Nibbles – Page 439 – Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

December 11, 2007

Mopane worms

Mopane worms:Â a traditional source of protein in Botswana. I’ve tried them. They’re yummie.

December 11, 2007

Chestnuts coming back

Chestnuts roasting on open fires again. Bing Crosby unavailable for comment.

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.

1. Swapping maize for indigenous crops won’t fix African food systems designed around markets and policies that still favour a narrow range of crops.
2. Cassava is both a food security fallback and a commercial crop in Uganda, but disease, climate change and declining diversity make its conservation an increasingly urgent form of insurance. But what about the markets and policies?
3. When livestock and crops fail, Ugandan pastoralists draw on wild plants for food, underlining how much food-system resilience still sits outside the formal agricultural system, with its markets and policies.
4. The Morton Arboretum is using living collections and genetic research to help the threatened butternut tree cope with changing conditions.
5. Webinar discusses global approaches to seed provenancing and transfer zones, useful for anyone who wants to move native plants without moving the wrong genes. Butternut very interested.
6. San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance’s Frozen Zoo preserves genetic material of plant and animal species that may disappear, from DNA to cells to organisms. Butternut volunteers.
7. New Indian facility combines ex situ fish conservation with community aquaculture. Good model for much of the above?
Published on October 6, 2026