Nutrition

Nibbles: Quinoa, Millet, Prize, Agroforestry, Herdwick sheep, Plant breeding, Potato breeding book, Taro varieties, Hot chocolate, Spices

Oh no! Super-writer Bittman condemns yet more Bolivian farmers to destitution with yummy quinoa recipes.
Can Geoff Tansey help the poor millet farmers of the Deccan Plateau to avoid that fate?
Maybe he should enter that millet “initative” for The Equator Prize.
We’re deafened by the buzz in advance of the World Congress on Agroforestry.
For example, better nutrition associated with trees in urban environments and rural tree cover.
Today’s genome of passing interest: Herdwick sheep. They’re primitive, y’know.
Realfood.org – a name to strike apparently undeserved fear into the hearts of the cynical – offers an encomium to conventional modern plant breeding.
Which is apparently a lost art, at least as regards potatoes.
But not taro, if latest news from Pacific is to be believed. Ignore the title, BTW.
How they made hot chocolate in the olden days, the really olden days.
Another stunner from the Botanist in the Kitchen: Spices and phylogeny.

Ann Tutwiler, DG of Bioversity, on why we have to solve a quadratic equation of food security now. But is it 7,000 edible plant species, or 12,000? h/t Nancy Castaldo
Go to page 9 for a cool infographic on nutrition which kinda illustrates that. But really, what a palaver to find it. Which actually I did via Twitter.
Quadratic? More like non-linear para-differential equations. Or one of those weird things out of chaos theory.
You can bet ICRAF think one solution to that equation involves the domestication of fruit trees.
Is Golden Rice another solution? There’s a debate later tonight that might help you decide.
And while we’re dealing with gene jockeys, apparently RNAi is the Next Big Thing.
Community, ecosystems, poverty reduction; urban agriculture can do it all. And Dyno Keating, DG of AVRDC, would probably agree.
And here’s a big PDF from the Centre for Indian Knowledge Systems to show you exactly how. Who needs equations?
Fed up with maths? Cacao, bean to bar, in photos.

Today’s genome of passing interest, the water buffalo, less than two years after it was promised.
Saluting the true amateurs, on bean and tuberous diversity.
Unconsidered benefits of capture fisheries — except for the captured fish, I suppose.
Eleven months early, AoBblog links to a new paper on how to best to tap frankincense.
Not to be outdone, Modern Farmer relates how maple syrup could be industrialised as a row crop. H/t Metafilter.
An e-learning course on Gender in Agriculture.
Which is unlikely to please Ed Carr, author of Gender and adaptation: Time to do it differently.
US inventories its crop wild relatives.
Demand for cropland will increase.
Which is bad for forests, which are good for food security, but not as much as they could be.

Agriculture in Vietnam: rice down, coffee up. I wonder if the two may be related?
Interactive online atlas of sacred lands.
The Allium takes a pot shot at the gene jockeys.
“It’s all about convincing people to take the first bite.” Oh, and the second.
But will insects feature in this professional short course on nutrition from IDS?
SE Asian rainforest as managed as the Amazon?
Prof. Sen’s poverty lecture at LSE.

Freekeh is the new quinoa. What, the next environmental and social catastrophe for the Bolivian altiplano?
Oh no, sorry, it’s teff that’s the new quinoa.
Only a matter of time until African Chef gets hold of it then.
And no doubt Inga edulis is not far behind.
Let’s hope it doesn’t go the way of the McIntosh.