Networking

Nibbles: Cover crops, Viet coconut, Water maps, Mao’s mango, Tudor bread, Belgian gardening, IRRI fingerprints, Stay green barley, Miniature donkey

Species flying poleward.
FAO unveils pulse infographic. No word on whether any are harvestable by machine.
Potato farmer adds value the old-fashioned way.
Talking of old, here’s a really old horse.
And the oldest evidence of fermentation for food preservation. But you’ll need a strong stomach.
KitKat is certified crap.
How (and Why) Farmers Maintain Crop Diversity: The Book. Some reviews.
And here’s a specific example from India.
And here, courtesy of Bioversity’s Ann Tutwiler, is why farmers need some help sometimes.
Oh and here’s another one. People visit ICRISAT genebank in Niger, see stuff they like.

No new salinity tolerance in cereals? You need to look at the right thing.
No new crops? Focus on plants’ sex lives.
No hope for drylands? Look to biodiversity.
No new agricultural land? No problem.
No data on neglected Himalayan crops? Got you covered.
No way you’re drinking coffee from civet droppings? Chemistry to the rescue.
No place for the offspring of F1 hybrids in your agriculture? Go apomictic.
No new fruits left to try? Hang in there.
No diversity in your Aragonese homegarden? There’s a genebank for that.
No impact for your agricultural research. Try clusters.
No agroecological patterning to your crop’s genetic diversity? It’s the culture, stupid.

The First World Congress on Root and Tuber Crops is on. Right now. Are you there, tweeting away perhaps? Would you like to tell us about it? We’re all ears.