Neglected species

Nibbles: Quinoazzzzz, Haiti seed bank, Guatemala seed bank, Seed systems, Hybrid wheat, OFSP, Fish characterization, Vanilla

This quinoa thing is getting tedious.
Clinton brings a seed bank to Haiti, “which will support efforts to increase agricultural production.” Will be interesting to see how exactly it does that.
Whereas this seed bank in Guatemala “is empowering the local community to preserve and grow the seeds.” So there you go.
Of course, those seed banks are going to need seed systems. And vice versa.
And the next milestone in the continuing disempowering of the farmer is…
Orange-fleshed sweet potatoes go aquatic. Where they’ll find fish that need to be compared.
A Tongan vanilla tour.

The future of rice science. It says here.
Is Holistic Management the SRI of livestock?
Another online botanical database to contend with. Eventually.
NASA maps poleward vegetation shift. I suspect the Progressive Cattleman will be onto that in a flash. See what I did there?
More fancy aerial science, this time at the service of phenotyping. And more of the same.
Ghana’s agricultural research system deconstructed. Would have been nice to mention the genebank.
African food, in Africa and America. And in audio.
Propagating tropical trees for fun and profit.
The epigenetics of maternal nutrition, courtesy of USDA.
Liberians showered in seeds.
Kim, are you listening? This one’s for you.
IPK reaches out to India.

Britain rekindles its love affair with spelt.
ICRISAT hopes to do the same for West African women and fonio, with a machine that grinds faster.
If you care about whether what you do has any effect on, say, agrobiodiversity, you’ll want to digest a Review of the Evidence on Indicators, Metrics and Monitoring Systems.
A robust defence of plant patents; not that I agree, which never stops me linking to things.
This is meta: Mike at One Thing Leads to Another relates how we led him to naked oats. Well, our role was pretty minor.

Things are slim today, mostly only tangentially related to agricultural biodiversity. But we hate to disappoint…

The ever-influential Lancet has published a series on non-communicable diseases (many of which are associated with dietary diversity). Marion Nestle has the details.
The USDA’s conservation program is fighting a losing battle against high corn prices, and everybody suffers (except corn farmers).
Sell wheat? Prices are high, but forecasts are good.
Vegscape! If you need a “state-of-the-art, satellite-based U.S. crop condition vegetation assessment and monitoring service”.
Now this really is agrobiodiverse: A high definition film on seed saving that needs your support.
This one too: women and bambara groundnut.

Geographic patterns in epigenomic variation. Yeah, but in Arabidopsis.
A global strategy for conservation. Yeah, but for cacao.
That “Diversifying Food and Diets — Using Agricultural Biodiversity to Improve Nutrition and Health” book? You’ll be able to get chapters and case studies from a dedicated website nine months after publication.
Not to be outdone, the Ethiopian Institute of Agriculture Research lets you download “Defining Moments in the Ethiopian Seed System.”
New Agriculturist fillets out some contributions to a recent Economist conference on malnutrition.
The Brassica research community gets together in the UK. Not many people hurt.