- The old go-intensive-so-we-don’t-have-to-plough-up-Nature-for-more-farmland argument rears its beautiful head again.
- Frosty pod rot comes to Latin America’s cacao, but CATIE has the varieties.
- But clove is not so lucky.
- Value addition, the Kenyan way.
Nibbles: Canids, Pea, Cacao, Scallops
- Dogs are different from wolves, different types of wolves are different from each other.
- Vavilov-Frankel Fellow on the move.
- Nacional cacao bean rediscovered in northern Peru.
- Manx Queenies deemed to be sustainable. And wipe that smile off your face.
Nibbles, Menu edition: Garlic, Potatoes, Meat, Tomatoes, Ramps, Bananas, Chocolate, Coffee, Pepper breeding, Local cattle in RSA
- Chicago, Chicago, it’s an edible town. Major urban centre named for edible wild species shock.
- Drought-resistant potatoes! At least 1000 genes involved.
- Test-tube burgers? 1
- Wild tomatoes and climate change. A meeting round-up from our chums at CIAT.
- The appeal of fair trade bananas. A good read.
- Technical Guidelines on the Safe Movement of Cacao Germplasm updated.
- Coffee, please. A cup of your finest specialty variety.
- Caribbean pepper breeders getting hot under the collar.
- Gotta love the way Farm Radio Weekly not only has great stories about agrobiodiversity, but also handy background notes.
Well, that was fun.
Nibbles: Hunger foods, Pollinators, Sacred Seeds, Neglected species, Grasses, Yields, Hawaiian History
- Mining Mungo Park for info about famine foods. Bamboo seeds and, perhaps, baobab pods.
- The big prerequisite for EU funding is a good acronym. STEP — status and trends of European pollinators — gets the go ahead.
- Sacred Seeds project at Missouri Botanical Garden announces new partners in India.
- New Bioversity project to extend importance of work on neglected species in India, Nepal and Bolivia.
- How to manage diverse grasses.
- More on climate change and maize yields. “[I]f anything heat tolerance is declining.”
- Ancient agriculture in Hawaii.
Nordic chefs exploring Nordic foods with Nordic genebank
I was intrigued by a reference to a genebank in a restaurant review in the Wall Street Journal. Not just any restaurant, but the best restaurant in the world, Noma in Copenhagen, which is “is best known for its fanatical approach to foraging.” Here’s the reference:
Noma helped found a Nordic Food Lab, which has a gene bank that is collating information about the wild products in the region.
Nordic Food Lab does indeed sound interesting (especially its fermentation trials):
Nordic Food Lab is a non-profit self-governed institution established by head chef of Noma, Rene Redzepi and gastronomic entrepreneur, Claus Meyer with the purpose of scientifically exploring the New Nordic Cuisine and disseminating results from this exploration.
But they’re not really establishing a genebank, as suggested by the WSJ piece.
We are collaborating with Nordgen, the amazing bank of genetic material, to evaluate the gastronomic potential of bygone varieties of Scandinavian produce. We will publish our sensory evaluations as they are completed. This promises to be an extremely interesting project; many modern species are produced on other merits besides flavor, and we expect intriguing findings.
Much more sensible.
