- Nature has new Plants journal. With blog.
- More from the randomized trials backlash frontlines.
- World Bank sets up internal task force on climate smart agriculture. Oh good.
- No word on whether spiritual values on agenda.
- Hacking the school lunch.
- Indian flour mills winding down. Implications for crop diversity unknown.
- Big Australian writeup of CIMMYT genebank.
- Big CIP writeup of CIP genebank. And other collections, to be fair.
- It’s the regeneration, stupid.
- Gardens save plants.
- Sustainable diets defined to within an inch of their lives. Common factor is less animal products. But, as Susan McMillan of ILRI points out, for whom, and where?
- Traditional Maori use of weird fungus.
Nibbles: City farming, Yeast diversity, Fungal taxonomy, Ankole cattle, Fruit breeding, Goat improvement, Private hunger, Vietnam cacao, Sequencing life, Old vegetables, Cola politics, Lugar Center, Wither biofuels, Plant breeder award, Amateur potato breeding
- “Fifteen to twenty percent of the world’s food is produced through urban farming, involving an estimated 800 million people.”
- We shaped yeasts as much as they shaped us. Now to sort out their nomenclature, along with the rest of the benighted fungal kingdom.
- Cheese is just one way yeasts shaped us. What kind of cheese can you make from Ankole milk, I wonder.
- Sean Myles tells us how his lab “makes food better.”
- Tan Sonstegard of USDA tells us how ADAPTMap can make goats better. Skip to 2 mins in, if you want to avoid adorable footage of cute (human) kids. I love a nice bit of goat cheese.
- Can the private sector help combat hunger and malnutrition? Gee, I dunno, do tell me.
- Vietnamese chocolate comes of age. Someone mention the private sector?
- Gene jockeys take over world. World surrenders.
- What did the Elizabethans ever do for us? Well, they grew funky vegetables for one thing.
- Both Colas sign up to FAO guidelines that “protect the rights of poor and vulnerable people to land, livelihoods and food security.” But is it all marketing?
- The Lugar Center has a bunch of bibliographic resources for researchers.
- Biofuels? Bah, humbug.
- Jorge Dubcovsky, a professor of plant sciences at the University of California–Davis, snags another award.
- “Are you all converts to the cause of backyard potato breeding?” Do tell. And so we come full circle.
Nibbles: Rural income sources, Medicinal trees, Saffron, Biofuel trees, Trout genome, Maize & drugs in Mexico, Bee-keeping, Urban ag, Food security, Jackfruit, SDG2015
- Natural areas just as important for rural incomes as crops.
- Because of things like medicinal plants, among others.
- Not if the crop was saffron, though. Or multi-purpose biofuels?
- Trout gets the genome treatment. I prefer it grilled with a little butter and parsley.
- High maize prices good for one thing. Wanna guess?
- Guerrilla bee-keepers in the Rust Belt.
- Maybe they’ll be discussed in tomorrow’s tweetathon: Urban Food Security +SocialGood.
- Brussels sprouts too, maybe: it’s urban agriculture, Jim, but not as we know it.
- Another view on NatGeo’s five steps to food security. (Here’s Luigi’s.)
- The key thing NatGeo left out: jackfruit.
- Well, that, and multi-stakeholder partnerships. Of course.
Nibbles: Tomato colour, INBio demise, Specimens, Plant lore, Ancient chickens, Edible flowers, Urban veg, Trees & nutrition
- Deconstructing the colour of tomatoes. h/t @kctomato
- INBio folds? Or (h/t Jacob) government takes responsibility?
- Discussion on whether natural history specimens are necessary.
- So there’s a place where you can record your plant lore. No word on whether that’s linked to specimens.
- Yellow skin in chickens is a recent trait. Specimens involved. Part of that PNAS special feature on domestication.
- What have bees ever done for us?
- Edible flowers not just for pansies.
- Australia funds World Veg to research urban veg in Africa.
- Remember how we included in Brainfood a few months back a paper linking tree cover with dietary diversity and fruit/veg consumption in Africa? Well, here’s the PowerPoint.
Nibbles: Hawaii research farms, Disneyland dates, Sumerian beer, Danish beer, Hipster foods, Wheat rust, Salmon farming, Quinoa pix, Asparagus cost, Llama evacuation, Japanese hemp, Awards
- “You can trace the genetic makeup of most corn grown in the U.S., and in many other places around the world, to Hawaii.” There’s a GMO angle, but that’s frankly the least interesting thing about this.
- Disneyland protects really old date palm. Sweet.
- “A Hymn to Ninkasi.” Sumerian beer 101.
- Bronze Age beer: not quite as old as Sumerian, but still…
- Hipsters told to stop worrying about beer, among other foody things.
- They should worry about wheat rust though.
- And salmon.
- And quinoa, of course. Pictorial taster for a forthcoming, restricted Harper’s feature.
- The true cost of Peruvian asparagus is also kinda worrying. Those poor hipsters.
- But Peru has other stuff to worry about, like active volcanoes and llamas.
- “In haiku poetry… key words describing the stages of cannabis cultivation denoted the season when the poem is set.” Oh, I’m researching that, and no mistake.
- Nominations sought for World Food Prize and Wangari Maathai Award.