Mainstream – Page 384 – Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

September 18, 2007

British grub

Britain’s oldest recipe sounds as awful as more recent fare.

September 18, 2007

Seedless lemon mutant

Pip-less lemonÂ launched. Cocktail drinkers rejoice.

September 18, 2007September 18, 2007

Biotechnology annual report available

The biotech industry’s annual pat-on-the-back report is available from ISAAA.

September 17, 2007

Hot peppers celebrated

Damn, I missed the Peperoncino Festival!

September 12, 2007September 12, 2007

More Malus mayhem

I guess it’s the season. More apples today, again from both sides of the Atlantic. From Britain, an invitation to Apple Days at East Malling, a celebration which will feature the (troubled?) National Fruit Collection. ¹ And from the Minneapolis-St Paul Star Tribune, more news of American apple breeding, featuring David Bedford of the University of Minnesota.

1. Sir Nathaniel Bacon’s painting records the arrival of American crops in early modern England. And the cookmaid gets equal billing.
2. North America’s bison survived near-extinction, but how much of its genetic diversity is left? Past and present DNA is helping reconstruct what was lost, with implications for how what remains is conserved and managed.
3. China’s wild rice collection in Hainan now holds more than 15,000 samples. A genetic treasure trove, but its value ultimately depends on what breeders can make of it. Much like what’s left of bison diversity.
4. Mycorrhizal fungi form vast underground networks that support plant life and store carbon. A new global map begins to show their extent, and just how much of this biodiversity remains overlooked.
5. Africa’s herbaria hold centuries of botanical history, much of it still effectively invisible. Specimens can reveal shifting plant distributions and overlooked species. First, though, someone has to do the painstaking work of getting the data online.
6. Africa has done painstaking work on seed laws, but getting good seed to farmers remains hard in practice. The gap between policy and delivery is stark, and commercial companies need to work alongside farmer-managed seed systems, not pretend they don’t exist.
Published on October 14, 2026