Medicinal plants

Nibbles: Impact evaluation reviews, Coffee podcast, Pretty on sustainable intensification, Patient capital, Searching for species names, Searching in general, Palestinian agriculture, Korean Neolithic, Mesquite in Africa, CIMMYT-China, Banana trade, UK plant science, Breadfruit, Weed, Beans in Mexico, Macadamia, Organic Cali

How to do impact evaluation. Required reading.
Podcast on the history of coffee from Linn. Soc. Required listening.
How to intensify agriculture sustainably. Meah.
It may well involve patient capital though.
This thing will look for all the species names in a piece of text or website. Bound to come in useful one of these days.
How to use Google properly. And a vaguely agricultural quiz to see if you’ve been listening in class.
Protecting ancient irrigation system on the West Bank.
And finding the oldest agricultural site in East Asia.
The good and bad side of Prosopis in Africa.
CIMMYT in China.
The banana as a weapon.
Touring UK plant science sites.
Mapping breadfruit to save the world.
“Over 78 million Europeans (15–64 years) have tried cannabis…” Purely medicinal purposes, man.
“We wanted to see how farmers are reacting to this global climate change…” Bean farmers, not cannabis farmers.
If you’re at the Noosa Botanic Gardens, Cooroy, you can see rare macadamias. Yeah but can you smoke ’em?
Organic seed systems in California. No, not cannabis, settle down.

Slate puts a fork in, well, the fork.
Gotta love the Prairies.
Mysterious Cattle Deaths Caused by GMO Grass: not GMO, not particularly mysterious.
Gotta love the Spice Islands.
How scientists can extract impact from their ~~navel-gazing~~ research.
Gotta love online mapping platforms.
Another journal starts a blog.
Horses in agriculture, and history.
Gotta love za’tar. It’s about thyme.
Sweeter than sugar. Mauritius goes for fair trade and diversification.
Dying for batik.

Rejoice, the new edition of the FAO/Bioversity Multi-Crop Passport Descriptors (MCPD) are now available on-line!
Pollinators good for pollination shock. No, kidding apart, this is Pollinator Week and we should take note.
Another step in building plant breeding capacity in West Africa.
How to get quinoa cake on the menu of posh Bolivian coffee shops.
Virtual tour of my old stomping ground at the Cambridge University Botanical Garden includes a chemical trail. Which alas does not in turn include the main chemical we used to consume there.

CGIAR pushes ITPGRFA into Rio +20 limelight. ITPGRFA unavailable for comment.
Recession or no recession, Samoan women’s group in Body Shop coconut oil deal.
Pre-Columbian Amazon not densely inhabited after all. Just wake me up when they sort this out.
Ok, where do I get my hands on some Moringa leaves?

A seed fair in South Sudan. Good idea, but why only certified seed?
Maybe they should watch Seeds of Freedom. Well, maybe.
Genetic diversity is important! Settle down, we’re talking dandelions.
Nature’s value includes crops. Phew. Dandelion is a crop, isn’t it?
Talking about value… She don’t lie, she don’t lie, she don’t lie…
And again. Award-winning research on livestock farming’s value to developing countries. And its dark side.
Both of which could of course be usefully visualized by the people involved.
Vizualise this! Nightmare skyscraping vertical farms, for real.
Today’s jetpack request comes from Sophien Kamoun, stimulated by ravishing fungi.