- There’s a sort of mycological culinary hotspot in Yunnan… Yeah, I thought that too.
- Signs found of old banana cultivation in Australia. Well, kinda. As in not as old as in PNG, and not mainland Australia.
- Really, really old horse butchery site in southern England excavated. When the Brits ate horses. Well, kinda.
- New wheat is pretty much like old wheat, gluten-wise at least.
- Breeding better apple rootstocks at USDA. A hitherto somewhat neglected aspect of apple genetic conservation and improvement.
- Speaking of USDA, here’s another job.
Nibbles: Wild bees, Korean rice, Peanut coffee, Ag research, Sugarcane, Eat This Newsletter
- Wild bees important even if there are plenty of honeybees.
- The rice war hots up between Korea and Japan.
- Peanut coffee. Peak 2020. Hopefully.
- Op-ed on international agricultural research and indigenous knowledge systems takes us 25 years back in time to a simpler world.
- New varieties are behind sugarcane expansion in the US. You want to delve a little deeper into the history of sugarcane down South? Ok, but it ain’t pretty. Still, some people want to redeem the crop.
- Jeremy’s latest newsletter. Lots of good stuff on there. I’ll be saying a little more about it in a post.
Nibbles: USA020, Protected areas, Svalbard, Indian sugarcane, Ġgantija, Fishy spice, Ft Collins video, Gums
- Important job opening at USDA running the Ames Plant Introduction Station. 50,000 accessions, people.
- Online database on the effectiveness of protected areas.
- 100-year seed experiment kicks off.
- Towards more sustainable sugarcane in India. Spoiler alert: juice, not molasses.
- The Neolithic temples of Malta were used to worship food.
- The “fish pepper” of Black Chesapeake homegardens lost, and found..
- News clip on the USDA central genebank at Ft Collins.
- Invest 50 mins in learning about eucalypts.
Nibbles: UN training, Genebanks double, CG spatial data, Fruit IPR, Citrus greening, Sikkim diversity, Bulgarian lavender, Biogenetic Paradoxes, Heroin, Palestinian eggplant
- Training courses on multilateral environmental agreements, including CBD and Plant Treaty.
- CGIAR dashboard on the Genebank Platform. More data here.
- Some of the above are included in this list of the world’s most high profile genebanks.
- The latest spatial crop data from CGIAR. Useful for genebanks, among other things.
- Protecting fruit intellectual property. Wait, that didn’t come out right.
- I guess this fruit is next.
- Sikkim’s agricultural diversity as colours on a palette.
- Lavender is a nice colour, whether in France or Bulgaria.
- Book on nation-building through agricultural biodiversity. Bulgarians unavailable for comment.
- Poppy diversity being helped by solar panels to build something or other in Afghanistan.
- Palestinian paean to the bitinjan. Jeremy goes to town on it in his latest newsletter.
Nibbles: Coconut & biodiversity, Nutrition, Maize volatiles, Tea history, OFS online, AGRA, Forage breeding, Grapevine editing, SDG indicators, Black Lives Matter
- Coconut oil is the new palm oil? And not in a good way.
- The cost of poor diets is considerable.
- Maize plants call natural enemies for help against stemborers. And there’s variation in how well they do it, natch.
- Fortune’s fortune: the colonization of tea. With added poison. And capitalism.
- The Oxford Food Symposium is on, virtually. Registration is closed, but follow on the blog, social media etc.
- Criticism of the Green Revolution approach to African agricultural development.
- Forages, from genebanks to farmers, in one interactive infographic.
- Saving Sangiovese through gene editing: the infographic. Not interactive, though, alas.
- How FAO keeps track of progress on the SDGs.
- How to not be a racist in the plant sciences.