- UK breeders scour ICARDA’s fava beans for better genes. What next? Chianti?
- Olive cultivation then and now. An archaeologist speaks.
- Entomophagy.
- Lager yeast origins.
- Salvia divinorum: underutilized no longer.
Nibbles: Honey, Records, Fowl, Fungi
- GIS used to manage production and marketing of honey.
- Silly season story number 1 and number 2.
- Avian flu threatens Turkey’s Hacıkadın chickens.
- Lybia has truffles? From the new NWFP-Newsletter((FAO’s link is broken.)).
Nibbles: Human migrations, Fungi, Madagascar, Green Revolution
- “Nilotic-language speakers … first brought herds of animals to southern Africa before the Bantu migration” about 2000 years ago.
- British truffles go berserk. And more.
- An interview with the guy who’s been mapping hundreds of Malagasy species.
- Not sure if I already drew your attention to the New Agriculturist’s Focus feature on A Green Revolution for Africa.
Soils and gardens
There’s an exhibition on soil at the Smithsonian in Washington, DC, entitled “Dig it.” And there’s a kids’ book, “Soil! Get the inside scoop,” courtesy of the Soil Science Society of America. I guess the two things are connected. Anyway, they’re both good ideas, and seem to pay due attention to the agrobiodiversity angle.
Speaking of exhibitions, there’s another interesting one relevant to our theme, this one in London. The organizers of IslamExpo have created a traditional Islamic garden at the centre of that busy showcase.
We hope visitors will take a little time out from the main exhibition to wander into one of the four gardens and perhaps sit a while surrounded by the lush planting, under one of the trees of Paradise (pomegranate, fig, date-palm or olive), collecting thoughts or listening to Qur’an recitation or a story by the winner of the Muslim Writers Award, Aliya Vaughan.
Nibbles: Biofuels, Prices, Biofuels again, Wolf, Mushrooms
- Wanna laff? Ag Leaders Challenge Ethanol Myths.
- Whisper it; the market works. Rice futures tumble, again.
- “Some biofuels might do more harm than good to the environment, study finds”. Alert the media! Oh, they already did.
- “Graphing Jane Austen” approach suggests wolf taught man to hunt. Little Red Riding Hood unavailable for comment.
- India’s Mushroom City.