Nibbles

Nibbles: Frogs, Sacred forests, Heirloom onions, Lobster, Przewalski’s horses, Marco Polo sheep

Eating frog legs is bad. France surrenders.
Oxford boffins to map world’s sacred forests.
Lafort onion: from the Wellesbourne genebank to Irish Seed Savers to urban kitchen garden.
Lobster 101.
A wild relative in trouble any way you slice it.
And one that gets around. Didn’t we blog about this before? Yep.

Money for AnGR conservation up for grabs.
8th International Food Data Conference: Biodiversity and Sustainable Diets is taking place September 14-17, 2011 at NBI Conference Centre, Norwich, UK.
So how are we doing with that MDG1?
More on CABI’s Plantwise. I just hope most of it will be free. They have a blog, natch.
CIMMYT drought-tolerant maize varieties featured in blog post. I’ll alert the media. No, wait. Seems like only 60% of farmers in Kenya are willing to pay for these varieties anyway.
No extension workers? No problem.
A tasty dish of Ugandan grasshoppers. Always a good subject for a subtly xenophobic CNN phtoto feature.
Cows not so bad after all?

Beetles good for weeds. No news on effect of Rolling Stones on pests.
When to move species. Acacias, for example?
A gene to prevent inbreeding depression in potato. I’m kinda down myself today.
As you were, Plant Cuttings has made me feel a whole lot better.
Documenting Peru’s success in fighting malnutrition. Did fortification play a role? Hard to say from this, which focuses on policy, and in particular conditional cash transfers.

More on #IBC18 from AoB. Web 2.0 as it should be.
EurActive.com with massive dossier on sustainable intensification in Europe. Not much diversification there, though, except for intercropping.
Boffins look for wild macadamias with thinner shells for wimpy consumers. Well, not just that.
The ancient Maya mixed up their turtles.
Grass skirts latest GMO fear.

Livestock diversity in the hands of FAO. No comment.
Let them eat fruit!
AoB breaks down International Botanical Congress 18 for us.
Species-poor tree plantations could be good for conservation of rare tree found in remnant forest patches in Chile because they encourage pollinators to move on. Agriculture, on other hand, is bad because it lures generalist pollinators into staying. Nature, don’t you just love it?
Climate-proofing the Solomon Islands to include “the isolation of crop species tolerant of high salinity, high rainfall, and drought.” Strewth.
Marine diversity. (Only kidding.)
Good advice on home seed saving from Suzanne Ashworth. She wrote the (a?) book.