Category: Nibbles

Little bits of link goodness not worth a whole post

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Nibbles: Pearl millet redux, Garden plants, Armenian pics, Seeds galore, Heavenly Book, Pastoralism threats

  1. Pearl millet is getting the hybrid treatment. And, loving it.
  2. Want to know what to grow in your garden? Yes, even pearl millet.
  3. Nice pics of Armenian landscapes, food and foodways. No pearl millet in sight.
  4. The latest monthly newsletter from The Botanist in the Kitchen does seeds. Pearl millet unavailable for comment.
  5. China is genotyping and phenotyping (almost) everything. Pearl millet feeling left out.
  6. If pearl millet fails, there is always pastoralism. No, wait…
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Nibbles: Middle East genebanks, American crabapples, Community seed banks, Indian banana genebank, Legume breeder spotlight, Agrobiodiversity tourism

  1. The Lebanese and Syrian genebanks in the news. For good reasons, for now at least.
  2. Wild American apples should be more in the news. And probably more in genebanks.
  3. Community seed banks could be good news in fragile states.
  4. Good news for India’s banana diversity. Yes, it now has a genebank!
  5. All those genebanks need breeders, like Mina Nešić.
  6. Genebanks are nice of course, but it’s even better news when the agrobiodiversity gets out and about.
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Nibbles: Peruvian agrotourism, RSA heirloom apple, Wild tea in China, Native American seeds, Indian chiles, Genebanks, Kenyan tree planting

  1. Agrobiodiversity inspires tourism in the Andes of Peru.
  2. South African fruit exporters does its (small) bit for heirloom apple conservation.
  3. Wild tea doing just fine in the Shunhuangshan National Nature Reserve in Hunan Province, China. Even when harvested by local communities. Looks great for tourism too.
  4. Native communities in Nebraska getting some support for saving and exchanging seeds.
  5. Women are in charge of chiles in Tamil Nadu.
  6. Popular Science does genebanks. At least one genebank has tourism potential, I’d say.
  7. Want to support forest landscape restoration through native tree planting in Kenya? Go to MyFarmTrees, and help keep Kenya a tourism hotspot.
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Nibbles: Crop mapping, Climate change impacts, Rice cheese, Andean blueberry, Rare apples, Hungarian genebank, Old seed collection

  1. AI doesn’t recognize tropical agriculture very well.
  2. So presumably it can’t easily be used in assessing climate change impacts in agricultural heritage systems? FAO has some ideas on how to do it.
  3. Maybe rice heritage systems can be used to make cheese.
  4. I bet Andean blueberry (Vaccinium floribundum) goes great with rice cheese.
  5. But if not, heritage apples will probably do.
  6. The Hungarian genebank is hoping to inject heritage grains into non-heritage agricultural systems. AI and FAO unavailable for comment.
  7. Maybe AI can help with the mystery of this old seed collection at the Natural History Museum, London.
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Nibbles: Agricultural expansion maps, Brassica diversity, Not against the grain, South African seedbanks, Safer peanuts, Diné seedbank

  1. Agriculture is bad for natural ecosystems. But great for maps, you have to admit.
  2. Greens are good for you. And this is a great roundup of the latest scholarship on brassica evolution, domestication and diversity. You’ll find most of the paper quoted in past Brainfoods.
  3. Grains are great. Especially with greens.
  4. Thank goodness for household seed banking. Especially in conjunction with the formal kind.
  5. All so we can breed a better peanut. And cut down more natural ecosystem?
  6. No, there’s community genebanks for that too…