- Funky vegetables from around the world.
- Ft Collins genebank on CNN.
- India gets a litchi genebank. None of that in Ft Collins.
- Honeybees get help from museum collections.
Nibbles: German zucchini, Nice tomatoes, Genebank Database Hell, Pakistan genebank, Brachiaria genomics, Haiti agriculture, Chinese potatoes, Green green grass of home, Domestication book, Rudisha returns!
- Deadly zucchini sweep through Germany. Actually just one possible hybrid with ornamental squash, apparently, probably, I’m told by a vegetables expert.
- Everybody loves photos of heirloom tomatoes.
- Sorting out genebank data management at IRRI.
- It’s very tricky to move the Pakistan national genebank.
- Where are the Al-resistance genes in Brachiaria?
- Le jardin créole in Haiti as a model of sustainable agriculture.
- China’s spud revolution. And more.
- Grass is America’s biggest crop. Tell me something I don’t know. What’s that you say? Not that kind of grass?
- Nice excerpt on cats from recent book on domestication by Richard C. Francis.
- The plant-based diets of East African long-distance runners.
Nibbles: Plant names, Tomato trifecta, Amaranth, Corn wars, Wild lettuce, Dying, Indian ag, Chocographic, Root symbionts, Rehabilitation, Mesquite, Extreme weather, Saviour plants, Pawpaw, Japanese rice, Coffee museum, Caribbean early ag, Amazonian livelihoods, Vislak on corn
- In praise of common names. Meh. You won’t see a Latin name in this whole Nibbles. See how you like it.
- Building a tomato. In Spanish.
- Tracking a tomato.
- The dark side of tomatoes.
- Amaranth to rescue Mexicans from obesity.
- Seeds of contention.
- Finding the lost Least Lettuce.
- Indigo goes back to the future.
- What if the monsoon fails? MS Swaminathan has some answers.
- Nice chocolate infographic from FAO.
- A diverse microbial community in and around roots helps plants thrive. The Science article is behind a paywall, but there’s a helpful infographic on Twitter.
- The US has a National Seed Strategy for Rehabilitation and Restoration. Vision? The right seed in the right place at the right time. Wish I’d thought of that.
- When otherwise useful trees attack. Ah, the irony of this coming right after the previous one.
- UK’s Global Food Security programme says extreme weather events are increasing and we must adapt agriculture. Good to know.
- And today’s Five Plants That Will Save the World are…
- Maybe add pawpaw to that?
- Japanese rice farmers: change gonna come.
- Nice coffee museum in Brazil.
- Early agriculture in the Caribbean: Cuba and Trinidad.
- The babaçu breakers of Maranhão are under threat. What’s babaçu? Yeah, well, look it up.
- “Seed banking began about 30 years ago as an improvement to individual farmers storing and using their own seeds.” Riiiiight.
- That Vilsak is a card.
Nibbles: CIAT job, Rice revolution, Pomegranate genebank, Spiderplant, Floating heritage, Lager origin, Amaro history, Golden Rice et al.
- CIAT genebank looking for a leader.
- IRRI soon-to-be-former (Thanks, Mike) DG looking for a new Green Revolution.
- Looking for pomegranates? Look no further.
- Cleome looking for markets. With genomics.
- Looking to the floating gardens of Bangladesh for answers.
- Looking for the origin of lager yeasts. And finding two of them.
- Looking to understand amaro.
- A good look at biofortification.
Nibbles: Kinky crops, Hot pepper, Cary Fowler, Gin history, Open data, Quaker food, QPM in Ethiopia, Botany app, Old seeds, New tomato
- Why aren’t there more crops among the orchids?
- This pepper is not so much a crop as a weapon of mass destruction.
- Now here’s a crop. New tomato has taste, storability, looks. But I think it’s dating.
- Maize with cool amino acids reaches Ethiopia. Must have walked there.
- Really old squash seeds.
- Cary Fowler on the Weather Channel. You heard me.
- Quakers have an opinion on the right to food and climate change. Well, why shouldn’t they? They also have a UN office, but that’s another story. No word on whether they made the Weather Channel.
- Ok, so apparently the answer is data. Says a data company. And open data at that. Quakers nonplussed.
- Botanizing in N or S America? There’s an app for that.
- The rise and rise of gin. And I certainly need one.