- How is Europe doing at saving its threatened plants? Paper and website available. How many crop wild relatives are threatened in Europe? I think it should be possible to work it out…
- Bioversity colleagues summarize their work on homegardens.
- Introduced plants can be useful too!
- Soil Association continues to quibble about need to double food supply.
- ICARDA looks for heat-beating wheat.
- “Coconut Biodiversity for Prosperity” meet coming up soon in Kerala. Local press excited.
- Jeremy sets the world straight on Pavlovsk.
- Kew et al. set the world straight on how many plants there are in the world. Jury still out on the number of crop wild relatives.
- Vulnerability of vegetation to climate change varies around the world. Well there’s a thing now. Nice maps.
- If you’re running a livestock cryobank I’ve got the software for you.
Nibbles: Yams, Agrobiodiversity, Melons, Cacao, Biotropica, Food, Seed saving, Rice pix, Mongolian livestock, Gums
- IITA set to expand its ability to provide the world with yam diversity.
- “Agricultural biodiversity is essential for farmers as it places them in a better position to manage climate change.” Wait, what?
- An exotic melon is found in Birmingham, UK. But can you make juice from its seeds?
- James dissects the latest genome announcement: cacao. Ignore the press release, just read this.
- Biotropica has a special issue on biodiversity. Even some agrobiodiversity.
- The history of food consumption in the 20th century. Scary reading.
- New Internationalist magazine has a special issue on seed saving! But only a couple of articles available online, alas.
- Wonderful photos of the rice harvest from Flickr.
- Mongolian cashmere can only get more expensive.
- Australians have more to cope with than a back-stabbing prime minister, it seems. Their eucalypts are in trouble. Something to do with fire, maybe.
Dangerous foods round-up
Playing follow-up this morning. Just noticed a couple of papers that deal with topics we’ve been considering here over the past couple of weeks. Remember the post about sorghum beer in Africa from a few days back? Well, it turns out it’s not all good news. There had to be a catch, right? And, following our discussion of a paper on the chemical ecology of cassava, there’s a vivid reminder of why detoxifying those tubers is still so important in some parts of Africa. 1
Nibbles: Climate change, Monitoring, Evaluation, Vegetables, FAO newsletters, Guardians
- Climate change to bring lemons in Kent. Now for the bad news.
- Monitoring biodiversity in Africa and India.
- More Free Air Concentration Enrichment (FACE) research facilities needed, say those who work there.
- Ethnic vegetables? Yep, you heard me.
- Non-Wood Forest Products and Plant Breeding newsletters are out. Subscribe already!
- W.S. Merwin: poet and Guardian of Biodiversity.
Nibbles: Boswellia, Nepali rice, Andes, Pacific nutrition, Wild rice, Coffea, Kashmir, Fibres, Fermentation
- Saving Dhofar’s frankincense tree. Evocative things they are too.
- The rich may have trouble getting into heaven, but they manage more agrobiodiversity. At least of rice. At least in Nepal.
- Gotta be careful with niche modeling in mountain areas. Well, duh.
- New Pacific food leaflets from SPC.
- Ok, how weird is it that I have a personal connection of sorts to all of the above? Probably not much.
- Ex situ not enough for wild rice. Say it ain’t so!
- The evolution of coffee.
- “If the rains do not fall we may face problems with certain crops.” Right.
- Network on natural fibres proposed by Industree Craft Foundation and the Commonwealth Secretariat. Sounds like fun.
- Screening lactic acid strains for sorghum beer making. Well, kinda. Somebody please fund this vital research!