- MSM on Amman meeting; eat Luigi’s dust.
- Black sigatoka disease confirmed on St Lucia; eats banana plantations.
- “Eggs come from sheep” kids survey surprise shock; eat anything.
- Qatar builds a genebank.
- On World Wetlands Day, Lake Chad protected and British farmland flooded. Will some crop wild relatives benefit?
Nibbles: Amman again, DNA hype, Blight-resistant spuds, Seeds, Sorghum, Brassicas, UK Food Security
- Crop Genebank’s Knowledge Base enjoys an outing in Amman.
- Great Headlines of our Time: Researchers fight world hunger by mapping the soybean genome.
- Blight-resistant potatoes from Hungary to the UK.
- Danish Seed Savers 2010 list available.
- “We want to make sorghum to be even better than maize,” says Kenyan gene jockey. Why?
- “The dog is the brassica of the vertebrate world.” Jeremy says: “Never met one I didn’t like … cooked right.”
- James sprouts off on brassicas too.
- New UK approach to food security: apples.
Nibbles: Orissa, Salatin, Economic impact, Olives, Food security, Lettuce, Chayote
- Koraput, in Orissa state, India, is about to be recognized as a globally important agriculture heritage system, which is nice.
- Chemical-free farmer has enough.
- How much is that drought-tolerant maize really worth?
- UK now has home-grown olives, seven varieties. Luigi says: “And so it begins …”
- Food security for the faint of heart. A book for people, not policy-makers.
- What was the cultural significance of the iceberg salad? Answers win a great book.
- CIAT touts its chayote success story in Vietnam. Nice film.
Nibbles: Spud, Mali’s farmers, Pollan, Geneflow, Taiwan botanic garden, Pollinators squared, Vegetarianism
- A makeover for the potato.
- Mali’s farmers want improved landraces, not fancy-shmancy hybrids.
- Biofortified does Pollan. And Pollan does Oprah…
- The long-term consequences of introducing new genes to populations are not all that bad. Relevance for crop wild relatives? More research needed…
- The Dr. Cecilia Koo Botanic Conservation Center (KBCC) in Taiwan described.
- Almond tree produces poison in nectar to attract insects? Go figure. In other pollinator news, they’re declining in Central Europe.
- What would a world without domesticated livestock look like? ILRI DG questions vegetarians.
Nibbles: Globalizing locavorism, Pollinator relations, Fisheries, Pea wild relative, Haitian coffee, Niche modeling, Slow Food, Chayote, Grass vs corn, Shade chocolate, American organic
- “…eleven models of regional food aggregation and distribution that are successful in linking local farmers with regional food chains.” Via.
- Hell hath no fury like a fig tree scorned.
- Tracking monkfish, saving monkfish.
- The history of the wild relative of the pea.
- Can coffee help rebuild Haiti?
- “Integrating bioclimate with population models to improve forecasts of species extinctions under climate change.”
- “The commoditization of products and taste: Slow Food and the conservation of agrobiodiversity.”
- CIAT promotes chayote in Vietnam. Why? Well, it’s not about the crop or the country. I suppose it’s about farmers and markets. But is there a diversity angle?
- How old is feeding corn (maize) to cows? Older than some people think, apparently.
- Shade-grown cacao sows seeds of its own demise.
- Waiting for the results of the USDA organic survey…