- U. of Minnesota has a poster of the pedigree of hop varieties which I covet.
- Cool catalogue of the native potatoes of a bit of Ecuador. Via Red Electronica de la Papa.
- Stark photos of a few heirloom apples, with descriptions.
- Meanwhile, Brockwell Bake sows some heritage wheats. With stark photo
- Report on the state of UK capacity in taxonomy. How many countries have reports on the state of their taxonomy? Anyway, here’s some of that capacity at work.
- Farrago on some old olives in Jerusalem.
- CIAT celebrates 45 years of existence.
- Meanwhile, IITA pushes soil fertility management and cassava.
- Arca-Deli Awards awarded.
- Defra’s latest Biodiversity News has stuff on the importance of insect biodiversity to pest control and pollination in orchards.
- The International Year of Quinoa, which is next year, has a website, and all sorts of associated social networking goodness. And here’s a nice little student video on the crop, for a somewhat different perspective.
Nibbles: Using genebanks, Fonio collecting, Bean breeding, Caribbean PGR networking, Cotton breeding, Conflict prevention, Beer foam characterization, Soil microbes, 7ITS
- IRRI DG on the Kasalath story and its wider implications.
- French collect fonio. Glad someone is.
- CIAT bean breeder complains about having too much diversity to play with.
- Caribbean needs a regional genebank, catalogue of germplasm. What, still?
- Improving cotton in Texas one (or two) chromosomes at the time.
- Managing livestock-predator conflicts. The name of the game is prevention.
- Candidate gene for improved beer foam identified. I knew all that genomics stuff would come in useful eventually.
- Diverse root biome helps plants survive drought.
- Gear up for the 7th International Triticeae Symposium, or 7ITS as it is widely, if unfortunately, known.
Nibbles: Potato/banana, European landrace project, GCARD2, Ankole in Uganda, Crowdsourcing gadgets, Cacao renewal, African food, Australian beans
- BBC pounces on CCAFS report previously trumpeted by Bioversity. Bottom line: adaptation may mean changing crops. Bottom bottom line: Will they have enough diversity?
- PGR Secure newsletter is out.
- GCARD2 rumbles on.
- The ankole cow is threatened. What, still?
- Tracking ash dieback. And since we’re talking gadgets…
- Old cacao trees being replaced in Nigeria. No word on what’s happening to the diversity they represent. Maybe it’s ex situ already? Maybe it’s not significant? I dunno, I would just like to be told.
- Slow Food documents African foods. Thankfully no ugali.
- Aussies put together cool bean collection.
Nibbles: ICRISAT genebanks, Agricultural history, Weeds, Gowda, Fruit symposium, Chaffey, Open pollinated seeds, Breeding institute, Ash dieback, Perennial grains, Marshall strawberry, Neanderthal cuisine, Colorado beetle control
- World Bank goes inside ICRISAT seed bank and finds in vitro plantlets.
- “Did mongrel grains serendipitously meld together and sprout from the sewage dumps of sedentary fishing tribes (a current theory), or was the domestication of wheat grasses, pomegranates, and fig trees a willful act of genius?” Scientific American excerpts a bit of purple prose from from Frederick Kaufman’s “Bet the Farm: How Food Stopped Being Food.”
- And a book on how (some) food (i.e. weeds) started being food.
- ICRISAT legume breeder bags award.
- One of the more interesting symposium titles I’ve come across: International Symposium on Fruit Culture and its Traditional Knowledge along Silk Road Countries.
- Plant Cuttings.
- And plant seeds. Of the open-pollinated sort.
- Donald Danforth Plant Science Center establishes Institute for International Crop Improvement (IICI). CGIAR unavailable for comment.
- CABI gets to grips with ash dieback.
- Perennial grains in practice.
- Recovered rare strawberries as art: Marshall Duchamp.
- Intrepid journo discovers secrets of Neanderthal cuisine.
- Crimson clover cover crop protects aubergines as well as insecticide against Colorado beetles.
Nibbles: Complementary conservation, Ash dieback, EUCARPIA meeting, AnGR, Green Revolution history, Fellowship, Canadienne cows, Sustainable intensification
- So apparently field genebanks are “monotonous orchards packed with tropical trees spanning as far as the eye can see.”
- Any ash genebanks, I wonder, field or otherwise?
- EUCARPIA pre-breeding pre-meeting.
- FAO moans about progress in conserving livestock.
- The Green Revolution deconstructed.
- Good news for procrastinators: the deadline for Vavilov-Frankel Fellowship applications has been extended to 18 November. Ignore the date of 11 November.
- Saving the endangered Canadienne cow. In other news, there’s a Canadienne cow.
- Friends of the Earth doesn’t think much of “sustainable intensification“.