Microbes

Nibbles: Traditional knowledge, Opium poppy, Fish, Bees, Earthworms, Wild horses, Camel, Fearl rabbits, Guinea savannah, Kava

“In the face of climate change, keeping diverse, resilient ecosystems is one of the strongest tools for adaptation.”
Getting high in Eden.
Chinese ate freshwater fish 40,000 years ago.
British MPs finish cleaning their moats, decide to save the honeybee.
Worm power!
LEISA 25:2 is out.
Przewalski’s horse gets first ever reverse vasectomy.
Early farmers used camel-drawn carts.
Using Google Earth to map bunnies in Australia. And then kill them.
Farming the savannah. What could go wrong?
Stressed out? Try kava. With audio goodness.

European are growing more vegetables. But how much of that is heirlooms?
Canadian boffins grow wild potatoes for the leaves.
Chinese wasp going to roast Italy’s chestnuts.
The genetics of swine geography. Or is it the geography of swine genetics?
The diversity of sauces.
Cooking Flipper.
Genetically engineered brewer’s yeast + cellulose-eating bacterium + biomass = methyl halides.
Wild sheep runs wild in Cyrpus.
“It can be planted in farms because it does not compete for resources with corn, coffee or bananas and acts as a nitrogen-fixing agent in the soil. The mpingo is also considered a good luck tree by the Chagga people who live on the slopes of the Mt. Kilimanjaro.”

DFID-supported collection of stories showing how information about new ways of doing things is communicated to rural people in developing countries includes some agrobiodiversity stuff.
The genetic nature of the Pea-comb phenotype in chickens.
Entomopathogenic fungus can become an endophyte in sorghum and confer protection from stem borer. Ain’t agrobiodiversity grand?
Different earthworm species have different effects on the competition between four annual plants and their relative fecundity. Ain’t agrobiodiversity grand?

“No a la droga, si al caucho y al cacao.”
Spotting banana Xanthomonas wilt (BXW) with biochemical tests.
The tree that owns itself. Take that, lawyers!
“The old Chinese gardener in ragged blue coat and trousers with a wispy white beard who potters around smoking one of these long pipes with a tiny bowl — and a mongol cap, periodically performing elaborate grafting techniques on the plum tree.”
Mexican coffee growers protect surrounding forest. Nepal forest community moving in similar direction?
Mapping the competition between soy and forest in Brazil.
Weird agrobiodiversity corner: pseudomonad bacteria help maize take up nutrients.
Using herbicides to help prairie establishment (including sunflower wild relative).
Stop press: “Agricultural genetics is one of the easier parts of the solution.”
“…wildcats preferred resting sites in shelter structures near forest edges.”
Video on Greek yogurt. Jeremy comments: “I’m going back to Crete.”