Nibbles – Page 483 – Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

July 18, 2007July 18, 2007

Water management classified

Librarians will like this report on the International Forum on Drought.

July 17, 2007July 17, 2007

Plants help each other out

Intercropping makes more phosphorus available.

July 17, 2007July 17, 2007

Restoring the American chestnut

A grant allows American chestnuts to survive, as hybrids with the Chinese species.

July 16, 2007July 16, 2007

Ratatouille

Latest chinese dish is an agrobiodiversity bridge too far: another option.

Adding value to coffee

Civet cat crap creates celebrated cup of coffee.

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