- Vavilov in Spanish.
- Song about the potato Solanum ajanhuiri from Aymara to Spanish to English.
- Using blockchain to trace biofortified seeds. Maybe.
- Vincent Lebot on the opportunity that Covid-19 represents for traditional Pacific crops. Silver lining.
- Botanic gardens to the rescue. Wouldn’t that be cool.
Nibbles: African veggies, Commodities, Grasslands, Spices, TZ coconuts, Jordan genebank, Mosquito domestication, Jamon, GRIN-Global, Cultivariable
- All-Africa Summit on Diversifying Food Systems with African Traditional Vegetables to Increase Health, Nutrition and Wealth. New dates! 25-28 January 2021.
- “How do you like Cocoa and Coffee? Saving crops, protecting culture, sustaining livelihoods.” Online event, 8 September. Register here.
- How the US prairies got wheat, a soil classification, tree shelter belts and weeds from the Russian steppes, thanks to Mennonite farmers and emigre Jewish scientists. Entertaining podcast on what sounds like a fascinating book. Oh and there’s a video too. Nice Vavilov anecdote.
- History of Spices 101.
- Quick summary of coconut research and development in Tanzania.
- A genebank gets off the ground in Jordan.
- How the mosquito Aedes aegypti got domesticated. Yeah, domesticated.
- Texas and Georgia move into jamón ibérico: acorns off the menu, “pecans, peanuts and sunflower” on. Hilarity ensues.
- The USDA National Plant Germplasm System gets a new database. Go crazy.
- Meanwhile, Cultivariable publishes his latest evaluation data on the USDA potato germplasm (see “Evaluation Year”). Will it find its way into the above-mentioned database?
Nibbles: Quinoa, Another quinoa, Old Apple Tree, “Anglo-Saxon” ag, SADC landraces, Record whisky, “Shipped but Not Sold”
- The results of the 2nd International Quinoa Research Symposium are up on YouTube.
- I was today years old when I learned there’s a quinoa in Taiwan.
- REALLY old English Greening apple tree dies. Sad: “When you reach your new home in the wilderness, should you ever think of me, plant these seeds.” Not all gloom, though, so do read the whole thing.
- Coming conference on the medieval agricultural revolution.
- Results of a dialogue on the registration of farmer varieties in SADC. Long way to go, alas.
- Talk about adding value to agricultural products! But were weird local barley landraces harmed in the making of this whisky?
- High value agricultural products, among other things, were used as gifts by 18th century merchants in Yemen. Not whisky, though, right? Well, actually…
Nibbles: Gumbo ingredients, Seed library, Pomology award, Breeding presentation, Seed storage
- Not-so-suffering sassafrass.
- Another seed library, this one in Canada.
- Fruit breeder Dr David Cain gets 2020 Wilder Medal from American Pomological Society.
- PowerPoint on plant breeding. Dr Cain unavailable for comment.
- Which species can you bank anyway? With video goodness. Which I agree is not all that unusual these days, but still.
Nibbles: Canary collections, Integrating fish, Indigenous seeds, Dan Charles articles, Stats, FAO booklet
- Collections of banana and mangoes in the Canary Islands.
- No word about catfish with those bananas.
- Interview with the wonderful Rowen White, Seedkeeper from the Mohawk community of Akwesasne.
- NPR series on agricultural land, courtesy of the no less, though differently, wonderful Dan Charles.
- Harvard lectures on statistical analysis of social sciences data.
- FAO tells us “How the world’s food security depends on biodiversity“.