Both the Svalbard Global Seed Vault and Kew’s Millennium Seed Bank are in the news this weekend. Coincidence? Probably.
Nibbles: Climate change, Monitoring, Evaluation, Vegetables, FAO newsletters, Guardians
- Climate change to bring lemons in Kent. Now for the bad news.
- Monitoring biodiversity in Africa and India.
- More Free Air Concentration Enrichment (FACE) research facilities needed, say those who work there.
- Ethnic vegetables? Yep, you heard me.
- Non-Wood Forest Products and Plant Breeding newsletters are out. Subscribe already!
- W.S. Merwin: poet and Guardian of Biodiversity.
Agrobiodiversity means luck
Literally, I mean. In China, the peanut (huasheng 花生) is an auspicious symbol because its second character (sheng 生) means “to give birth.” That’s why you can buy cute plastic peanut-shaped toys which open to play a jingle.
Conservation and vernacular names
Nibbles: Haitian mangoes, Dog bones, Vitis in Georgia, Lavandula in Tunisia, Pistacia in Chios, Rice wine in Korea, Nutella, Mozzarella, Gloucester Old Spot, Cowpea
- Buy Haiti’s Francis mangoes!
- The Muge dog was, in fact, a dog.
- Looking at the grapevine in its center of origin.
- Need to fence lavender populations in Tunisia to protect them.
- More Mediterranean stuff. History of the mastic trade in an Aegean island.
- Making “drunken rice” in Korea. Sign me up.
- Nutella to come with warning label? Jeremy says: We don’t need no nanny state!
- Bluish mozzarella balls confiscated. Jeremy says: Ok, maybe we do after all.
- EU makes itself useful and protects bacon pig of choice, with built-in apple sauce to boot.
- “…finding how the physical and chemical composition of different cowpea varieties influence human health, reduce obesity and prevent diseases like cancer, hypertension and heart related ailments.”