- The CATIE coffee collection gets a really close look.
- Pigeonpeas for Australia.
- Coloured wheat for India.
- Also in India, a rice institute opens its doors.
- A livestock genebank for Uganda.
- The coconut for the Caribbean.
- Why crop-based businesses should pay for crop conservation. Holding my breath…
- Hawaiians reclaim taro. Breathing again…
- How to use wild species sustainably.
- Diversity Assessment Tool for Agrobiodiversity and Resilience. Yeah, what we need is more software.
- 16th century beer. From Quito, the first city to brew beer in South America.
- Egyptians: I see that and raise you about 6 thousand years.
- You too can drink Leonardo’s wine. Wonder if he liked beer.
- Exploring for wild tomatoes.
- Liberating diversity.
- Agricultural R&D is in the top 3 value-for-money development interventions. Just saying…
- Seconded: “Multiplying the budget of CGIAR, the world’s largest global agricultural innovation network, would be a good start. And, in a time of great disruptions, we ought to prioritize Sustainable Development Goal 2.4, implementing resilient agricultural practices, with a greater focus on smallholder farmers in developing countries.” And 2.5!!!
Nibbles: Pepper picking, Ancient goats, Ipomoea, Manuka honey, Language conservation, USDA sorghum
- Breeding chillis for mechanization.
- Long, but very engaging, video on zooarchaeology in general and goat bones in particular.
- Delving into the origins of the sweetpotato at CIP.
- Cultivating Leptospermum scoparium for honey.
- Saving languages.
- Jasmonic acid is bad for sorghum yields.
Nibbles: Root & tuber breeding, Potato fun, Melon domestication, Maize conservation, Millet diversification, Business as usual
- A backyard breeder evaluates USDA’s potato accessions. Among other things.
- The Onion roasts potatoes.
- How melons got sweet.
- Mexican Senate considers in situ/on farm conservation areas for maize.
- Millets for climate change resilience in India.
- Business for biodiversity. Yeah, right.
Genebanks everywhere on NPR
Just realized that my last two stories involved gene banks. Shouldn't there be some sort of award for that?
— Dan Charles (@DanCharlesNow) October 31, 2019
I’m all for it, but judge for yourselves. Here are the two stories involved:
- From Culinary Dud To Stud: How Dutch Plant Breeders Built Our Brussels Sprouts Boom. By looking into their genebanks, of course, to find less bitter varieties.
- Most U.S. Dairy Cows Are Descended From Just 2 Bulls. That’s Not Good. But fortunately there’s heritage semen in the fridge.
Nibbles: ISF & SDGs, Nutrition report, Plant blindness, Cowpea, Chefs, Ancient baking, Rotations, Blue maize, Forests & poverty, Food miles
- International Seed Federation secretary-general in podcast on seeds and the SDGs.
- Country nutrition profiles. Sobering.
- Share your plant stories on Herbaria 3.0.
- The secret history of the cowpea, from a chef: “Our peas were tiny little texts, and we didn’t even know it.”
- Speaking of chefs…
- More on that 4000-year-old baking yeast story.
- The economics of rotations.
- The economics of blue maize.
- Mapping the evidence base for the link between forests and poverty alleviation.
- Speaking of maps, here’s how food moves around the USA.