Mainstream

November 5, 2014October 31, 2014

Lots of old book illustrations now online

A Yahoo research fellow at Georgetown University, Kalev Leetaru, extracted over 14 million images from 2 million Internet Archive public domain eBooks that span over 500 years of content. Because we have OCR’d the books, we have now been able to attach about 500 words before and after each image. This means you can now see, click and read about each image in the collection. Think full-text search of images!

Very cool. Interested in sheep breeds, say? Go crazy.

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November 5, 2014November 5, 2014

Nibbles: Prof Brian Cox is cool, GRAIN vs Gates, Fragaria law suit, Central Asian fruits, Ecoagriculture, Forage breeding risk, WPC 2014, Nutrition trifecta, MSB funding, European seedsters support IT

Final Human Universe episode features Svalbard Global seed Vault.
GRAIN objects to where Gates Foundation spends its money. Nobody much cares.
Latest on that UC Davis strawberry breeding programme debacle.
Yes, bears do shit (apple seeds) in the woods. And some context.
A conference for the hippy in all of us.
The dark side of pasture breeding. Super-weed, I am your father!
World Parks Congress on soon too.
No access to healthy food? Use your mobile! Watch a video! Grow traditional crops!
Toyota funds the Millennium Seed Bank.
ESA supports the ITPGRFA. Speak Up For Seed!

November 4, 2014November 3, 2014

Nibbles: Easy Eleusine, Ethical down, Bison pix, Svalbard pix, Salinity costs, Nutrition conference, Veggies for nutrition

Finger millet is the future in Zimbabwe.
Conventional down has a problem. I do prefer unconventional down myself.
They had National Bison Day and nobody told us.
Epic’s Excellent Svalbard Adventure.
Start planning for next year’s cucurbit conference.
Soil salinity sucks.
On the other hand, this nutrition conference is in only a couple of weeks. And there will be radio.
Not that these Indonesian ladies will need that.

November 2, 2014November 2, 2014

Nibbles: Biological collections, ICT & food security, Pisco battles, Rabbit stew, Afghan silk, ILRI @40, Silicon Valley & livestock, Trade & deforestation, Nexus shmexus, Landscape analyzed, Native potatoes, Botanical herb garden, Plant crime, Cornbread & other indigenous foods, Climate smart ag, Caterpillar fungus, Reindeer poop virus, Rice breeder vid

Biological collections under pressure.
And mobile phones probably wont help. Much.
Chilean pisco? Really?
The end of cooking?
Sericulture on the Silk Road.
ILRI is 40, did we say? Not sure what they do on sericulture. No doubt somebody there will tell us. They’re social networking machines over there.
Watch out, ILRI, Silicon Valley is coming for ya.
One of the reasons why we need livestock research: deforestation.
I like any article with the word nexus in the title.
The landscape approach meta-analyzed to within an inch of its life. Bottom line: it’s the women, stupid!
The power of the people’s potatoes.
A secret herb garden revealed. I hope they install CCTV.
Kana’tarokhónwe. Yep, clickbait, but worth it, trust me. And then scale the thing up.
How to do climate-smart agriculture in Latin America and the Caribbean, country by country.
Oh no, yet another article on that Himalayan Viagra caterpillar fungus thingy.
Boffins resurrect 700-year-old fungus from reindeer crap.
Indian rice breeders talk about their cool new basmati.

November 2, 2014

Embrapa’s “ark” on Globo

“If you have a disease, a pest or adverse climatic conditions, we can look for features that serve to combat that disease or that climatic situation, and then create new varieties that can cope with this challenge,” explains Mauro Carneiro, Head of Biotechnology/Embrapa.

One precaution that has already paid off: in 1994, the Kraho indians were able to recover with the help of Embrapa a kind of corn which for three decades had not been grown in the villages in the North and Northeast regions.

That’s the Google Translate version of part of an article on Embrapa’s new genebank in Brasilia, which includes a video. Attentive readers will remember we blogged about that Kraho story some years back. A second example of restoration of genetic resources from a genebank trumpeted on the internet — and TV in this case! — within a few days. One more and we have a trend.