- BBC Food Programme on crop diversity in India, with a little help from Bioversity’s Stefano Padulosi (whose name manages to be pronounced in three different ways in 20 minutes.
- How to measure photosynthesis on a grand scale.
- The origins of our diet. It’s the interactions, stupid.
- Barley as superfood. No, not the fermented kind.
- More diverse freshwaters give higher fish yields.
- European earthworm diversity mapped. No word on relationship with yields. Surprisingly difficult to see any correlation with agricultural intensification.
- It’s been a bad time for livestock (and therefore people) in Mongolia and in Ethiopia.
- Domesticating the wild mango that is not a mango but is almost as tasty.
- The weird world of the pure caffeine trade.
Nibbles: Spinifex industry, Tsiperifery pepper, Pacific taro, Coffee double, Guadeloupe genebanks, Cucumber history, Gourmet maize, Peruvian cuisine, Heirloom rice
- Spinifex fibres for ultra-thin condoms, with indigenous approval.
- Piper borbonense getting its 15 minutes.
- Cook Islands shares taros with Samoa. Fingers crossed they’re TLB resistant.
- A couple of videos you may only be able to get on Facebook, or at least I can’t find other sources: Ethiopian coffee ceremony, and INRA/CIRAD’s banana and yam collections in Guadeloupe.
- Speaking of coffee, drink it while you can. And yes, it’s China’s fault.
- The cucumber in England through the ages.
- Gourmet maize in Oaxaca right now.
- All kinds of gourmet food in Peru right now too.
- Ok, ok, a Filipina chef on gourmet heirloom rice too.
Nibbles: Meta-organic, Wild ginseng, Ancient Australia, Insect nutrition, King Corn, Early nutrition, Funny olives, CWR control, Damn dams
- The latest meta-analysis of organic agriculture says it can feed the world.
- The latest update on saving the wild ginseng adds pretty much nothing to previous updates.
- The latest look at Aboriginal land burning says it did no damage.
- The latest study of insects as feed says they’re good for you. Still no word on whether they’re good.
- Not sure whether I’ve ever seen a study linking biotech corn for biofuels with the abandonment of rotation, but it makes sense. And more.
- The latest investigation of early childhood nutrition still says it’s important.
- The latest Italian food scam involves painting olives.
- The latest pean to crop wild relatives says it’s still about control, man.
- The latest report on dams again says you have to be careful.
Nibbles: Pharaonic bull, Moving the cheese, Popping the corn, Persian food double, Sweet potato galore
- Cattle in ancient Egypt.
- Because yesterday was National Cheese Day and we missed it.
- The protein to which we owe cheese.
- The anatomy of popcorn.
- Pat Heslop-Harrison interviewed on Iranian saffron.
- And more Persian foodstuffs.
- Orange sweet potato going wide in Mozambique. And where it came from.
Nibbles: Dirty methane, Ag wages, Myrrh, Irish DNA, Oca harvest, Rice domestication, Millets
- The US is hiding meaty methane emissions.
- What’s an Indian agricultural labourer earn? It depends …
- The traditional year-end revisitation of the magic of myrrh.
- A year end knees-up argument of whether the Irish are from the Caspian steppes or some other place.
- The traditional harvest of odd non-potatoes, oca at year’s end, and oca at year’s beginning.
- A convenient year-end summary of crop domestication, mostly rice.
- Speaking of which, millets (and Jeremy) hit the big time.