Nibbles

Nibbles: Genebanks, Grasses, Traditional Diets, Cuba, Hominid diets, Drought, Polluted bison, Chinese research, Turkeys

Luigi thumps his tub, again: genebanks are important.
Studiously avoiding turf-war truisms, grass species exhibit diverse drought tolerance.
“Honor the Gift of Food,” to diversify diet in line with ancient practices.
“I do not believe any president in the world has been so intimately involved with the problem of food production is his country, or with such paltry results.” You’ll never guess who. Or what his brother is up to.
“The problem is not so much the drought but our over-reliance on this single crop.” Diversify, young person.
Cattle genes make for smaller bison.
Chinese money makes for new ag research station in Mali.
Give thanks: turkeys domesticated 1000 years earlier than previously thought.

No bananas without soil nutrients.
Perhaps the back story to the banana genome can fix that.
Coupla big Moringa meets coming up in November.
Britain goes for gold in the jumping-on-the-Olympic-bandwagon-to-solve-global-hunger event.
And CEO of Cargill offers coaching: be flexible, try harder.
Deforestation in Guatemala and Belize. I love it when I can see geopolitics from space.
Help Kew digitise its diversity.
FarmAfrica celebrates non-timber forest products in Tanzania.
Which could be of interest to Tanzanian farmers who have experienced the future of climate change.
Nepali farmers say they’ve been hit hard by climate change.
But it is not the reason for the climb of the desert ceanothus.
Americans about to embrace colourful potatoes. Aren’t they always?
The 2013 Vavilov-Frankel Fellowships are now open. Apply here.
Seth Roberts says “I want to take this! Harvard class on fermented food.” Me too.

More US drought data and some insights into the drought’s impact: it’s affecting the Black Sea region too.
Another reason to improve childhood nutrition – it improves Olympic medal prospects.
Grist gets stuck into the GMO potatoes debate. It’s about diversity, Dummie. Not that anyone cares.
Brewing stone age beer. “The minor details make beer brewing exciting.” I’ll bet.
The long, straight dope on a food industrialist’s approach to better fast food.
Diversifying inputs increases Rwandan coffee farmers’ profits.

Discover taxonomic names in files, websites, etc…
Chinese genebank collecting wild species in Tibet.
Touring a non-government genebank. And running another one.
Not a community one, though.
Everybody talking about scaling up. Here’s how you do it. Probably need the media involved, right?
Scaling up did for the bison.

The National Fungus of Japan explains itself.
The aurochs recreated in fact and fiction. And more.
Yes, that’s what we need to make good on all those GM drought-resistance promises: a new model system. And now for something a little more serious.
Some protected areas don’t work terribly well. Here comes the science.
Darwinian Agriculture explained by the man himself.
Ancient diets deduced from teeth crap and crap crap.