- “Something researchers are looking at is which cultivars, or strains, of hemp are best for the various uses — fiber, oil, nutrition, etc.” Love that etc.
- Speaking about grass: Brachiaria goes home, to wild acclaim.
- Did someone say wild? Wild grass needs help!
- Rice is a grass. Oh my yes.
- How to keep up to date with taxonomic research online.
- Pacific Regional Breadfruit Initiative gets an award.
- You can also make flour from acorns.
- And maize: what’s a grit?
- Greenpeace touts MAS.
- Next thing you know they’ll be singing the praises of Big Data. Yeah, maybe not.
Apple pie
It must be the season, but there’s been a ton of stuff on apples on the interwebs recently. Here’s a little sampler:
- Problems with Kazakhstan’s apples.
- Problems with Britain’s apples.
- Cambridge has a solution for those, though.
- Solutions, actually.
- And then there’s Dan Bussey‘s way.
- And Rowan Jacobsen‘s. (He of the Apple Renaissance.) Which basically means documenting every last variety you can find.
- They can then all — or the ones you can still find — go into the Seed Savers Exchange collection, say.
- I’ll drink to that!
- And a teaser…
Nibbles: Wonder Bread, Cassava sex, Languages and biodiversity, Wild Musa, Bronze Age musings, New Indian rice varieties, Improved breeds in Kenya, GMOs in China, Organic vision, Foreign food, Publicity, Nutrition advice & indicators, Ethiopian seed banks, Zimbabwe millet, Agroforestry, MSB legume collection, Demon paywalls, CIMMYT seed, Tempting apple
- The industrial sliced loaf as racist fantasy.
- Bill Gates talks dirty. About cassava, settle down.
- Where the wild things are is where the languages are, but why? And where are they endangered?
- This new Indian wild banana is probably a bit endangered.
- The past may be a foreign country, but they got Street View there too.
- Blockbuster rice in India. (But how energy-efficient is it?)
- And potentially blockbuster livestock breeds in Kenya.
- China goes GMO. Which of these?
- Maybe they should read this vision for organic farming? You know, just for completeness?
- Have a food adventure! Just perhaps not in China.
- FAO and National Geographic have a food security adventure together. For more stuff like this, no doubt…
- Eat more plants, and ditch the junk food. Sounds easy, doesn’t it? Ok, for the more complicated, nerdy approach, there’s always fancy indicators.
- Ethiopia’s community seed banks.
- I bet there are some in Zimbabwe…
- African Development Bank makes a bet on agroforestry. Maybe health is why? There’s more that one reason…
- Gotta be strategic with your legume collecting.
- Want conservation science to translate into impact? Don’t publish behind a paywall.
- CIMMYT earns its keep.
- Build a better apple, and you won’t be able to keep the journalists away.
Nibbles: Grassland diversity, Home on the range, Delicate hump, Mexican medicinals, ‘Shrums, Salty potatoes, Salty pigs, Afforestation, Craft beer guy
- Diversity rules. In grasslands, settle down.
- You want bison with that grassland?
- Your hump, sir. Bison shbison.
- Federales crack down on medicinal plants.
- Including fungi?
- Salt-tolerant potatoes in the news, for the wrong reason.
- What is it about photos of pigs on a beach? You could grow the above potatoes on the beach and then the pigs could eat them. I’d pay money to see those pics.
- Japanese methods used to plant Indian urban forests. Tree planting has a special name?
- Peru deals with stunting.
- Hero.
Nibbles: Georgian kitchen garden, Italian citrus history, Domestication infographics, AVRDC, Zambian nutrition policy, Camel-keeping, ESA states its case, Making lunch
- Podcast double: Georgian kitchen gardens (with pix) and Italian citrus.
- Domestication infographics are now officially a thing.
- Feeding the world with vegetable research, courtesy of AVRDC. Need to register, alas.
- Zambia biofortifies. Maybe they didn’t register for the above.
- Camels as biocultural artifacts.
- European Seed Association breaks down the tumultuous last 18 months of the European seed sector.
- “It takes more than 40 different species to make a simple lunch…”