- How they grow bananas in Fadan Karshi, Nigeria.
- How they grow sorghum in Karamoja, Uganda.
- How tequila is ruining small farms in Mexico. Or is it?
- How small farms cannot feed Africa. Or can they? Join the debate! Via.
- How the Brits plan to rebrand cauliflower. This I gotta see.
- How the ancient Chinese made wine out of rice, honey, and fruit. Pass the bottle.
- How Georgia is mapping where its chestnuts used to be.
- How farmers’ rights are being implemented.
- How Indian agriculture should move beyond wheat and rice. Ok, but what would everybody eat?
- How microsatellites can be used to help catfish breeding.
- How Ni Wayan Lilir is helping people learn about the traditional healing herbs of Bali.
- How the Brits brought back the Konik.
Nibbles: Mendel, Darwin, Cloves
- Mendel was no cheat.
- Correspondence between Darwin and Belfast merchant about potato late blight.
- Zanzibar clove farming stinks.
Nibbles: Kenya, Idioms, Seed, Potatoes, Nerica, Farm Albebo, Fish
- Kenya to bioprospect?
- Plant idioms explored.
- Be evil. Save seeds and spread them around.
- Get ready for the London Potato Fair 25th January. Via.
- GRAIN positive that Nerica is bad for Africa.
- Shinier cropland to cool the planet? More from the author.
- Profiting from fish by not fishing is illegal?
Nibbles: UG99, Medicinals, Participation, Climate change, Svalbard
- Rust never sleeps. Good news and bad from CIMMYT.
- Medicinal plant, heal thyself!
- Seven-step programme to livestock breed recognition in new New Agriculturist.
- “The most extreme summers of the last century will become the norm…“
- Svalbard Global Seed Vault makes another Top 10 list.
(Not much) agrobiodiversity on display in Nairobi museum
The main building of the National Museums of Kenya in Nairobi has had a facelift, courtesy of the EU. Pretty good job on the outside, but the new exhibits were a bit of a disappointment.
There’s a big hall about Kenya’s animals, of course, and another series of displays about its cultures, arranged by life-stages (birth, youth, adolescence, initiation: you get the picture), though this includes very little about agriculture:
But there’s nothing at all on the country’s ecosystems and protected areas, and nothing on its plants, at least inside the building (apart from a display of an herbarium specimen in the small hall describing the museum’s history). There is a little botanic garden dedicated to medicinal plants (arranged by family, the wisdom of which is debatable), but this misses the opportunity of describing the Amaranthus on display as not just a medicinal but also a nutritious traditional leafy green (see my next post):
However, the entrance hall does have a terrific display of cucurbit diversity:
These bottle gourds are used by the Maasai and other pastoralists to store water, milk, blood, and mixtures thereof. Here’s a close-up: