- Recreating Roman wine. It’s the tar, stupid.
- Decolonizing weed.
- Ancient Aboriginal foraging and cooking was quite something.
- The National Seed Bank at the Australian National Botanic Garden makes the news. See what I did there?
- So does sweetpotato in Kenya.
- Turning to art to find lost fruit varieties in Italy.
- Remembering Lee Calhoun of North American Fruit Explorers.
- Bringing back the quince. That’s the fruit trifecta.
- Might as well bring nutmeg back too.
- CIMMYT’s synthetic hexaploid wheat programme explained in a PowerPoint.
- Report on screening ICARDA’s wild forages.
- Nerd out with cool land cover map in Google Earth Engine. Mash up with above, for example?
Nibbles: Purple, Emirati bees, MJ Bale, Solanum jamesii, Olive genebank, Victoria genebank, Kampot pepper
- Murex from Meninx.
- Breeding a better bee.
- Menswear retailer to dabble in sustainable livestock.
- There was a fourth sister.
- A world olive collection in Spain.
- “If we can assume the fire pattern is as bad as the stuff we see on TV, I reckon at this very moment there is a goodly sized handful of species that are technically extinct right now.” At least in the wild.
- Cambodia’s world-beating peppercorn makes a post-post-colonial comeback.
Nibbles: Sacred forests, Morning glory, Organic cereals, Sorghum diversity, Phoenix studentship
- The church forests of Ethiopia.
- Monumental monographic study of Ipomoea.
- New project on breeding cereals for organic farming in Europe.
- Sorghum genetic resources in the USA.
- Fun studentship on date palm diversity.
Nibbles: International genebanks, Ahmed Amri, Genebank management, Nutrition stories, Spice nomenclature, Breeding against waste, Cuneiform tablets, Breadfruit, Ag risk, Giant pineapple, Chiles in Mexico, Solanum jamesii, Seed Week, Kenyan community seedbank, Lost apples
- The CGIAR genebanks in the limelight.
- My friend Ahmed Amri is a big reason for the success of the above.
- The dual role of genebank managers like Ahmed.
- Feel-good nutrition stories needed.
- Rosemary gets a name change. Not many people hurt.
- Fighting food waste through breeding.
- Babylonian cooking deciphered.
- Breadfruit (and Diane Ragone) on TV.
- Maize looks doomed in Zambia. All hail sorghum.
- Food exhibition at the Fitzwilliam.
- Chiltepin culture.
- The forgotten potato of the Four Corners.
- Hey, it’s Seed Week 2019 in the UK and Ireland!
- Something similar in Kenya too, thanks to Bioversity and CCAFS.
- There’s always an apple detective story around this time of year.
Nibbles: Agricultural transition, Cassava beer, Lost Feast, African seeds, Plants course, Bitters, Rangeland management, Prize
- Rubber brings rage in India.
- Cassava brings beer in Brazil.
- Book on how foods go extinct.
- The Economist discovers good seeds.
- Why Study Plants? See above.
- The biodiverse botany of bitters.
- Rangeland management in the Great Plains: a timeline.
- I know, what we need is a Food System Vision Prize.