Nibbles – Page 477 – Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

August 8, 2007August 8, 2007

Urban oenoculture

Urban oenoculture (in California).

August 7, 2007September 21, 2007

Lactose persistence

More on an agrobiodiversity-related bit of human diversity, for a change.

PVP in SADC

An update on plant variety protection in southern Africa.

August 7, 2007August 7, 2007

Coconut’s roots

The National Geographic Society has awarded US$ 20,000 to a study of coconut DNA that will shed light on its history before and after domestication.

August 5, 2007August 5, 2007

Growing tea herbs

Want to grow a tea-garden? My mother-in-law unavailable for comment.

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