- They got an awful lot of fungi in Norwegian wood.
- Waiter, there’s a mushroom in my beer.
- Kew seed scientist discovers the taste of the Amazon.
- That “tearless onion” is good for the heart story? The article is behind a paywall, so I don’t know how the boffins suppressed lachrymatory factor synthase. And frankly, I don’t really care.
- A new guide to Melaleuca species. Be still my beating heart.
- The world’s oldest tomatillo clocks in at 52.2 million years.
- French seed company Vilmorin buys 25% of Zimbabwe’s Seed Co. Ltd. What could possibly go wrong?
- “Katy Perry’s latest album, Prism, is Number One in Australia, but that hasn’t stopped the country from declaring it a potential biohazard.” Can anyone explain the significance of this story? Or who Katy Perry is?
- On the whole, I’d rather be at the frites museum in Bruges.
- “Clearly, when it comes to agriculture, productivity matters.” Here comes the science.
Nibbles: Panama disease, N2Africa, Trees and CC, CITES, Jordanian farmers and CC, ETC poster, Digitization, Wallace video, International Rice Genetics Symposium, Roots and tubers meet, Hybrid maize, Quinoa, Food Security, Israeli boars
- Panama comes to SE Asia. Banana people will understand. And will know what to do?
- Shucks, just missed the N2Africa project first phase results presentation shindig in Nairobi. All about the power and beauty of nitrogen-fixing legumes (geddit?). Jeremy wont let me link to the piece about the project that recently appeared on a well-known site, and he’s right, it’s largely content free. And you can find it if you really want to anyway.
- Climate change? Not a problem, for some plants (including wild relatives?), if there’s trees around. Well, kinda sorta. But it made you look, didn’t it? Are any of them on CITES? Consult the new handy dandy online thingy.
- Ah, but tell that to Abu Waleed and other Jordanian farmers.
- Who are the answer to etc Group’s question: Who will feed us?
- A botanical use for online gaming. Whatever next.
- Celebrating Alfred Wallace via animated video. And why not.
- You want more videos? Here’s a nice explanation of the difference between winter and spring wheat.
- Huge rice genetics meet is apparently a “hot bed of discussion”. For another couple of days. Let us know if you are party to any of that.
- No doubt the same could have been said about the recent 12th International Symposium of the International Society for Tropical Root Crops in Accra.
- Zambian families are better off nutritionally if they grow hybrid maize.
- A handy English translation of an all-consuming post about quinoa in Spanish. And check the photo of quinoa diversity!
- Gary Nabhan explains why “more biodiversity means more food security“.
- Israel’s wild boars are European. I’m biting right through my tongue here.
An agroforestry database to rule them all
During my recent visit to Nairobi, the reason for my lack of blogging during the past couple of weeks, I briefly ran into Dr Roeland Kindt, one of the people behind the various ICRAF databases I have occasionally written about here. And guess what? He warned me there’d be another ICRAF database coming out imminently. Of course, by now the Agroforestry Species Switchboard 1.0 has been announced all over the place and my scoop has evaporated. Anyway, no matter, better late than never. I haven’t had a chance to go into the Switchboard in detail, but hope to very soon, and will blog about it when I do. It certainly sounds useful. Here’s what Roeland had to say about it in the ICRAF press release:
Before the Switchboard, you had to search for a particular species one database at a time. But now, multiple databases that list information on a particular species can be accessed in one go. Because listings of species in databases only partially overlap, it is common to find little or no information on a particular species in one database, but plenty of it in a second or third database. So it makes sense to query multiple trusted sources of data on one web interface.
It sure does. Maybe this will spell the end of factsheets?
Oh, and that’s a totally gratuitous panorama shot of ICRAF’s Warburgia field genebank at Muguga, Kenya. Well, not so gratuitous maybe. Because it allows me to say that if the Switchboard had permalinks to search results, such as for things like Warburgia, I would have been able to link to them, which would have been cool(er).
Nibbles: Book, Sorghum, Plant breeding, Quinoa, Herbal medicines, Compensation, New varieties, Beers
Here’s a bunch of better-late-than-never links, some of which will be good this time next year.
- A new book on Plant Genetic Resources and Climate Change.
- I expect it covers sorghum, which NPR calls the “camel of crops”.
- Wonder whether they’ll cover sorghum at the Tucson Plant Breeding Institute course in January 2014. h/t Crops for the Future.
- Last week’s International Congress on Quinoa. Pretty sure our invitation got lost in the mail.
- As was our invitation to Kew’s one-day symposium on herbal medicines and food supplements.
- Annals of Botany explains how compensation may underly the benefits of genetic diversity – in Arabidopsis. (And thanks for the shout-out.)
- ICRISAT struts its stuff in Nigeria with new varieties of groundnut and millet. As ever, we ask: who’s looking after the old varieties?
- Diverse beers for Halloween – one to cut out and keep.
Nibbles: Archaeocuisine, Ag-fab, Onion shortage, Healthy sorghum, Organic soybeans, Tropaeolum, Fish in rice
- The Silk Road Gourmet talks about Reconstructing Cuisines And Recipes From The Ancient World.
- Colin Tudge splutters about The Founding Fables of Industrialised Agriculture.
- India’s ongoing onion crisis still a vale of tears.
- But India’s jowar (sorghum) still offers superficial health benefits.
- You know how all the US soybeans are being exported to China? Think again.
- How the nasturtium got its spur; not a just-so-story.
- California discovers the productive miracle of fish in rice paddies.