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Nibbles: Grazing, Saving foodways, Amaranth, Fortification, Avocado threats, Kew job, Coffee photos, PhyloLink, Nutrition & ag, Remote sensing

Grazing is good for grassland.
Saving British food. And that of Ghana too, why not?
Amaranth the next superfood? Maybe, but I vote we ban that silly term.
The case for fortification: diverse diets are just too hard.
And the latest fruit that’s in trouble is…the avocado.
Wanna “[s]pend your summer in lovely Kew Gardens interacting with the public and opening people’s eyes and noses to the delightful world of spices”?
Photographing the soul of coffee.
Atlas of Living Australia adds nifty phylogenetic thingie.
World Bank says “agriculture has a unique and critical role in improving nutritional status” so it must be true.
Protecting forests from the air.

Where should we collect sweet potato wild relatives?
Cheese made from toe bacteria. Because we can.
The sainted M.S. Swaminathan on millets.
FAO brings together dietary guidelines from around the world.
An infographic on kale origins.
Diversity down, productivity down. At least in Alaska.
Cotton’s got a genome.
McDonalds commits to ending deforestation in its supply chain.
IUCN report says commercial agriculture and forestry could could actually be good for biodiversity. Hope McDonalds read it.

More of a proper catch-up Nibbles later, but these should hold you for a while.

Le Figaro goes to Svalbard.
But Wired goes into much more depth on the tragic situation in Syria.
Many AgAtlas pages now include interactive mapping and data download, eg AEZ. About time :)
Looking for information on varieties of ornamental plants? Look no further.
Diversity in wild European apples: past, present and future.
Genetic garden opens in Bangalore.
The perils of sandalwood smuggling.
Dam the Amazon, full speed ahead! What will happen to all that human body bacteria diversity?
ICRISAT’s new DG has a blog. Looking forward to his first foray into the genebank.
Lots of stuff on African traditional veggies in AVRDS’s latest newsletter.
The swimming camels of Gujarat get protection. I’d pay money to see them, I really would.
Patagonian women farmers are doing it for themselves, at last.

Lamb ham: an easter tradition we can all get behind.
Indian researchers market a new earthworm. Not to bring you down or anything.
PPP are the new black. It says here.
Cassava gets Big Data treatment. That’s kinda biotechnology too. But then you have to commercialize the stuff, right?
“Food price shocks are both a determinant and effect of conflict.”
Recognizing the “rubber soldiers”.
Chinese experts tell Mongolians how to be more resilient to climate change. I hope it works out for them.
New potato and sweet potato varieties for the Pacific come to CePaCT.
Any of those potato varieties benefit from wild relatives?
New plantain variety for Uganda.
Galician genebank gets old brassicas. National genebank unavailable for comment. Actually, national genebank unavailable.
“We can see the blinkered promotion and systematic ‘bigging-up’ of individual agricultural technologies, and their real or imagined impacts, as a direct result of the uncritical acceptance of the language of ‘impact at scale’.”
Biotechnologist says we need biotechnology to feed world. QED.

That 2000-year old date palm seed is all grown up.
And since we’re talking ancient stuff: ornithology in the service of egyptology.
Citizen scientists track phenology.
Citizen scientists find new species.
Let’s hear it for cover crops.
Turns out it’s ok for hipsters to eat quinoa.
Sorghum takes over the Great Plains. (Well, not really.) And not only… Who needs quinoa.
Especially when you have teff.
And while we’re on gluten: need to make up for that off-colour quip in the last Nibbles.
Malnutrition. Mapped. Including that much-discussed Missing Middle? Hang on, wait, here’s another nutrition mapping thing.
African leafy greens in Benin get a video. Map that!
Farmers make good extensionists.
Chocolate workshops at Kew.
Caribbean chocolate to get a make-over. Somebody telling Kew?