Nibbles

Nibbles: Cannabis, Brachiaria, Grasslands, Oryza, Taxonomy resources, Artocarpus, Quercus, Zea, MAS, GBIF

“Something researchers are looking at is which cultivars, or strains, of hemp are best for the various uses — fiber, oil, nutrition, etc.” Love that etc.
Speaking about grass: Brachiaria goes home, to wild acclaim.
Did someone say wild? Wild grass needs help!
Rice is a grass. Oh my yes.
How to keep up to date with taxonomic research online.
Pacific Regional Breadfruit Initiative gets an award.
You can also make flour from acorns.
And maize: what’s a grit?
Greenpeace touts MAS.
Next thing you know they’ll be singing the praises of Big Data. Yeah, maybe not.

The industrial sliced loaf as racist fantasy.
Bill Gates talks dirty. About cassava, settle down.
Where the wild things are is where the languages are, but why? And where are they endangered?
This new Indian wild banana is probably a bit endangered.
The past may be a foreign country, but they got Street View there too.
Blockbuster rice in India. (But how energy-efficient is it?)
And potentially blockbuster livestock breeds in Kenya.
China goes GMO. Which of these?
Maybe they should read this vision for organic farming? You know, just for completeness?
Have a food adventure! Just perhaps not in China.
FAO and National Geographic have a food security adventure together. For more stuff like this, no doubt…
Eat more plants, and ditch the junk food. Sounds easy, doesn’t it? Ok, for the more complicated, nerdy approach, there’s always fancy indicators.
Ethiopia’s community seed banks.
I bet there are some in Zimbabwe…
African Development Bank makes a bet on agroforestry. Maybe health is why? There’s more that one reason…
Gotta be strategic with your legume collecting.
Want conservation science to translate into impact? Don’t publish behind a paywall.
CIMMYT earns its keep.
Build a better apple, and you won’t be able to keep the journalists away.

Diversity rules. In grasslands, settle down.
You want bison with that grassland?
Your hump, sir. Bison shbison.
Federales crack down on medicinal plants.
Including fungi?
Salt-tolerant potatoes in the news, for the wrong reason.
What is it about photos of pigs on a beach? You could grow the above potatoes on the beach and then the pigs could eat them. I’d pay money to see those pics.
Japanese methods used to plant Indian urban forests. Tree planting has a special name?
Peru deals with stunting.
Hero.

Podcast double: Georgian kitchen gardens (with pix) and Italian citrus.
Domestication infographics are now officially a thing.
Feeding the world with vegetable research, courtesy of AVRDC. Need to register, alas.
Zambia biofortifies. Maybe they didn’t register for the above.
Camels as biocultural artifacts.
European Seed Association breaks down the tumultuous last 18 months of the European seed sector.
“It takes more than 40 different species to make a simple lunch…”

A new genebank for CIAT?
DuPont Pioneer sponsors a plant breeding symposium at Wageningen University. You can attend by webinar but you have to register. But I fear this is going out way too late. Sorry! Nevermind, you’re still in time for this.
360 tomato genomes give an all-round view of its evolution.
EUFORGEN turns 20. Don’t know EUFORGEN? Watch this video. Or go to this side event.
Self-reproducing hybrid cowpea and sorghum? Gates Foundation is on it. Ah, but it’s not all sweetness and light in Seattle.
It’s also a bit late, so don’t expect a prize, but you can still take the GCP World Food Day quiz just for fun.
But for real fun, watch their cassava video.
Oh my! Judge for yourself whether it was worth listening to.