Nibbles

Nibbles: Artichokes and bracts, Colour, DsG and experts, Fish, Genetics, Horseradish, Improved nutrition, Kenyan sorghum, Plant Press

A is for artichoke, B is for bract. A botanist in the kitchen explains.
C is for colour and color, both of which affect the nutritional value of rice.
D is for Directorate of the EU, three of which are at a standstill as an expert is apparently blocking all attempts to loosen EU seed laws.
F is for fish, which smart farmers are helping to survive low water in rice paddies.
G is for the genes tweaked by scientists to deliver seeds without sex.
H is for horseradish, whose root problems can now be solved. In other H-related news, horseradish has root problems.
I is for improvements in child nutrition and less stunting is many countries.
J is for Jeremy, who must have some time on his hands.
K is for Kenya, where clever scientists have created Striga-resistant sorghum. Again.
L is for Lodoicea, and other botanical treasures.

Texan farmers have solved the problem of open sesame – with non-shattering varieties.
They’re protected by patents, of course. No need then for handy dandy guidelines to access and benefit sharing in research projects.
But you just know that ABS will be a hot topic when they round up the usual suspects for the International Symposium on Agrobiodiversity for Sustainable Development.
As will the question of whether yields are becoming more or less sensitive to temperature.
I wonder how quickly the proceedings of that shindig will become available. It took the 2nd International Symposium on Underutilised Species less than two years! Course, they’re still not open access …
No free access to the IncrEdibles festival at Kew either. And why should there be?
I’m willing to guarantee that cat-tail pollen will not be featured at Kew.
Arepas, on the other hand…

Eat steak!
No, eat cicadas!
Farm pearls!
Get a grant!
CIAT got one, to map crop wild relatives!
Not sure if any of these drought tolerance genes in cassava are from wild relatives, but I wouldn’t be surprised.
I would likewise not be surprised if both cicadas and cassava featured in Malawian permaculture.
Punjab’s 1st investigative e-paper doesn’t allow visitors to highlight and copy text, which means that the potentially interesting book about agricultural sustainability it mentions will go ungoogled.
Which is a pity because I was really hoping for a nice segue into this conference on, ahem, agricultural sustainability, to take place in a few months in China.
Which I could then have followed with a plug for the FAO Commission on GRFA, which many of us will be attending next week here in Rome.
No, wait: Agricultural Sustainability: Progress and Prospects in Crop Research.
But of course the best argument for sustainability is the moral one, right?
That. Or beer.

Blogging machine Tom Barnett worried about effect of climate change on his favourite tipple.
BGCI shell out for cool animation on social role of botanic gardens, and it’s totally worth it.
As also, but differently, are IUCN’s videos on forest restoration.
All the world’s forests, online, any day now, to monitor the opposite of their restoration.
Europe tries to stimulate innovation in plant breeding. By holding a meeting. Ah, but there’s a hashtag.
Development economists illustrate interesting point about gender and yam cultivation with photo of sweet potatoes.
The organic attitude to inorganic nitrogen.
Late Pleistocene hunter-gatherers ate fish. Well I never.
Reviews of couple books on agricultural origins.
Need bioinformatics training? Who doesn’t.
ICRAF reviews efforts to monitor sustainable intensification. Somewhere. I can’t for the life of me find the actual document.

Rwandan women receive gift of goats. Now all they need is to get over the taboo on drinking goat milk.
Immortal tomatoes. Oh no! They’re clones! Eeeeeek!
Breeding heat-tolerant wheats. Wonder whether they’ll be doing it with doubled haploids.