Mainstream

Nibbles: China agrobiodiversity, Hedge apple, Maize history, AI and extinction, Mapping pastures, Mapping foodscapes

China makes progress in its agrobiodiversity census.
Osage orange history deconstructed: “horse high, hog tight, and bull strong.”
Maize history deconstructed.
Using AI to assess the vulnerability of plant species. Vulnerability of landraces next?
Not sure about landraces, but maybe pasturelands?
Mapping food systems to save them.

Organic Seed Growers Conference, February 4–11, 2022. Don’t miss it.
Mapping biodiversity from space. Agrobiodiversity next? I wish.
How to cite Indigenous knowledge. Including in germplasm databases? I wish.
An old Czech barley variety from an Austrian genebank makes a comeback in craft brewing. I dunno though, I need to look into this a bit more.
Demonizing livestock is unjust. But will probably continue.

University of Chicago Press series on food & drink: Edibles.
An Indian farmer who’s really into tuber diversity is featured in The Hindu.
“We are a public access seed bank – not a commercial seed company. You will find that our presentation of information and how you access our seedbank is a bit different from ordering seeds from the usual on-line commercial enterprise.”
Italian university maps agrobiodiversity.
Maize data in USDA’s GRIN database includes Indigenous group.

The ancient, wild, Georgian roots of bread wheat gluten.
Wild relatives could help us save coffee. But we knew that. Right?
Photosynthesis in wild rices responds more quickly to light changes than in the crop, stomata not so much. Sometimes domestication giveth, sometimes it taketh away.
It gave us the Three Sisters for sure. With video goodness.
Honeybees have wild relatives too. Well, maybe.
But do the NDCs recognise any of the above?

There’s a national chickpea championship, but in Spain.
Senegal is getting its rice back. No word on any championship.
The Great Plains are not coming back, alas. Spoiler alert: rice and chickpeas are not to blame.
Cheddar is trying to get its cheese back, though, and has a chance.
Cool book on the fruits of Brazil. I bet some would go great with cheddar.
Review of what seems a cool book on the history of food in Europe. I wonder if it explains the whole cheese-with-fruit thing.