- New Gene Conservation is out. Put out more flags.
- Biofuel from coffee grounds? Right. Hope the stuff was shade-grown, anyway.
- Is a lupin or date palm seed the oldest ever found? Let the controversy rage.
- Bees scare caterpillars as well as pollinating plants. Thankfully, Europe is on the job, colony-collapse-wise.
- Trouble for Scottish farmed salmon. And the wild ones may have their problems too. But aquaculture in general is booming, they say.
- Google Earth discovers forest. Not agrobiodiversity, but fun nonetheless.
- “It doesn’t just take in seeds – it sends them out.”
- Maize pest will love climate change. Well, some of them anyway.
- The latest review of earthworms discussed.
- Jellyfish and chips?
- Eating local pretty much unavoidable in Cuba. Yes, everyone wants to be a locavore these days.
- Japanese amateur botanists get into genebanking.
- “108 dishes based on jackfruit and seed varieties that are facing extinction were also exhibited at the festival.” 108?
- Queensland markets its tropical produce via a new website. No reason why others shouldn’t do the same, is there?
- “People shouldn’t underestimate how important a goat can be for a family in Africa.” Having had to assist in slaughtering one over Christmas, I certainly don’t.
- A rapid run-through the history of chocolate.
- Long-fallow agriculture in Mali leads to more, more diverse and taller trees.
- Global accessibility map published. Also one of fires, and intact forests. Let a thousand agrobiodiversity mash-ups bloom. Thanks, Andy.
- Nepal has lots of medicinal plants. Funny they don’t seem to feature in the Western Terai Landscape Complex Project.
Nibbles: Health, Fungi, Health, Pollan, Organic
- Nobellist praises biodiversity, ignores food.
- TED video on world-saving mushrooms.
- God: “Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yieleling seed; to you, it shall be for meat.“
- Pollan: “Vote with your fork, for a different kind of food. Go to the farmer’s market. Get out of the supermarket… Plant a garden… Declare your independence from the culture of fast food.”
- Rodale Institute: “Yield data just by itself makes the case for a focused and persistent move to organic farming systems.”
Nibbles: Marijuana, Yellow River, Chicha, Drips
- More (than you might possibly ever want) on that ancient weed.
- Yellow River unfit “even for agriculture”. Via.
- Danny does chicha. We await a full report.
- Drip irrigation uses more water! Say it isn’t so. Via.
Catch a fire, China-style
Nibbles: Info-fest, Medicinals, Wiliwili, Fish, Salinity
- 10,000,000 pages of biodiversity: among them 84 articles on agriculture.
- The road to scientific expertise for Maryam Imbumi began with a stomach ache.
- It’s wasp versus wasp to save native wiliwili.
- Domesticating big fish in the Amazon. Really big.
- Indian institute churning out salt-tolerant varieties.