- “Always rotating, regardless of prices, is close to optimal.” Not what you think. Or maybe it is. Robust economic reasons for not planting the same annual crop two years running.
- Got any data about nutrition and biodiversity? FAO wants them.
- Fuller and McCouch on the origins of rice. Audio goodness only.
- The first of many video updates on #COP19. Gonna be a long couple of weeks.
- And no, I don’t think a UN Nutrition and Sustainability Seminar will help much in that respect, but you can follow that too at #sustfoodsystems. Or is it #sustdiets?
Nibbles: UK collections, Rice domestication, Cattle domestication, Truffles, Yam chromosomes, Shiitake, Videos galore, Coffee and climate change
- Search the UK’s living plant collections for errant edibles and their wild relatives.
- Independent origins for aromatic rice varieties?
- I’ll see your rice varieties, and raise you independent cattle domestication in China.
- The scent of a truffle, love it or leave it.
- Improving the yam, with flow cytometry and satellite markers to discover how many chromosome sets they have.
- Going back to nature for the best in cultivated shiitake. With video goodness.
- The @gricultural Revolution, from CTA. Too cute, too loud, too long. With even more video goodness.
- “Local Farmer Grows Beans from the Basque Region.” I guess he’s not local to the Basque region, then, or it wouldn’t be remarkable. Yet more video goodness. Aside: I’ve grown alubias de Tolosa and they are wonderful, but I never was elected a member of the confraternity.
- You want even more video goodness? Here’s some on resilience in coffee farming.
Nibbles: Vilsack on ice, Genebank standards, Indigo, Sardinian food, Seeds of Time, Musa genome, Wild rice collecting, Palm oil, Markets
- Secretary of Agriculture tours Ft Collins genebank. With video goodness.
- Which genebank I’m sure follows the Genebank Standards for Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. With video goodness.
- Prince of Wales sows organic rice. In white suit. With video goodness.
- The story of indigo. No video, but lots of photos.
- Sardinian blood soup. No video, but one photo. Which is more than enough.
- Wanna watch Seeds of Time? Here’s where. Includes much on Svalbard, of course. And a bit on USDA wild potato collecting. I plead the fifth.
- So there’s a second banana genome? Thankfully no video.
- “We are only using the tip of the iceberg.” Rice genetic resources, that is. Could easily have had a video.
- Face palm oil.
- Photo essay on the bazaars of Central Asia.
Nibbles: Fungi, Beer, Cupuaçu, Tearless onions, Melaleuca, Tomatillo, Seed takeover, Katy Perry’s seeds, Bruges fries, EU ag
- They got an awful lot of fungi in Norwegian wood.
- Waiter, there’s a mushroom in my beer.
- Kew seed scientist discovers the taste of the Amazon.
- That “tearless onion” is good for the heart story? The article is behind a paywall, so I don’t know how the boffins suppressed lachrymatory factor synthase. And frankly, I don’t really care.
- A new guide to Melaleuca species. Be still my beating heart.
- The world’s oldest tomatillo clocks in at 52.2 million years.
- French seed company Vilmorin buys 25% of Zimbabwe’s Seed Co. Ltd. What could possibly go wrong?
- “Katy Perry’s latest album, Prism, is Number One in Australia, but that hasn’t stopped the country from declaring it a potential biohazard.” Can anyone explain the significance of this story? Or who Katy Perry is?
- On the whole, I’d rather be at the frites museum in Bruges.
- “Clearly, when it comes to agriculture, productivity matters.” Here comes the science.
Nibbles: Panama disease, N2Africa, Trees and CC, CITES, Jordanian farmers and CC, ETC poster, Digitization, Wallace video, International Rice Genetics Symposium, Roots and tubers meet, Hybrid maize, Quinoa, Food Security, Israeli boars
- Panama comes to SE Asia. Banana people will understand. And will know what to do?
- Shucks, just missed the N2Africa project first phase results presentation shindig in Nairobi. All about the power and beauty of nitrogen-fixing legumes (geddit?). Jeremy wont let me link to the piece about the project that recently appeared on a well-known site, and he’s right, it’s largely content free. And you can find it if you really want to anyway.
- Climate change? Not a problem, for some plants (including wild relatives?), if there’s trees around. Well, kinda sorta. But it made you look, didn’t it? Are any of them on CITES? Consult the new handy dandy online thingy.
- Ah, but tell that to Abu Waleed and other Jordanian farmers.
- Who are the answer to etc Group’s question: Who will feed us?
- A botanical use for online gaming. Whatever next.
- Celebrating Alfred Wallace via animated video. And why not.
- You want more videos? Here’s a nice explanation of the difference between winter and spring wheat.
- Huge rice genetics meet is apparently a “hot bed of discussion”. For another couple of days. Let us know if you are party to any of that.
- No doubt the same could have been said about the recent 12th International Symposium of the International Society for Tropical Root Crops in Accra.
- Zambian families are better off nutritionally if they grow hybrid maize.
- A handy English translation of an all-consuming post about quinoa in Spanish. And check the photo of quinoa diversity!
- Gary Nabhan explains why “more biodiversity means more food security“.
- Israel’s wild boars are European. I’m biting right through my tongue here.