoa melting gene, Double sake, Simcock, CIMMYT double, Popular breeder, Georgian wine odyssey, Cinnamon vid, Yam bean factsheet, Jackfruit bandwagon, Prairie berries
- Agriculture and the SDGs in one nice infographic thingy.
- Seeds: The Book.
- Seeds like millets?
- Those medievals really knew how to eat.
- An obsessive botanist? Whatever next.
- Deconstructing chocolate, one gene at a time.
- Sake 101. And for a more in-depth look…
- Joseph Simcox, self-described “Internationally Renowned World Food Plant Resource Authority” takes you “on a World Adventure to learn about little known edible plants!” On Facebook.
- A journey into the heart of CIMMYT. They’ll even screen your maize for you.
- The people’s breeder.
- Tracing wine to its source: Georgia.
- Harvesting cinnamon. With video goodness.
- FAO unleashes its mighty comms machine on another poor neglected crop: yam bean. Not many people hurt.
- Watch out jackfruit, you’re probably next.
- Or maybe saskatoon berries (Amelanchier alnifolia).
Seeds of Time comes to Bonn!
