https://twitter.com/GrantBrooke/status/603892676249915394
My sentiments exactly. This is the kind of thing that keeps nutritious, locally-important, traditional crops underused. Quite apart from messing with the livelihoods of farmers.
Nibbles: Cuban heritage, Old food, Forest restoration, Botany in trouble, Community genebanks, Seed book, Beer genomes, Old wheat, Fowler/Naylor, Veggie kiosks, Breeding & data
- 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: Beer from fog, Ecoagriculture, Slow oil, Greek diet, Livestock history, Biofortified millet, Zambian crops, Wild tomatoes, Trees & drought, Global genebanks, Saving coconuts, Industrial crops
- Fogcatcher ale? Oh I think so!
- Greenpeace guides donors on ecological farming. Booklet on the preservation of historical monuments to follow.
- Slow Food launches olive oil presidium. Presidium?
- The ancient Greeks had wine for breakfast. Explains a lot.
- Livestock size changes through the ages.
- The sainted Lawrence Haddad on that biofortified pearl millet story from yesterday. Remember that variety can be traced back to a genebank. But not only millet.
- Zambians told to look to their neglected traditional crops. By their government. Which is surely complicit in their neglect. Maybe biofortify them first?
- Collecting tomato wild relatives.
- July drought stops pine trees growing in the SW US.
- Building a global genebank system. And again.
- Saving the PNG coconut collection from Bogia disease. We need a Svalbard for coconuts is what we need.
- Industrial crops and food security in sub-Saharan Africa: mainly complementary, but…