Nibbles – Page 473 – Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

August 21, 2007

Island cooking

A celebrity chef meets breadfruit in a Hawaiian botanical garden.

August 20, 2007August 20, 2007

Ancient chewing gum

Neolithic Finns chewed birch bark tarÂ for fresh breath, clean teeth.

August 20, 2007August 20, 2007

Douglas Gayeton photography

Slow Food-type photographs from Tuscany.

August 20, 2007

East meets West

Big Pharma looks to Chinese medicine.

August 20, 2007

Mystery camel ailment

Saudi camels are dying in droves. Boffins baffled.

- 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