- Boffins to rice: Pump it Up!
- Saving the nuts of Central Asia.
- Nepali women abandon hybrids for landraces and community seedbanks. Weird thing is that it’s a WWF project. But where are the extensionists? If only they had listened in Bhutan. Ok that packed a lot of links in there.
- Never saw an invasive I didn’t like.
- Architectural theorist tackles wine. Not many people hurt.
- Turns out 57 insect species can play host to that famous medicinal fungus that led to war between Tibetan communities a couple of years back. Which helps how?
- An envelope is opened at FAO.
- Seeds come to South Sudan. One hopes they are of the right kinds. And that somebody is collecting what was there before. Maybe someone should call WWF.
- You want vegetables with your fish?
- Crops for the Future says not all middlemen bad.
Nibbles: Ethnobotany talks, Cannabis taxonomy, Ag blogging, Breadfruit in Hawaii, Heirloom auction, Iron Age boozer, Andean potatoes, Minor crops conference, Insects as food
- And if you can’t get to Kew, how about an ethnobotany talk in Denver, Colorado? Or maybe one on GPS and plants, same venue? Can’t make either? Watch a lecture on Schultes in the Amazon. He’s the Father of Ethnobotany, after all.
- Misclassification of Hemp Holds Back Industrial Applications. Duuuuuuuuuude.
- Write a blog on youth and agriculture, win big money. Yeah, right, I’ve heard that one before… I’m still here, Sergey.
- Hawaii’s Breadfruit Festival is coming! So get in the mood.
- Sotheby’s auctions heirloom. No, really. Alas, probably no breadfruits.
- Now, what can I say about Scotsmen and pubs that won’t be construed as a racist slur? Probably nothing.
- Old potatoes helping Andean farmers cope with climate change. And, no doubt, obesity too.
- Conference on pesticide use on minor crops. Oh, to live-tweet that one.
- Micro-livestock makes it into the New Yorker. Can the backlash be far behind?
Not potatoes
But colourful nevertheless. giving the lie to their binomial, Arracaccia xanthorrhiza.
A jute renaissance?
According to the BBC, there’s a resurgence of jute cultivation in Bangladesh.
It’s not that long ago that the International Jute Organization could think it worthwhile to support, of all things, a herbarium survey of the wild relatives of the crop. I also seem to remember a very comprehensive germplasm collecting mission in Kenya in the 1980s, organized by the then IBPGR and funded by the IJO, though I can find no evidence of it. There is some germplasm in the international system, though not nearly as much as in national genebanks in Bangladesh and India. In fact, I seem to remember that the collection at the Bangladesh Jute Research Institute had some kind of international status at one point. I wonder if those heady days will now return?
Nibbles: Drought tolerance, Cassava pests, Sorghum beer, Frankincense, Permaculture in Asia, RDA
- “…drought-tolerant species are not necessarily following the general “stress-tolerator” syndrome.” Meaning?
- More on that cassava-problems-will-get-worse-with-climate-change thing from CIAT.
- More on that beer-will-save-East-African-agriculture-from-drought thing.
- Two of the Wise Men to rescue “poverty-stricken Ethiopian communities.”
- F. H. King’s Farmers of Forty Centuries or Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan: The backstory. Via.
- Presenting South Korea’s genebank.