It seems that Usain’s Bolt’s Olympic success is down to yams. That would be sweet potatoes?
Later: Nope, the yams in question are, in fact, yams. See comments.
Nibbles: Horse milk, GMOs
- Marketing Indonesian horse milk as a nutraceutical. Good luck with that.
- Nick Cohen on Prince Charles on GMOs: “Like Marie Antoinette, he sees the poor as happiest when they have their place in a natural order, with royalty at its head.”
Masanobu Fukuoka R.I.P.
Masanobu Fukuoka, the author of The One Straw Revolution, and a pioneer of “natural” or no-till farming, has passed away at 95.
Cow Parade
There was an article in the local paper on Saturday which described how some of the exhibits at the recent Cow Parade in San Jose were a bit worse for wear and were being repaired. Well, I’d never heard of Cow Parade, but it sounds like fun. You can check out the entries for the San Jose event online. I just wish there was more phenotypic diversity on show, all the entries in the Wikipedia article look like basically the same breed.
Nibbles for the road: Baobab, Breeding, Gardening, Earthworms, Taro, Pollinators, Llama, Trees, Chili peppers
- More on how the baobab is coming to Europe.
- Review of breeding for nutritionally improved crops.
- Book on the origins of British gardening.
- Earthworms “modulate the competition between grasses and legumes.”
- ACIAR publishes book on taro pests in the Pacific.
- UNEP launches global pollinator conservation initiative.
- Unusual use for livestock fetuses.
- “And she grows more than 100 types of trees…“
- “Along the equator, without access to refrigeration, you could be dead pretty quickly unless you can find a way to protect yourself against the microbes you ingest every day.”