Mainstream

Nibbles: Biodiversity economics, ICARDA social network, Beyond food miles, Heirlooms on BBC, Cannabis, Research funding, Cacao diversity, Agriculture from the air, Sustainable intensification example, Research whine, Japanese botanic garden visit, European PGR network, Tribal Glycene, Youth in agriculture

Oxford Review of Economic Policy has special volume on biodiversity economics. Not much ag, though, settle down.
ICARDA announces on Twitter the existence of a new Facebook page which looks a bit like the old one.
It’s the fertilizer miles, stupid.
Great British Food Revival does heirloom carrots. Oh and beer.
Good news for a particular agricultural biodiversity subsector from Amsterdam and Colorado. The Dude unavailable for comment. For obvious reasons.
If you’re from Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda and are doing research on Neglected and Underutilized Species you’ll be interested in this call or research proposals from ISF.
Bioversity deconstructs that paper on the spatial analysis of Theobroma diversity. I still don’t quite get why they didn’t do the gap analysis.
Farming from the air. And more along the same lines. Or polygons, I suppose I should say. Can you estimate diversity from the air? I bet you can.
Sustainable intensification in (sort of) action.
Damn rice farmers not playing ball.
Oxford botany geeks visit Japan, identify wood of bench in noodle bar.
13th meeting ECPGR Steering Committee. All the documents you’ll need. And then some.
Soybean as a vegetable. Possibly an acquired taste.
How to keep young people on the farm? “Perhaps the first point to recognise is that the evidence base on which to build policy and programmes is frighteningly thin.”

Sustainable value chains made easy. Perhaps too easy.
An end to crazy EU agricultural subsidies? Don’t hold your breath. What would it mean for agricultural biodiversity?
Yesterday it was rotation, today it is intercropping, and more. Is there something in the air?
Ten new things we learned about trees this year. The one I would add is that eucalypts are rain forest species.
Way more about high-throughput phenotyping than I need to know. But somehow still less than I’d like to know. Thanks, Tom.

Dalo chips! With illustrative goodness.
Tree genomes! Whole journal-full.
Seeds! From Kew’s Millennium Seed Bank, that is. In a database. Or two. Online.
Japanese tubers! If anyone can find the actual video, I’d be very grateful. It’s not here yet. Or here. And I also want to find out more about the mythical Professor Sweet Potato.
Best farmer awards in Ghana! “He cultivates diverse crops…” Ah but not everyone is happy. Via.
An Omani genebank! Still “under process”? There was one of sorts 20 years ago when I worked there.
Day of the Dead! Nuff said.
Crop rotations! The NY Times plays catchup.
John Innes Institute video! Explains a couple of papers in Current Biology on root-microbe interactions, where the microbes are both good and bad.

U. of Minnesota has a poster of the pedigree of hop varieties which I covet.
Cool catalogue of the native potatoes of a bit of Ecuador. Via Red Electronica de la Papa.
Stark photos of a few heirloom apples, with descriptions.
Meanwhile, Brockwell Bake sows some heritage wheats. With stark photo
Report on the state of UK capacity in taxonomy. How many countries have reports on the state of their taxonomy? Anyway, here’s some of that capacity at work.
Farrago on some old olives in Jerusalem.
CIAT celebrates 45 years of existence.
Meanwhile, IITA pushes soil fertility management and cassava.
Arca-Deli Awards awarded.
Defra’s latest Biodiversity News has stuff on the importance of insect biodiversity to pest control and pollination in orchards.
The International Year of Quinoa, which is next year, has a website, and all sorts of associated social networking goodness. And here’s a nice little student video on the crop, for a somewhat different perspective.

BBC pounces on CCAFS report previously trumpeted by Bioversity. Bottom line: adaptation may mean changing crops. Bottom bottom line: Will they have enough diversity?
PGR Secure newsletter is out.
GCARD2 rumbles on.
The ankole cow is threatened. What, still?
Tracking ash dieback. And since we’re talking gadgets…
Old cacao trees being replaced in Nigeria. No word on what’s happening to the diversity they represent. Maybe it’s ex situ already? Maybe it’s not significant? I dunno, I would just like to be told.
Slow Food documents African foods. Thankfully no ugali.
Aussies put together cool bean collection.