Nibbles – Page 440 – Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

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.

November 29, 2007

Is it aronia or sarcasm?

Aronia berries set to take off. In Iowa. Maybe.

November 29, 2007

Unconventional wine-making

Grapes? We don’t need no stinkin’ grapes. To make wine, that is.

November 28, 2007

Bringing back a wild relative

Aurochsen. Tarpans. Nazis. Wait, Nazis?

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