Nibbles – Page 495 – Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

June 21, 2007June 21, 2007

What colour is your pollen?

What colour is your pollen? Mustard Plaster tells all.

June 19, 2007June 19, 2007

Chilean salmon farming

WWF recommends how salmon farming and beautiful Chilean lakes can co-exist.

June 18, 2007June 18, 2007

In praise of older fruit

Muck and Mystery would have us believe that glossy supermarket fruit is “poverty food”. And he’s right.

Croatian agricultural biodiversity

Conference on Croatian breeds and varieties, in Croatian though.

Kapok disjunction

Kapok (Ceiba) distribution explainedÂ by long distance dispersal?

1. Ancient farmers didn’t have to wait for the genetic diversity that made domestication possible. They selected from variation already present in wild plants, including the ancestors of rice and maize. Domestication was as much about spotting (or happening upon) useful differences as creating new ones.
2. English colonists in America called Indigenous dogs “wolves,” revealing as much about colonial perceptions as about the animals themselves. This history of Indigenous dogs shows how unfamiliar animals were classified through peculiarly European ideas about wildness.
3. Austria is bringing forgotten apple varieties back to life. Saving old varieties in genebanks is one thing: getting people to grow, sell and eat them is another, but it can be done. Or at least tried.
4. Jordan’s olive-oil heritage centres on traditional varieties such as Nabali and ancient Rumi trees, but most production is consumed locally, leaving exports limited and making provenance, cultivar and harvest date important indicators for buyers. Compare and contrast with Austrian apples.
5. Small island developing states have distinctive food cultures and ingredients, but face particular challenges in building sustainable and resilient food systems. FAO’s A Taste of SIDS explores the connections between island food, biodiversity and culinary heritage. Nice to see diversity within crops considered, though a few local variety names would have been nice.
Published on October 21, 2026