Markets – Page 268 – Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

August 22, 2007

Geographic identity

Need help with your terroir?

August 20, 2007

East meets West

Big Pharma looks to Chinese medicine.

August 18, 2007

Opiate supply and demand

More on legalizing poppy cultivation in Afghanistan.

August 17, 2007

Food miles to go before I sleep

A plea to rebuild regional food networks.

August 14, 2007

Baobab products galore

There’s a Baobab Fruit Company in Senegal. Via Timbuktu Chronicles.

1. A North Macedonian professor’s 15-year rescue mission for landraces and crops surviving only in remote villages. Why bother? Stay tuned…
2. Ancient grapevines in Tigray represent a unique genetic lineage with potential value for breeding varieties adapted to dryland conditions.
3. Hawai’i Public Radio checks in on Maui’s coconut genebank. Useful to breed varieties adapted to really wet conditions, presumably.
4. The Cayman Islands are also hoarding coconuts, along with lots of tasty fruits.
5. A USD 400,000 boost from Taiwan for the Eswatini national genebank. Indigenous vegetables get much-needed love.
6. A regional survey of 25 orphan crops across 13 Latin American countries finds quinoa and amaranth well-catalogued, but characterization budgets are the real bottleneck. Collecting and conserving in genebanks is great, but not enough.
7. South Korea puts 330,000 seed accessions under “double lock”, hedging against both climate change and war. Conserving in one place is not enough.
8. FAO warns that nearly a third of the world can’t afford the USD 4.28 a day that a healthy diet costs — nearly three billion people, and rising. That’s why we need al the above, I guess.
Published on July 28, 2026