- A way out of hell: workshop on Database Challenges in Biodiversity Informatics
- Potato man honoured.
- Farm diversity reduces nitrogen runoff.
- Darwin on the Farm, from our friends at the Global Crop Diversity Trust.
- Yeast and wheat genome sequencing going gangbusters.
- Coffee!
- Fermented tigernuts more nutritious? No, they’re not from an endangered species. Via.
- Cow water!
- Lots of medicinal plants conservation projects going on in India.
Nibbles: Bananas, Sorghum, Agave, Big vs small, Cauliflower, Wine, Chestnut, Farmers’ rights, India, Aquaculture, Medicinals, Tarpan
- How they grow bananas in Fadan Karshi, Nigeria.
- How they grow sorghum in Karamoja, Uganda.
- How tequila is ruining small farms in Mexico. Or is it?
- How small farms cannot feed Africa. Or can they? Join the debate! Via.
- How the Brits plan to rebrand cauliflower. This I gotta see.
- How the ancient Chinese made wine out of rice, honey, and fruit. Pass the bottle.
- How Georgia is mapping where its chestnuts used to be.
- How farmers’ rights are being implemented.
- How Indian agriculture should move beyond wheat and rice. Ok, but what would everybody eat?
- How microsatellites can be used to help catfish breeding.
- How Ni Wayan Lilir is helping people learn about the traditional healing herbs of Bali.
- How the Brits brought back the Konik.
Nibbles: Wine, Ass, Maps, Mauka, Pest management, Photos
- Mathilda on domestication of the vine and donkey.
- New software for species mapping is out: Croziat.
- Another day, another tuber.
- Using Diversity as a Pest Management Tool. There’s a thought.
- Pix of West African plants, including cultivated, with lots of assorted link goodness.
Nibbles: Vanilla, Bhutan, Oca, Satoyama
- Vanilla domestication 101.
- Bhutan ponders biodiversity database. We say: Don’t forget the crops, people.
- “Crap crops of the Incas.” One man’s on-off relationship with oca.
Satoyama: Japan’s Secret Water Garden. A different approach to rice.
Online platform comes up short on agrobiodiversity
Via LEISA’s Farm comes news of INFONET-BioVision,
…an online information platform tailored to the rural population in East Africa. It offers information on sustainable agriculture and ecological control of plant-, human- and animal- targeting pests and disease vectors.
Leave aside for a moment the unlikelihood of many rural people in East Africa being able to access such a platform. ((Perhaps extension workers will be the main audience?)) It does have a great deal of useful information on the agronomy of a large number of crops, including neglected ones, focusing on pest and disease control strategies. But there’s not as much as one might have hoped on the value of diversity. Although, for example, there’s a list of a few local and improved cultivars in the cassava section, I didn’t get the sense of genetic diversity management as a legitimate strategy for sustainability. On a par with “conservation tillage,” say. Pity.