- A new Twitter list on ex situ plant conservation. Subscribe!
- Yeah we need a new Twitter list like fish need trees. No, wait…
- “64 traditional varieties of paddy, vegetables and millets will be exhibited.”
- Junk food worse than tobacco, UN says.
- An overview of origin-linked products. No junk food there.
- New Zealand heirloom seed collection in trouble.
- Canadian heirloom seed collection takes off. Maybe these two should talk?
Nibbles: Seed drying, Yield gap trap, African fermentation, Rice & temp, Cultural exchange, Youth, Syria and ICARDA
- How to keep seeds dry. Don’t do this at home, folks! No, wait…
- Don’t get trapped in the yield gap, researchers told.
- Diana Buja breaks down banana brewing.
- Night temperatures cross important threshold for rice.
- Cultural change does not have to mean genetic erosion and loss of agrobiodiversity knowledge.
- Getting youth back into agriculture. Not just about the money.
- Latest from the tragic ICARDA situation
Nibbles: Uncommon grains, Wheat model, Yield gains, Cheese bugs, Grapes, Bee biodiversity, Pakistan seed industry, Bangladesh nutrition, Baobab juice
- Could teff or millets topple wheat, maize and rice? Anyone for unintended consequences?
- Not if superior models lead to bigger wheat harvests. ’Cos that’s all it takes.
- That and a good book: Yield Gains in Major U.S. Field Crops.
- Did somebody mention models? Vorarlberger Bergkäse is a model cheese, and “The rind is the boundary layer between a cheese and its environment”. Welcome to the cheese microbiome.
- What’s the difference between a wine grape and a table grape? Simple: Pectic-{beta}(1,4)-galactan, extensin and arabinogalactan-protein epitopes.
- Bee biodiversity results in mo’ bigger blueberries. Now to make use of that.
- Seed policy wonks – you know who you are – will thrill to IFPRI’s new report: The seed industry in Pakistan.
- So how does that square with the Financial Express of Bangladesh’s discovery that “Agro biodiversity can improve nutrition and health”?
- How to make baobab juice. Time to edit those factsheets.
Nibbles: Cowpea blogging, Rice vs wheat psychology, IRRI rice breeding, Wheat disease, African ag success, AGRA seed, Seed certification
- Omnibus edition of recent GCP blog posts on cowpea.
- Chinese rice farmers more sharing and caring than wheat farmers.
- Wonder if that will change with all these fancy new rice varieties coming through.
- Wonder if fusarium ear blight of wheat will change that.
- No such problems in Africa, no sirree.
- Not with all these AGRA-supported seed companies taking off.
- But there’s an international component to that which is being neglected.
Nibbles: Nepal goat project, Kenyan camels, Sustainable diet metrics, Agri-informatics centre, Cassava dishes, CC & nutrients, Yield is all, African CC hotspots, AGRA seed enterprises, PlantVillage blog, Medieval weeds, French reserve, Black garlic, Australian tree tool
- Sometimes all it takes is a goat.
- Or a camel.
- I wonder how either would figure into a metric for a sustainable diet. Wonder if these people will be interested in those metrics.
- Cassava figures in lots of different ways.
- No word on whether carbon dioxide will affect its nutrient content the way it does with other crops.
- Who cares, it’s yield we’re after. Well, that’s in trouble too in some parts of Africa.
- That’s the only way those African seed start-ups are going to survive.
- Yeah, but disease resistance is important, Shirley. PlantVillage gets a blog.
- And weeds? Don’t forget the weeds. Although of course some of them you can eat. Put that in your metrics.
- Meanwhile, France starts to re-wild. Would love to see some wild relatives in the Bois du Boulogne. Livestock wild relatives, not your crazy cousin on his gap year.
- And now we can figure out what climate change might do to them. I guess this thing might work for European animals. Says here it works for Australian trees.
- Speaking of France, garlic is quintessentially French, isn’t it? Well, maybe, but it’s also very Korean, in its black, cured form.