Nibbles – Page 439 – Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

December 10, 2007

Vineyards benefit from integrated pest management

In Austraila, Fosters Wine Estates reduces pests by reducing pesticides; Sir Les Patterson unavailable for comment.

December 9, 2007December 9, 2007

Names from the Biodiversity Heritage Library

XML SOAP names are available from the Biodiversity Heritage Library: no geeks available for comment (but I suspect this could be important).

December 3, 2007

Food choice at truck stops

Truckers want healthy foods. Yeah, right.

December 1, 2007December 1, 2007

Profile of Russian genebank

Profile of the Vavilov Institute: Nikolai Ivanovich unavailable for comment.

November 30, 2007November 30, 2007

Radio interview with “apple detective”

A man who finds “the world’s rarest species of fruit;” neither Linneaus nor BBC’s scientist available for comment.

- China is building its germplasm collection at the National Frigid Zone Crop and Soybean Germplasm Resources Mid-term Bank in Harbin. Cool.
- Driscoll’s helped build China’s blueberry industry, then discovered that knowledge, infrastructure and genetics have a habit of escaping. Not so cool.
- Meanwhile, the Philippines wants its rice collection to hit 21,000 varieties by the end of the year. IRRI unavailable for comment.
- Italy is establishing a major global olive genebank. Unclear where it fits in with other major global olive genebanks, but some redundancy is good.
- FAO showcases Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems, where crops, landscapes and traditional knowledge have survived together. Like olives in Italy, I guess.
- The mangelwurzel is making a comeback, because apparently forgotten root vegetables just need better publicity, and not a fancy GIAHS.
- Ohio growers are trying to save the pawpaw just as Americans are discovering it, partly because of better publicity.
- BeanGPT is bringing AI to breeding and farming beans. Maybe it can help the mangelwurzel and pawpaw too?
Published on September 23, 2026