- “Take into account both women’s and men’s preferences when developing and introducing new varieties.”
- Rats!
- Domestication of figs pre-dates that of cereals?
- Neanderthals liked barbecue.
- Underutilized plant in homegarden a terror threat.
- Heirloom bean farmer feted by Washington Post, added to Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog blogroll.
- Orchards as hotspots of agrobiodiversity.
- “…grass pea is a ‘poster child’…”
Malanga comes through Ike
Cuba has not been lucky this hurricane season. The latest storm to hit is Ike. Damage to agriculture has been extensive, but there is a glimmer of good news:
In Cienfuegos, plantain and sweet potato are affected, as well as vegetables and citrus such as grapefruit and orange. The one crop that hasn’t been affected is malanga – a tuber kind of like potato.
Malanga is Xanthosoma, and Cuban researchers have had a great interest in the crop.
As Grahame Jackson says in his Xanthosoma Yahoo Group post, “diversity of local food crops is so important in countries where there are threats from natural disasters, hurricanes, torrential monsoons, droughts.” Indeed. And we do have some idea of where the threats are going to be concentrated, and therefore where agrobiodiversity will be most needed.
Nibbles: Favas, Olives, Insects, Beer, Hallucinogen
- UK breeders scour ICARDA’s fava beans for better genes. What next? Chianti?
- Olive cultivation then and now. An archaeologist speaks.
- Entomophagy.
- Lager yeast origins.
- Salvia divinorum: underutilized no longer.
Nibbles: Value chains, Growing local
- Value chain analysis — how beans get form Guatemala to Costco. CIAT involved. Huge story.
- Brilliant. Via Aguanomics. Sky Vegetables.
Nibbles: ICTs, Dance, Information, Animal genetic resources
- Video on Web 2.0 applications in the development sector in Africa.
- Dancing with agrobiodiversity. Via. Thanks, Kev.
- New Agriculturist is out.
- China will “ban the export of genetic resources of newly-discovered, unidentified livestock and poultry breeds that are unique to the country.” Unidentified?