- The industrial sliced loaf as racist fantasy.
- Bill Gates talks dirty. About cassava, settle down.
- Where the wild things are is where the languages are, but why? And where are they endangered?
- This new Indian wild banana is probably a bit endangered.
- The past may be a foreign country, but they got Street View there too.
- Blockbuster rice in India. (But how energy-efficient is it?)
- And potentially blockbuster livestock breeds in Kenya.
- China goes GMO. Which of these?
- Maybe they should read this vision for organic farming? You know, just for completeness?
- Have a food adventure! Just perhaps not in China.
- FAO and National Geographic have a food security adventure together. For more stuff like this, no doubt…
- Eat more plants, and ditch the junk food. Sounds easy, doesn’t it? Ok, for the more complicated, nerdy approach, there’s always fancy indicators.
- Ethiopia’s community seed banks.
- I bet there are some in Zimbabwe…
- African Development Bank makes a bet on agroforestry. Maybe health is why? There’s more that one reason…
- Gotta be strategic with your legume collecting.
- Want conservation science to translate into impact? Don’t publish behind a paywall.
- CIMMYT earns its keep.
- Build a better apple, and you won’t be able to keep the journalists away.
Nibbles: Grassland diversity, Home on the range, Delicate hump, Mexican medicinals, ‘Shrums, Salty potatoes, Salty pigs, Afforestation, Craft beer guy
- Diversity rules. In grasslands, settle down.
- You want bison with that grassland?
- Your hump, sir. Bison shbison.
- Federales crack down on medicinal plants.
- Including fungi?
- Salt-tolerant potatoes in the news, for the wrong reason.
- What is it about photos of pigs on a beach? You could grow the above potatoes on the beach and then the pigs could eat them. I’d pay money to see those pics.
- Japanese methods used to plant Indian urban forests. Tree planting has a special name?
- Peru deals with stunting.
- Hero.
Brainfood: Shea diversity, Weedy rice, Old barley, Grassland diversity, Afrikaner cattle, Sudanese baobab, FGR review, Small farmers, Ecological pest management, Andean ag changes, European soil biodiversity, Durum adaptation, Agrobodiversity indicators
- Genetic diversity in shea tree (Vitellaria paradoxa subspecies nilotica) ethno-varieties in Uganda assessed with microsatellite markers. Three geographic populations revealed by SSRs, not much related to the folk classification.
- Malaysian weedy rice shows its true stripes: wild Oryza and elite rice cultivars shape agricultural weed evolution in Southeast Asia. The weed is caught in the middle and swings both ways.
- Farmers without borders—genetic structuring in century old barley (Hordeum vulgare). Nordic barley structured latitudinally, with lots more variation within landrace accessions than now, according to historical specimens.
- The Agrodiversity Experiment: three years of data from a multisite study in intensively managed grasslands. Does increasing plant diversity in intensively managed grassland communities increase their resource use efficiency? No idea, but here’s the data from a huge multi-site experiment. Go crazy.
- Genetic diversity in selected stud and commercial herds of the Afrikaner cattle breed. It’s doing just fine, genetically, despite recent declines in numbers.
- The African baobab (Adansonia digitata, Malvaceae): Genetic resources in neglected populations of the Nuba Mountains, Sudan. Maybe a little more variation in homesteads compared to the wild. Maybe.
- Seeing the trees as well as the forest: The importance of managing forest genetic resources. The first State of the World’s Forest Genetic Resources and the first Global Plan of Action for the Conservation, Sustainable Use and Development of Forest Genetic Resources summarized: exchange, test in common gardens, and be clever with genetics, in breeding, management and restoration.
- Are small family farms a societal luxury good in wealthy countries? Rich countries don’t mind inefficient farms because they look nice.
- DIVECOSYS: Bringing together researchers to design ecologically-based pest management for small-scale farming systems in West Africa. Where do I sign up?
- Ecosystem governance in a highland village in Peru: Facing the challenges of globalization and climate change. Big Dairy doing for Andean crops.
- Intensive agriculture reduces soil biodiversity across Europe. What they said.
- The climate of the zone of origin of Mediterranean durum wheat (Triticum durum Desf.) landraces affects their agronomic performance. 4 main climatic zones, accounting for up to 30% of variation in important evaluation traits. FIGS, anyone?
- Indicators for the on-farm assessment of crop cultivar and livestock breed diversity: a survey-based participatory approach. And only 5 of them too!
Nibbles: Georgian kitchen garden, Italian citrus history, Domestication infographics, AVRDC, Zambian nutrition policy, Camel-keeping, ESA states its case, Making lunch
- Podcast double: Georgian kitchen gardens (with pix) and Italian citrus.
- Domestication infographics are now officially a thing.
- Feeding the world with vegetable research, courtesy of AVRDC. Need to register, alas.
- Zambia biofortifies. Maybe they didn’t register for the above.
- Camels as biocultural artifacts.
- European Seed Association breaks down the tumultuous last 18 months of the European seed sector.
- “It takes more than 40 different species to make a simple lunch…”
Nibbles: CIAT genebank, Breeding course, Tomato sequencing, EUFORGEN celebrations, Gates projects, GCP quiz & video, CFS41 ITPGRFA side event
- A new genebank for CIAT?
- DuPont Pioneer sponsors a plant breeding symposium at Wageningen University. You can attend by webinar but you have to register. But I fear this is going out way too late. Sorry! Nevermind, you’re still in time for this.
- 360 tomato genomes give an all-round view of its evolution.
- EUFORGEN turns 20. Don’t know EUFORGEN? Watch this video. Or go to this side event.
- Self-reproducing hybrid cowpea and sorghum? Gates Foundation is on it. Ah, but it’s not all sweetness and light in Seattle.
- It’s also a bit late, so don’t expect a prize, but you can still take the GCP World Food Day quiz just for fun.
- But for real fun, watch their cassava video.
- Oh my! Judge for yourself whether it was worth listening to.