Nibbles

Nibbles: Indian farmer, Indian farming landscape, Guatemalan protected areas, Old phones, Geo-data, HarvestPlus funding, Cavia, Agronomy, Bee bank, De-extinction

Bhogpur farmer Subash Chander Misra gets Plant Genome Savior Farmer award 2012 for pear conservation.
While a whole farming system gets protected in Kerala.
Hope it doesn’t go the way of protected areas in Guatemala. Maybe they need old mobile phones. Or a better roads or urban expansion dataset. Or maybe just their own maps.
UK government puts money where mouth is with grant to HarvestPlus. For things like this from ICRISAT. And have you seen the BBC slideshow?
Funnily enough, nobody talking about guinea pigs as a solution for malnutrition.
How Australian agriculture improved its water use efficiency. Clue: it’s not one thing. Good to be reminded, yet again, that’s it’s not necessarily always and only about the diversity. Keeps us centred.
Bees get a bank?
The de-extinction debate rumbles on. Centred, did someone say?

Companies should pay to protect ecosystems.
Like these? Hope they include some agricultural ones. Maybe even urban ones.
Why you’d want to is not least because of these plants. Which can be better for micronutrients. Not to mention mainly outcrossing.
Yeah, not all species are equal. Right?
I wonder if any of this philanthropic training money will go to work on rice wild relatives.

Jules Pretty meditates on the impermanence of things.
Like soil. And bumblebees.
Ah, well, let’s not get maudlin. Pass the bottle. Well looky here. The French got wine from the Italians. I feel better already.
And Canadians had clam gardens a thousand years ago. Probably still do, actually.
Along with offal, no doubt. Which did not, however, seem to play any role in a recent Mesolithic dinner. Though French wine did. Which is weird.
The best fruit in the world gets the Kew treatment.
And is included in a weird list of the 100 weirdest food plants.
Cassava‘s pretty weird too.
The best cheese in the world is not French either.
All of which foods no doubt feature in FAO’s new report on nutrition. Which is really important, so don’t let the flippancy fool ya. The Lancet agrees. And you can do your bit too.
Ah, but does quinoa feature in that FAO report? The backlash continues…

Will the world ever tire of hot pepper stories?
Would you like to work at the Millennium Seed Bank?
The Guardian hymns Howard-Yana Shapiro, the “vegan hippy scientist” who wants to open orphan crop genomes.
Patrick links to Arche Noah’s response to the new EU seed laws.
Laws that don’t bother Gene Logsdon, planter of old seed.
IRRI claims that rice seed aids Bangladesh’s cyclone recovery, but frankly, I can barely read it.

The Australians have turned the sod on a new genebank. Can’t have too many genebanks.
Climate change model reveals the differences between coffee and mango. Can’t have too many models. Or mangoes.
GMO tomato that is not GMO and is purple could result in healthier, cheaper tomatoes. Can’t have too much confusion.
Fantastically interesting infographic on where greenhouse gases come from. Can’t have too many good infographics.
Among which I include Pop Chart Lab’s new taxonomic poster of The Various Varieties of Fruits. Fruit is good for you. And tomato is not a fruit
A late addition: chickpea genome sequenced — twice. Can’t have too many chickpea genomes, as Nigel Chaffey explains.