- The Stairway to Heaven of barley breeding for whiskey involves thinking about taste a bit more.
- Taste comes into maize breeding too.
- Jeremy talks taste with Margot Finn. Oh and there’s his latest newsletter.
- Farmerama podcasts on cereals in small-scale farming in the UK and beyond.
- Nothing small-scale about ancient farming in the Nile Valley.
- Make ancient Roman bread during lockdown. Then compare and contrast with the Egyptian kind?
- What did the Romans ever do for the rural economy of Britain anyway?
- Course on communicating the value of biodiversity. Wasn’t all the above enough?
Food Planet Prize highlights agrobiodiversity
I didn’t know about the Food Planet Prize, but the editors’ picks this year in the area of biodiversity look pretty cool.
The selection comes with a Special Report by Dan Saladino on “Biodiversity in farming and nature.” You can submit nominations until 31 May.
Nibbles: Online courses, Colombian seeds, California grapes, Living lockdown
- Online courses on plant-related stuff.
- Beautiful catalog of Colombian heritage seeds.
- California mission grapes came from Peru, not Mexico.
- Taking care of living collections under coronavirus lockdown.
Nibbles: Olives, Figs, Columbian Exchange, Flour, landraces Newsletter, DOIs
- Is there any doubt that olives are important?
- Or figs, for that matter.
- Spanish botanical garden exhibit on Latin American plants that changed the European diet. Stunning.
- Old mills making a comeback.
- Latest issue of the Landraces newsletter from Farmer’s Pride. See also here for previous issues.
- Huge PDF on DOIs in genebanks.
Nibbles: Monticello, Breeding, Seed saving, Neolithic cultures, Ube
- Monticello has heirloom crops. But not only, lest we forget.
- The need for public sector breeders. And their genebanks.
- Let’s all save our seeds.
- Although of course seeds are not enough to define a culinary tradition, now or in the Neolithic.
- Yeah, what exactly is ube? Dioscorea alata? Ipomoea batatas? Your guess is as good as mine. Whatever: purple is the new orange.