- Plea from taxonomist to nutritionists and food people: use scientific names and get them right.
- Cooking writer doesn’t get the hint.
- New Scientist rounds up bunch of recent animal domestication studies.
- DIY bio-char; Muck & Mystery has some ideas.
- Diverseeds has videos of diverse seeds.
- “For one week, 2500 people from Noirmoutier use all their might to harvest this precious La Bonnotte potato by hand.”
- Barcoding bananas: useful for field genebanks?
A little little barley goes a long way
Like I say, not a day goes by. Yesterday, ramie. Today, little barley. As in:
They likely ate sunflower, marsh elder, two types of chenopod—a family that includes spinach and beets—and possibly squash and little barley, according to the findings. The people also grew bottle gourd to make into containers.
That would be the Riverton people living three thousand years ago along the Wabash River in present-day Illinois.
The Riverton crops may have “added to what was [already] a successful life” for the ancient Americans, said Brian Redmond, curator and head of archaeology at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History in Ohio.
Yes, because…
…[b]efore they began farming, the Riverton people lived among bountiful river valleys and lakes, apparently eating a healthy and diverse diet of nuts, white-tailed deer, fish, and shellfish, the study says.
So the Riverton people were not reacting to some environmental stress as a matter of survival when they became agriculturalists, but rather “engaging in a bit of gastronomic innovation.” Good for them.
Nibbes: Nettles, Rivers, Rare species, Library, Afghanistan protected area, Nordic-Baltic-Russian collaboration, Photos, Disease
- George Orwell scythes nettles, then seeks uses.
- World’s rivers in trouble. Also other wetlands the world over. CWRs to be affected, along with everything else?
- Let’s not get too hung up about rarity.
- UNESCO launches World Digital Library. Gotta be some agrobiodiversity in there somewhere, surely. Yes indeedy.
- Afghanistan’s first national park has some livestock wild relatives!
- Circum-Baltic collaboration on genetic resources conservation.
- Mongabay.com publishes lots of cool pictures of biodiversity to celebrate Earth Day yesterday. So does The Big Picture, even some vaguely farming ones. And Adam Forbes has just loaded a bunch of photos too. Luigi comments: Why didn’t we do the same for agrobiodiversity?
- Tuberculosis and domestication. Not.
Nibbles: Japan, Bananas, GMO, Bees, Squirrels, Mangroves, Climate change and indigenous people, Goji, Svalbard, Heirloom rice, Dataporn
- Japan’s unemployed end up farming.
- Somewhat uninformed comments about the perfection of the banana.
- “…traditional genetic crosses outperform genetically modified crops by a wide margin.”
- Alice Waters takedown.
- Brits throw money at bees.
- Red squirrel missing link found through DNA fingerprinting. Red squirrel pie, anyone? Ok ok, make it grey.
- Mexican mangroves in trouble.
- “Indigenous Peoples have contributed the least to the global problem of climate change but will almost certainly bear the greatest brunt of its impact.”
- Go go goji.
- Secretary General of the Nordic Council of Ministers and former Icelandic Prime Minister waxes lyrical about genebanks.
- So there’s a Carolina Gold Rice Foundation. No, not Golden Rice. Via.
- Help the Biodiversity Heritage Library decide on a citation format. Or not. whatever.
Nibbles: Taro, NTFP, Maca, Perils of new crops, Nabhan, Cockfighting, Old wine, Maya nut, Cassava Brown Streak Virus
- University of Hawaii’s work on taro summarized.
- Watch out for FAO’s new NWFP-Digest. Non-timber, non-wood; what’s the difference?
- The transition of maca from neglect to market prominence. Free download.
- Maize and malaria in Ethiopia.
- Gary Nabhan interviewed. Again.
- NPR on the limits of the Green Revolution.
- Cocks still fighting in India.
- The early Egyptians “…were very aware of the benefits that natural additives can have—especially if dissolved into an alcoholic medium, like wine or beer.”
- Brosimum alicastrum to the rescue.
- Uganda’s biofuel hopes dashed by virus? Say it aint so.