Nibbles – Page 464 – Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

September 23, 2007

Root crops vs grains

Do we need more vegeculture? Via Tucsonivores.

September 23, 2007September 23, 2007

Poisonous agrobiodiversity

UK’s only public garden of “poisonous” plants opens at Alnwick Castle.

September 22, 2007September 22, 2007

Biofuels bad

Rapeseed biofuel “produces more greenhouse gas than oil or petrol”.

September 22, 2007September 22, 2007

National fruit of Cambodia

Chicken egg banana. Not diversity, a variety name.

September 21, 2007September 21, 2007

How domestication happens

Blog commentary on a paper about serendipitous backyard domestication.

- 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