- How teosinte lost its shell. Not another Just-so story
- Search more than 450 publications from Bioversity International. Just-so!
- Push-pull solution to maize pests in Africa. What again? Yes, again! Just do it.
- “One time, harvesters sold her regular beans glued to unidentified dung.” And more weird food naughtiness.
- Flowers you can eat.
Nibbles: Food Security, GIS, Neoliberalism, Herbaria
- Food security? Can you say Eyjafjallajökull? Well, no, neither can I. But I know a man who can.
- Got something worth saying on GIS in Africa?
- From government intervention to the free market and back again. Neat trick if you can do it.
- Restoring Kabul’s herbarium “will vastly improve Afghan research capacity”.
Nibbles: ILRI, Diversitas, Trees, Water use, Soil, Kenya, Microlivestock, Truffles, Climate data, Forests, Diseases, Plant breeding survey, Beer, and more beer, Pollinators
- ILRI annual programme meeting thing gets Twitter treatment. Web 2.0 seizes up.
- Via EcoagriculturePartners newsletter, news that agroBiodiversity has a new website. Web 1.0 surrenders.
- And the prize for the weirdest name for a tree-planting initiative goes to…
- The water footprint of pasta is greater than that of pizza. Still no cure for cancer.
- Microbes good for soil. I see that, and I raise you termites. Take that, Dirt Diva.
- Fish farming in dryland Kenya. Must get out to see one of these next time I’m there, maybe set one up on mother-in-law’s farm. And get her one of these funky backpacks while I’m at it. Wouldn’t want her to laze about.
- Farmer Brown (sic) from Ghana talks about his grasscutters.
- Ever wonder how one cultivates truffles? Wonder no more.
- FAO librarian answers agroclimatological query. Lots of databases for you to explore is the result.
- And also from FAO, the latest on the state of the world’s forests. More databases no doubt involved.
- Damn, you mean diversity can be good for disease?
- Study says that to “be effective plant breeders, … should also be equipped with strong critical thinking and time management skills, and a well-founded work ethic.” Still no cure for cancer.
- Climate change to affect beer? Now it’s personal!
- Wonder how Ugandans feel about that? Guide to Ugandan Beer, Part 1.
- Pollinators do the Harlem Flutter.
Nibbles: Museums, Urban trees, Maya, Research, Sisal
- Better late than never, but tubes kinda dead today.
- CNN rounds up food museums.
- Extremely cool iPhone app maps NYC’s trees. And yet we still have genebank database hell.
- The Maya buried their history in their homes. Now, can the boffins find seeds, do their whole aDNA thing?
- French research boss explains What it will take to feed the world.
- The history of sisal in Tanzania.
Nibbles: Aubergines, Opuntia, Amazonian ag, Kenya, Swiflets, Coconut and Web 2.0, PROTA, Mexico, Fruit wild relatives
- More either-or stuff from the Guardian on the Indian GM brijal story.
- The USDA prickly pear cactus germplasm collection gets some exposure. And how many times can one say that.
- Much better title from Discover on that ancient northern Amazonian earthworks story.
- Kenyan foresters tell people to eat bamboo. Luigi’s mother-in-law politely demurs. On the other hand, she might like this.
- Swiflet farming? Swiflet farming.
- Really heated exchange on paper on coconut lethal yellowing in Yucatan develops on Google Groups. I love the internet.
- PROTA publishes expensive book on promising African plants. Promises, promises. NASA promised us the personal jetpack. Where are we with that?
- Nice summary of that Mesoamerican agricultural origins story we blogged briefly about a few days ago. So what exactly do you call hunter-gatherers who also grow crops?
- First International Symposium on Wild Relatives of Subtropical and Temperate Fruit and Nut Crops will be held March 19-23, 2011 in Davis, California on the campus of the University of California, Davis. Book early.