- African Seed Access Index comes out for Kenya, Uganda, South Africa, and Zimbabwe.
- New way to fund crop diversity conservation to be unveiled at FFD3 in Addis Ababa next week.
- “When you looked for ‘Ethiopia’ in a dictionary, it would also always mention ‘famine’. Now that time is over.”
- Vote for me!!!! I so want to win this damn Bioversity photo competition.
- Yes, you can have your long-grain rice and yield too!
- Everybody loves floating gardens.
- Mapping chocolate.
- “Why Is there Wine on the UNESCO World Heritage List?” Why the hell not?
- Lost grapes in Shangri-La. UNESCO beckons?
- Flatbreads rule.
Nibbles: Monocultures redux, Seedless watermelons, Red kiwifruit, Herbaria problems, Forest foods, Sorghum beer, SIRGEALC, Chinese veggies, Organic tomatoes, Andean women, Rise origins, Fermentation
- Deploy your cover crop diversity in time rather than space. But deploy it.
- Triploid goodness.
- Searching for a red kiwi.
- Herbaria on the rack.
- Let them eat non-timber forest products.
- Sorghum spurts in Kenya. Because beer.
- Sign up for SIRGEALC 10.
- Knowing your 菠菜 from your 西洋菜.
- 400 tomato varieties. No pesticides. No water. No problem.
- Women are conserving Andean crops. Sure, though with some occasional help from genebanks.
- The Rice Origins Wars continue.
- Sauerkraut changed the world.
Nibbles: Organic research, Plant models, Tabasco peppers, Andean shepherds, Weird pigs, Wild rice harvesting, Heritage ducks, Nutrient content
- An investment in organic research. At last.
- Plant models go online. Not those kinds of models.
- Where the peppers for Tabasco sauce come from.
- Apparently, “[w]hite alpacas have been overbred.” But not that kind of breeding, I think.
- Pigs are weird.
- Learn how to make poles. Yes, those kinds of poles.
- Even ducks can be heritage.
- Higher carbon dioxide bad for nutrition.
Nibbles: AVRDC genebank, Grits, Sikhs & parmesan, Congolese gouda, New rice, Poisonous plants, Bush tucker, Co-evolution, Amazonian medicinals, Native American usufruct
- World Vegetable Centre looking for a genebank manager.
- What’s a grit?
- Who did you say saved parmesan? Who did you say is making gouda?
- Philippines gets some new rice varieties. No, but these are climate-resilient.
- A poisonous plants gardens fits perfectly with my mood today.
- Involve native people in the development of a native foods industry. Well, duh.
- Blame butterflies for broccoli.
- There are a lot of medicinal plants in the Amazon.
- Wild rice (wild but not rice) vs pipeline.
Nibbles: Pope, CGIAR, Agroecology, ABS, Food shortage, World flora, Nutella, Bees, GMOs, CC & wheat, CC & legumes, EU satellite, Seed saving, Wheat breeding, Strawberry breeding, Adopt-a-crop, Organic tea, Malagasy yams, Seed app, Ebola seeds, Sorghum spoons
And we’re back! While we were away…
- …the Pope pontificated on climate change and GMOs, among other things.
- And so did the CGIAR.
- Boffins in the UK suggested that agroecology might be important to sustainable intensification. No word on whether the CGIAR is listening.
- Bioversity asked for contributions on whether ABS can support farmers. No word on whether anyone is listening.
- And The Economist asked: who cares, anyway?
- Google said it would help botanists catalogue all plants.
- Nutella was bad, and then ok again.
- Bees were again found to be important to agriculture, but not all bees.
- The pros and cons of GMOs were trotted out again. And again.
- Climate change was blamed for smaller loaves of bread. Which as far as I can tell might not be a totally bad thing.
- And for the need to grow drought-resistant legumes.
- The EU launched a satellite to monitor crops.
- Meanwhile, people just got on with it, in their own, sometimes weird, way…
- …breeding wheat. Even organic wheat. Even perennial. Even in Scotland.
- …breeding strawberries. Even with wild relatives.
- …or just adopting the raw materials of breeding.
- Growing organic tea in China.
- Conserving yams in Madagascar.
- Trying to find the appropriate seeds to grow in Kenya.
- And giving probably inappropriate seeds to Ebola-hit farmers.
- Which they can now eat using sorghum spoons.