- Youth compiles list of rare and extinct rice varieties of Assam. Maybe he should look at weedy rice too?
- Meanwhile, American farmers are learning to grow quinoa, probably including some rare varieties.
- The smelliest fish in the world. No traceability needed for that one, I guess.
- Cropland getting mapped. Presumably including the Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems (GIAHS). Help needed by both, by the way.
- Follow the forest discussions at COP18. High on the agenda: what is a landscape? It’s what you study when you’re being holistic, no? Anyway, there’s got to be a connection to the previous links.
- Boffins find a genetic marker for old seed. Will need to Brainfood this one.
- Pat Heslop-Harrison breaks down superdomestication for you.
- SRI gets a scaling up. What could possibly go wrong?
Nibbles: Vegetables, UK funding, Oz funding, Oz genebank, Jefferson, Hawaiian food, Markets, Tree seeds, NUS journal, Geographic targeting, ITPGRFA, Arabica and climate, Protected areas, European farmland biodiversity, Sustainable use, Ethiopian seed video
- Palestinian rooftop gardens. Including crucifers, no doubt.
- Brits support work with rice and wheat wild relatives. Among other things. They’ll probably use some of these genomics things.
- Aussies support sweet potatoes. HarvestPlus rejoices.
- That new Australian genebank. Will it have any sweet potatoes?
- The agricultural legacy of Thomas Jefferson. It doesn’t say here, but I bet he was into sweet potato.
- Hawaiian menus. What, no sweet potato?
- Forget biotech, the road to sexy agriculture is via the supermarket. Where you can buy sweet potato. Maybe even of the organic persuasion.
- Or maybe better tree seeds. Even in the Nordic countries. Or the US. Is cacao a tree?
- Plans for special edition of Sustainability on neglected crops. Like amaranth?
- Geographic targeting reaches roots/tubers. Using this newfangled atlas? Or no?
- Treaty and Consortium love-in filmed. Thanks for sharing. It’s all part of this CGIAR perestroika thing, no doubt.
- What that Kew coffee extinction paper really said.
- Protected areas need work. Especially for coffee (see above).
- Yeah but protected areas is not the only way to go, and Europe now has a bunch of biodiversity indicators for farmland. I guess it’s all part of some big plan.
- Policy brief on sustainable use of PGR. Or, as we used to call it, on farm conservation.
- Which you can kind of see happening here.
Nibbles: Biodiversity economics, ICARDA social network, Beyond food miles, Heirlooms on BBC, Cannabis, Research funding, Cacao diversity, Agriculture from the air, Sustainable intensification example, Research whine, Japanese botanic garden visit, European PGR network, Tribal Glycene, Youth in agriculture
- Oxford Review of Economic Policy has special volume on biodiversity economics. Not much ag, though, settle down.
- ICARDA announces on Twitter the existence of a new Facebook page which looks a bit like the old one.
- It’s the fertilizer miles, stupid.
- Great British Food Revival does heirloom carrots. Oh and beer.
- Good news for a particular agricultural biodiversity subsector from Amsterdam and Colorado. The Dude unavailable for comment. For obvious reasons.
- If you’re from Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda and are doing research on Neglected and Underutilized Species you’ll be interested in this call or research proposals from ISF.
- Bioversity deconstructs that paper on the spatial analysis of Theobroma diversity. I still don’t quite get why they didn’t do the gap analysis.
- Farming from the air. And more along the same lines. Or polygons, I suppose I should say. Can you estimate diversity from the air? I bet you can.
- Sustainable intensification in (sort of) action.
- Damn rice farmers not playing ball.
- Oxford botany geeks visit Japan, identify wood of bench in noodle bar.
- 13th meeting ECPGR Steering Committee. All the documents you’ll need. And then some.
- Soybean as a vegetable. Possibly an acquired taste.
- How to keep young people on the farm? “Perhaps the first point to recognise is that the evidence base on which to build policy and programmes is frighteningly thin.”
Nibbles: Value chains, CAP, Intercropping, Tree trouble, Phenotyping
- Sustainable value chains made easy. Perhaps too easy.
- An end to crazy EU agricultural subsidies? Don’t hold your breath. What would it mean for agricultural biodiversity?
- Yesterday it was rotation, today it is intercropping, and more. Is there something in the air?
- Ten new things we learned about trees this year. The one I would add is that eucalypts are rain forest species.
- Way more about high-throughput phenotyping than I need to know. But somehow still less than I’d like to know. Thanks, Tom.
Nibbles: Taro value addition, Tree genomics special issue, MSB database, Japanese tubers, Ghana farmer awards, Omani genebank, Mexican cemeteries, Rotation, Root interactions
- Dalo chips! With illustrative goodness.
- Tree genomes! Whole journal-full.
- Seeds! From Kew’s Millennium Seed Bank, that is. In a database. Or two. Online.
- Japanese tubers! If anyone can find the actual video, I’d be very grateful. It’s not here yet. Or here. And I also want to find out more about the mythical Professor Sweet Potato.
- Best farmer awards in Ghana! “He cultivates diverse crops…” Ah but not everyone is happy. Via.
- An Omani genebank! Still “under process”? There was one of sorts 20 years ago when I worked there.
- Day of the Dead! Nuff said.
- Crop rotations! The NY Times plays catchup.
- John Innes Institute video! Explains a couple of papers in Current Biology on root-microbe interactions, where the microbes are both good and bad.