- Mexico embraces moringa against malnutrition.
- Get your mushroom spores here. (You’ll need something for the headache the page induces.)
- Scientist Gardener discovers blue potato chips at altitude.
- GRAIN gets altNobel. It’s not the winning. It’s the being nominated.
- Bioversity stuns world with nutrition strategy. While Jess does poo.
- Damn, looks like we missed National Maize Day again.
- How your United Sorghum Checkoff dollars are being spent.
Nibbles: Collecting, US heirlooms, Sequencing NUS, Nutrition strategies, Potatoes and climate change, Italian genetics
- NSF re-invents the genebank wheel. No, that’s unfair, they’ve given much-needed money to evolutionary scientists to go out and collect seeds of 34 species in a really pernickety way.
- Heirlooms being lost (maybe) and being re-found in the US. Thanks to Eve (on FB) for both.
- A Cape tomato by any other name…
- Gates Foundation has a new nutrition strategy. Gotta admire the chutzpah of summarizing the thing in basically half a side of A4. Compare and contrast, both as to content and presentation, with the CGIAR. Unfair again, I know, but that’s the kind of mood I’m in. Jess unavailable for comment.
- Very complicated, very pretty maps about potatoes and climate change.
- “I failed to notice substantial contributions to discussions or presentations from breeders or seed organizations, the end users of so much of the research discussed.” Pat Heslop Harrison calls ’em like he seems ’em.
Nibbles: Nigerian farmer speaks, Kenya meeting, Ecuador, Striga-resistant sorghum, Designer veg, Cottontail, Funding conservation, African adaptation
- Why one Nigerian agriculture student will not become a farmer.
- Meeting in Kenya on agricultural biodiversity, and other stuff, in October.
- Ecuador and access to genetic resources (in Spanish).
- “Scientists on the verge of releasing new striga-resistant sorghum.” Drought-resistant too! No need for push-pull then?
- One wacky plant breeder’s story.
- Attractive local bunny in trouble. Not what you’re thinking, get your mind out of the gutter.
- Forest bonds in the offing. Genebank bonds, anyone?
- Climate change adaptation in Africa: examples of genetic and agronomic fixes. Need both, I guess.
Nibbles: G20, Organics, Oca, Cassava, Molecular phylogenetics, Human diversity, OFSP
- G20 nations turn to agricultural research for food security. All you need to know.
- Would it be worth updating Borlaug on organics? A Prinz says “Yes!”
- Rhizowen gets oca to grow seed to seed. Can Cornish “potatoes” be far behind?
- Is it cassava‘s time?
- Molecular taxonomy helps an allergy sufferer.
- Lagging behind in development? Maybe you’re too diverse. Or not diverse enough. Difficult, in either case, to envisage the solutions.
- Agfax podcast on orange sweet potato in Uganda. Comment on the kuroiler goes for this too.
So what about sericulture in Kenya anyway?
A short piece on Kenyan sericulture from 2007 is one of our most popular posts, 1 with some 20 comments, the most recent one today, most of them asking for information on how to set up in the business. We have not been very good at replying to these queries as they have came up, and on the one occasion when we did we linked to pages at UNDP-Kenya, ICIPE and Biovision which are all now stone dead. So I thought I’d better clean things up a bit.
Rosemary Mwololo Nyamu pointed us to KARI’s National Sericulture Station-Thika in a comment, but unfortunately this very interesting-sounding place is nowhere to be found on KARI’s website. Not to worry, though. Rosemary has also provided a nice write-up on sericulture, and useful contacts, including her own, at Infonet-Biovision. I just hope this link lasts a bit longet than the others…