Nibbles

Nibbles: Weeds, Poverty, Mycorrhizae, Gluten-free wheat, Vanilla, Different apples, Pashmina wool

Oh dear, someone else has fallen for the “weeds are better for you” line, cautious question-mark notwithstanding.
And guess what? The poor don’t buy nutritious foods. How silly of them.
Great post explaining the great unseen: mycorrhizal fungi as drivers of plant diversity.
Gluten-free wheat? Really (even if the links still don’t work).
What would you video on honeymoon in Mexico? A visit to a vanilla plantation. What else?
Conserving apples and earth apples at opposite ends of the world.
Oh, no, pashmina’s in trouble!

CIAT wants your help with its strategic planning. Read page 4 of the document: “…CIAT proposes to create a new genebank…”
Breeding a better British baked bean. What, again? Or still.
Talkin’ Bambara groundnut blues.
Solutions for micronutrients deficiency, in general and in particular.
Bees and yields take off in Kenya.
Pineapple taste gene identified, spliced into sugarcane, to produce GMO piña colada. Made you look!
Proponents of sustainable intensification are lickspittle lackeys tied to the apron-strings of the military-industrial complex.

CIFOR scientist talks about the much-vaunted landscape approach.
The repeated evolution of lemony flavour.
Nice infographic of breadfruit diversity in the Pacific.
Better infographic of chili pepper diversity in Mexico. Both are on Facebook. Hope you guys can see them.
FAO’s Eve Crowley is didactic and inspirational by turns about women, co-operatives and rural development.
Hardin vs Ostrom. Walk-over.
How much does production have to increase, really? Lobell deals the cards.
What are the effects of input subsidies on maize prices in Malawi and Zambia? Small to none.
Plant database to charge for access? Never a good idea.
Ok, here’s a first, a beer I don’t altogether feel like tasting.
Last days of the soybean homecoming show in Hong Kong. Anybody out there seen it?
Video on the intricacies of Kew. Not as long as you’d think.
Weevils in sweet pea jar pinpoint season of Santorini eruption. Has anyone tried to recover DNA from the seeds?
Experts for ensuring quality fish seeds to enhance production. Say what?
How should we mark the extinction of the passenger pigeon next year?

Millet helps sends Kenyan to college. Which millet though?
Some fruits, but not juice, good against diabetes. Coconut not included, alas. Nor bananas, for all their recently revised taxonomic goodness.
Which both seem as good reasons as any to grown your own.
And teach about them in schools.
And conserve them in genebanks. Ok, this piece from CIAT is about neither millets nor fruits, but it’s friday, gimme a break.

The Golden Rice thing rumbles endlessly on.
I wonder whether it was discussed at the First International Agronomy Day. I bet that fertilizer thing in Malawi was.
The world’s most expensive cock. Made you look!
I wonder whether you can select sex in chickens like you can in cattle.
Anyway, speaking of expensive agrobiodiversity, a celebrity economist rounds up links on Indian food price inflation. Must have seen our recent stuff on onions. But can you grow them on the roof?
The secret of breeding? Location, location, location.
List of “indigenous” fruits and vegetables of allegedly potential global importance without a damn scientific name anywhere. Annoying on many levels.
Mind you, this piece on the threats faced by the wild herbs of Crete also doesn’t have any names.
See, you can include a scientific name of an underutilized plant and not look unbearable geeky. Well, kinda. Although this press release on burgeoning collaboration on NUS manages to avoid mentioning even common names.
Oh I so need a drink.
And some cheese.