Nibbles

Nibbles: Chinese agriculture, Domesticating trees, Greening economies, Genebanks, Millets

Modern Chinese agronomist praises ancient Chinese agriculture, possibly gets in trouble.
Domesticating trees is still the next big thing.
Transform agriculture for a greener economy, says SciDev.net.
VoA on genebanks, including Svalbard.
Gerbil enthusiasts tackle millets. Yes, gerbils.

1.24 kg of book about Biodiversity in Agriculture.
Everybody’s already linked to The Economist on The Nutrition Puzzle but we’re not proud.
And lots of people have linked to the biblical garden story; we’re proud to point out that one of the plants was a culturally important cultivated citrus.
And while we’re in biblical mood, here’s a culturally important animal to go with that citrus.
Biopirates plundering the oceans’ genetic resources must be stopped with international agreements, ‘cos that’ll work.
Big session on Food security, climate change and climate variability at big scientific meeting. Eventually we’ll hear more.
As when UK Chief Scientist tells Voice of America about agriculture and climate change.
Small farmers in Mexico are making a difference to agrobiodiversity and politics.
Fruitipedia! 433 fruits and counting.
16th Triennial Symposium of International Society for Tropical Root Crops in the works.
Bayer CropScience buys into the Texas A&M University wheat genebank?
Seeds survive in the permafrost. Good news for Svalbard.
Seeds don’t survive in the permafrost. Bad news for Vikings?
The connection between the the engravings found on ancient graves and current cattle brands in the same general area. Turkana, that is. Not much is the answer. Pity.
And how did they make all that meat and milk safe for use, I hear you ask.

Crops for the Future has news of a symposium to promote underutilized food resources in May.
Or you could go to a report on fibre, an overused resource. I love how they blame the Limeys for all that’s wrong with nutrition.
Potato Professionals hear the good news about in situ conservation using disease-free microplants.
The archaeology of maize among the Mississippians.
The archaeology of Mike Jackson among the Andean roots and tubers.
Thomson Reuters Foundation has a big package on agricultural innovation. And many more topics you can trust.

Seven forest myths exposed. And more on the work debunking one of them. Yeah I know we already Nibbled it, get over it.
And you know what, here’s another one we already Nibbled, on collecting seeds in Central Asia. But I just read it again in the hardcopy version and it’s really cool and I like seeing people I know in funny shorts. Incidentally, the dead tree version has a link to Vaviblog that is unaccountably missing online.
Will no one buy me this fabulous banana book? (Not if you keep being rude to your reader. Ed.)
Second installment of that we-farm-because-we-like-beer thing. I’m not sure about the theory, but I like the way this guy writes. Yes, it’s a little look at me, look at me. But sometimes you need that.
Tales of the cucumber. Does anyone remember if we blogged about this paper?
More to myrrh than meets the eye. And more than most folk need to know.
Oxford boffins say a pox on both your houses: “environmentally friendly” farms better than conventional and organic.
National Geographic tackles the dog. Amazingly, all the photos are of, ahem, dogs.
What’s with all this stuff about cacao lately? Has someone sequenced another variety or something?

IFPRI and ILRI put out new free tool on documenting gender and assets data for programme evaluations. Apparently, crop diversity not considered much of an asset.
The pendulum swings on slash-and-burn? One can hope.
Different goats sound different. Well there’s a thing.
Denver Botanic Gardens explains how to share herbarium information. CWRs, take note.
The ITPGRFA gets itself some RSS feeds.
And WorldFish a podcast.
Farming for booze? Start of a series at Scientific American blogs. Can you say “contentious”?