Category: Nibbles

Little bits of link goodness not worth a whole post

Posted on

Nibbles: Corn diseases, German potato collection, Vietnam rice trials, Endophyte strain, Fish nutrition, Himalayan pea, Subversive seeds

  1. The US needs better maize.
  2. German genebank looks for the best potatoes.
  3. Vietnam looks for better rice in IRRI’s genebank.
  4. New Zealand markets an endophyte for better grass performance.
  5. Some Timor-Leste fish are better than others.
  6. The Himalayas have a better pea. Of some kind.
  7. How’s that for subversive cataloguing?
Posted on

Nibbles: Supermarkets, Cate Blanchett, ABS, Transformation, Medieval haymaking, Aurochs rewilding, Breed concept

  1. What’s wrong with supermarkets.
  2. Cate Blanchett on the Millennium Seed Bank. Attitude to supermarkets unknown.
  3. Access & Benefit Sharing 101. Cate Blanchett unavailable for comment.
  4. Experts weigh in on how we should change how we eat. Nobody but Cate Blanchett will listen, but supermarkets and seeds feature, for what it’s worth.
  5. How they ate in the Middle Ages without supermarkets. Or at least harvested.
  6. After we’re done with medieval haymaking, let’s bring back the aurochs too. And put it in a supermarket?
  7. Yeah but what is a breed anyway? Or an aurochs, for that matter.
Posted on

Nibbles: USDA Pullman genebank, Another Indonesian genebank, Somali community seedbank, Garlic moves genebanks, Enset conservation, Opportunity crop genebanks

  1. A primer on the USDA genebank in Pullman.
  2. Possible genebank in Indonesia. I could have sworn there was one already.
  3. Community genebank in Somalia. Surely not the only one.
  4. Garlic moves between genebanks. I’m sure there’s a reason.
  5. New enset products and processing methods are great, but is there a comprehensive genebank? I wish I could be sure.
  6. That goes for other “opportunity crops” and “forgotten foods” too.
Posted on

Nibbles: Impact assessment, Kenyan veggies, African veggie genebank, Madd fruit, Moroccan fruits, Date palm, DOGE at USDA

  1. Modelling adoption of biofortified crops is no substitute for empirical field surveys. Kind of obvious, but I guess needed saying.
  2. Kenyans may not need biofortified crops, though. Assuming they are actually eating their traditional vegetables.
  3. There’s a whole genebank for Africa’s vegetables.
  4. Saba senegalensis is also naturally biofortified.
  5. The High Atlas Foundation is also on a fruit tree mission
  6. Is the date palm the most important fruit tree in the world, though?
  7. I wonder what will happen to USDA’s fruit tree collections.
Posted on

Nibbles: SOTW report, Food prices, Rex Bernardo, Odisha landraces, Cyprus community seedbank, Haiti seed producers, Trees for the Future, Iraq genebank, Sudan genebank, Climate-Conflict-Vulnerability Index, India SDG2,

  1. FAO explains why crop diversity matters.
  2. Well, for one thing, there’s food prices, that’s why.
  3. Ah, yes, crop diversity: “You gotta have it. You gotta use it. You gotta talk about it.”
  4. Odisha mainstreams landrace diversity in its seed system.
  5. Meanwhile, the Farmers Union of Cyprus is stashing seeds away in Community Bank of Cypriot Traditional Seeds.
  6. Looks a bit like the Groupements de Production Artisanale de Semences in Haiti. If you squint.
  7. If only there were some guidelines for managing such community seed banks.
  8. Iraqi Kurdistan gets in on the genebank act.
  9. Iraq used to have a genebank, but what happened to it has just happened in Sudan.
  10. Ah, to have a Climate—Conflict—Vulnerability Index so that such things could be predicted and steps taken.
  11. And a monitoring system and some targets would be good too.