Nibbles – Page 484 – Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

July 13, 2007July 13, 2007

More on bovine belching

BBC News and Der Spiegel both add details to the low-gas bovines story. Still no word from Al.

Equine obesity

Improved forages make horses obese. That and too much TV.

July 12, 2007July 12, 2007

Thai food

BBC photo essay on Thai insect-based street food.

July 12, 2007July 12, 2007

New disease: citrus greening

New disease alert: citrus greening is spreading across the US.

July 11, 2007July 12, 2007

Cassava genes flow

Cassava exchanges precious bodily fluids with wild relative in French Guiana.

- 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