- Cuba recognizes traditional medicine.
- Your grandma’s cooking was not that great.
- Using genetics to guide teak restoration.
- Botany dying in the US.
- Brazil sets up lots of community seedbanks.
- Aren’t seeds just great?
- The 1000 beer genomes project is as great as it sounds.
- Palestinians freekeh out.
- Interview with Cary Fowler: about Svalbard, and much more.
- Mama boga in trouble. Bastards.
- Nature calls for crop improvement.
Brainfood: Agrobiodiversity & nutrition, Solanaceae, Pepper resistance, Fenugreek erosion, Wild grapes double, CC & mountains
- Improving diets with wild and cultivated biodiversity from across the landscape. Only 12 papers on the link between agrobiodiversity or crop diversity and nutrition included nutritionally relevant information, so perhaps not surprising that we still don’t really know how agrobiodiversity or wild biodiversity contribute to overall diet quality.
- Biodiversity of Food Species of the Solanaceae Family: A Preliminary Taxonomic Inventory of Subfamily Solanoideae. 15 genera used as food, 4 have economic crops, but then one of them is Solanum.
- Diversity of genetic backgrounds modulating the durability of a major resistance gene. Analysis of a core collection of pepper landraces resistant to Potato virus Y. Breakdown of resistance conferred by given allele depends a lot on the background it finds itself in.
- Brief but alarming reminder about the need for reintroducing ‘Greek hay’ (Trigonella foenum-graecum L.) in Mediterranean agricultures. Why don’t people like this thing? Is it the smell?
- Crop Wild Relatives as Genetic Resources – the Case of the European Wild Grape. Introgression from American wild species in S. German wild grapes. Still probably valuable for various disease resistances, though.
- Mining new resources for grape resistance against Botryosphaeriaceae: a focus on Vitis vinifera ssp. sylvestris. See what I mean?
- Global mountain topography and the fate of montane species under climate change. Some plants may have more land available to them as they migrate upwards.
Nibbles: CIAT genebank, Kew impacts, Zambian poachers, Sustainable cows, CO2 fertilization, Trees on the radio, Prosecco shortage, Chamomile
- CIAT 2014 annual report highlights role of genebank in its impact pathways.
- Kew post for International Day for Biological Diversity does something similar.
- Zambian poachers beat swords into ploughshares, plant peanuts.
- Turns out meat is not murder.
- Higher carbon dioxide can’t make up for other stuff.
- Great BBC Radio 4 series on The Meaning of Trees.
- Saving the Jesuit pear tree. Maybe they should put this on the radio.
- I’m not sure it would be so bad if prosecco ran out.
- Because the genomes of all of the components of beer have now been sequenced, so we’re safe.
- Have a a nice cup of chamomile instead.
Nibbles: Iron millet, Potato problems, Potato award, Chocolate, Cider, Nerica for Ebola, African vegetables, Collections in peril, Frida Kahlo, Diverse grasslands, Svalbard, Watermelon heirloom, Sugar, Food security, Engineered heroin, Collecting seeds, Foraging, Early modern maize, Plant protection, Guernsey seaweed
- Biofortified pearl millet has an effect!
- Bayer says the potato is a diva. But then they would, wouldn’t they.
- Potato exhibit wins award. Did someone say diva?
- Do we really need to be told that fermentation is a good thing?
- See what I mean? I’ll drink to that!
- Nerica for Ebola-hit areas. But why only?
- Cooking up some veggies in Cameroon. With some Nerica rice, no doubt.
- French national collection of carnivorous plants up for sale. Sorely tempted.
- Frida’s garden. I bet there’s some carnivorous plants in there.
- Diverse grasslands are stable grasslands.
- No, actually, The Guardian, not an overpriced deep freeze.
- The sweetest melon in the South.
- Taking the sugar out of our diets. But not watermelons, surely.
- Interview with the US Ambassador to the Rome-based UN agencies, focusing on food security.
- Home-brewed heroin: what could possibly go wrong?
- The Global Seed Conservation Challenge: but will it be done the right way?
- Rummaging around Europe’s forests.
- Is that Shakespeare or Drake holding an early introduction of maize to England?
- Using plants to protect plants.
- Vraic Day! h/t @twaihaku
Nibbles: Bees, Oysters, Herbals, Svalbard
- US honeybees really in trouble.
- Europeans also worried.
- Chesapeake oyster, on the other hand, are recovering.
- Series of posts on old herbals.
- Q&A on Svalbard Global Seed Vault.