Nibbles

Nibbles: Traditional knowledge, Digital herbarium, Digital Vavilov Centres, Rice genebank, Lentil breeding, Breeding for drought, Native American trout, Musa revision, Millet and sorghum promoted, Phenomics revolution

Paying attention to traditional knowledge to help with climate change … in New England!
Two million New York Botanical Gardens herbarium sheets digitized, possibly including some crop wild relatives.
Map your recipe, an entertaining way to talk about domestication and interdependence in the matter of agricultural biodiversity.
IRRI follows up genebank video with genebank podcast. No idea why.
Speaking of videos, here’s one on lentil breeding in Canada.
Which I don’t think involved drought resistance there, but it probably did elsewhere.
Tribes (not in New England — see above) diversify from trout. Alas freshwater not included in new global fish diversity hotspot map.
Musa taxonomists do their thing.
Millet takes on quinoa. Taxonomists would insist on calling it Panicum miliaceum. I think. Next in the queue is sorghum?
Phenomics in words and images.

Flower gardeners discover what their edibles colleagues have suffered under: new EU rules.
“Hard Times Followed Booms for Europe’s Ancient Farmers” Ya don’t say.
“Diversity in Forage Management.” Yes, even in the US.
Makanaka sticks it to the FAO’s State of Food Insecurity in the World 2013.

5th Global Botanic Gardens Congress coming up in Dunedin, New Zealand. Isn’t that somewhere near the Shire? And one garden’s engagement with agricultural biodiversity.
“It’s 2050, and Australia’s bounteous wheat harvest has been saved.” You see, as a total amateur at this lark, I’d have started with that.
Loren Rieseberg, interviewed.
HarvestChoice using fancy remote sensing imagery to improve crop calendars, give themselves excuse to quote Byrds classic.
European rye collection a little closer to reality.
WorldVeg turns 40.
Bellon and Ntandou-Bouzitou explore the tail. Talk about local innovation…
Old friends talk about crop wild relatives.

“The Access to Seeds Index measures the performance of the leading companies in the seed industry independently, which will result in the publication of a ranking every two years.” Will need to keep an eye on this. As no doubt also will the CGIAR…
…which met in Lisbon to discuss the Generation Challenge Programme and presented on NUS at Tropentag, having moved on from the Science Forum in Bonn, which had a lot on nutrition. No doubt some of them will be in Lillehammer to discuss plant genetic resources and climate change. How do they keep on top of it all?
And when they are not meeting, they are surveying the use of Gnetum, sampling goats, and making videos about their genebanks among many other worthwhile things…
Speaking of the IRRI genebank, Mike Jackson’s obituary of his friend Dr Joe Smartt, “geneticist and renowned grain legume expert,” is online at GRACE, but behind a paywall. Fortunately, you can get a condensed version on Mike’s blog.
Legumes, I hear you say? “Two big mysteries in soybeans have captured my attention.” And I’m sure that sentence captured yours. Corn+Soybean Digest reveals all.
Time for dessert. I see your 300-variety mango of Malihabad and I raise you a 250-variety apple of Chidham.
But lest we forget why we’re doing all this meeting and goat-sampling and fruit-grafting, here comes FAO’s latest report on food insecurity.

How to solve world hunger, eat a new report.
Or send them the UK’s surplus oats and wheat.
Our friend Anne Vezina lets the reptiles of the press have it right between the eyes: Crocs and banana plantations: What the media missed.
And Erik Hammar is peeved about a New York Times op-ed pooh poohing the problem of overpopulation.
Glad we’re not too late to point you to the write-up of the 1st day of the NUS 2013 conference. More to come?
There’s a new Berry go Round botany blog carnival up, with nothing of agricultural interest. I guess we missed the call for content. Again.
Farming Matters wants your articles on agricultural biodiversity.
In a cabbage taste test, wild is best.