- Nazi cattle invade Britain. Are they the ones that have been sequenced? I think we should be told.
- ICIPE helps Kenyan farmers domesticate hangover cure plant.
- New, useless acacia found. No word on who lost it in first place.
- Yet another plea to save the effing British orchard.
- Hunter-Gatherer-Sculptor. “I got your imprecations right here,” says Jeremy.
- Razib rounds up horses.
Nibbes: Nettles, Rivers, Rare species, Library, Afghanistan protected area, Nordic-Baltic-Russian collaboration, Photos, Disease
- George Orwell scythes nettles, then seeks uses.
- World’s rivers in trouble. Also other wetlands the world over. CWRs to be affected, along with everything else?
- Let’s not get too hung up about rarity.
- UNESCO launches World Digital Library. Gotta be some agrobiodiversity in there somewhere, surely. Yes indeedy.
- Afghanistan’s first national park has some livestock wild relatives!
- Circum-Baltic collaboration on genetic resources conservation.
- Mongabay.com publishes lots of cool pictures of biodiversity to celebrate Earth Day yesterday. So does The Big Picture, even some vaguely farming ones. And Adam Forbes has just loaded a bunch of photos too. Luigi comments: Why didn’t we do the same for agrobiodiversity?
- Tuberculosis and domestication. Not.
Nibbles: Japan, Bananas, GMO, Bees, Squirrels, Mangroves, Climate change and indigenous people, Goji, Svalbard, Heirloom rice, Dataporn
- Japan’s unemployed end up farming.
- Somewhat uninformed comments about the perfection of the banana.
- “…traditional genetic crosses outperform genetically modified crops by a wide margin.”
- Alice Waters takedown.
- Brits throw money at bees.
- Red squirrel missing link found through DNA fingerprinting. Red squirrel pie, anyone? Ok ok, make it grey.
- Mexican mangroves in trouble.
- “Indigenous Peoples have contributed the least to the global problem of climate change but will almost certainly bear the greatest brunt of its impact.”
- Go go goji.
- Secretary General of the Nordic Council of Ministers and former Icelandic Prime Minister waxes lyrical about genebanks.
- So there’s a Carolina Gold Rice Foundation. No, not Golden Rice. Via.
- Help the Biodiversity Heritage Library decide on a citation format. Or not. whatever.
Nibbles: Assisted migration, Livestock and ecosystems, Agrobiodiversity tourism, Earthworms, Fish, Cucurbits
- Assisted location is now managed relocation. So that’s alright then.
- Transhumance is good for ecosystem. Oh, and bison too.
- Geotourism in Yellowstone has a website. Can agroecotourism be far behind? I’m afraid so.
- No relationship between parasite load and genetic diversity in earthworms. Alas.
- “The naming of fish is a nightmare. They have more aliases than Maltese pimps.” Which is why Latin binomials were invented, duh.
- Pix of Colombian cucurbit (and other) diversity.
Nibbles: Pepper, Persimmons, Prosopis, Bio-banking
- Is Kampot pepper the best in the world?
- How the Japanese deal with persimmons.
- Making the Atacama bloom. Sort of.
- Bio-banking is all well and good, but will it be applicable to agrobiodiversity as well as orchids and pandas?
Wouldn’t you know it. That Kampot pepper link has rotted away. But you can still find the original thanks to The Wayback Machine.