- The Guide for the Perplexed Entering the Maze of Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Folklore. Great title.
- IRRI DG blogs about Golden Rice on World Sight Day. In other news, there’s a World Sight Day.
- Indian farmers ever more marginal.
- If they were in Africa, they’d be producing nutritious school meals.
- Book on camel biodiversity.
- Turns out Jeremy is part of a movement that he apparently didn’t even know existed.
- Are you involved in the UNFCCC agriculture negotiations? You’ll need this handy communications tool-kit. Agricultural biodiversity is in there somewhere.
- Not sure that eels are, but maybe they should be.
Nibbles: Committee on Food Security, Nutrition for noodles, Gum trees, GBIF
- The Committee on World Food Security is meeting in Rome. If that’s the kind of thing that whets your appetite, follow #cfs40 on Twitter.
- Where, if it’s not too late, you’ll find me offering mouth-watering nutritional advice.
- Up a gum tree; ICRAF clones puffpo piece. Whatever happened to added value?
- GBIF — the Global Biodiversity Information Facility — has a new portal. But is it a better portal?
- And you can watch GBIF’s Science Symposium 2013 live in just under 85 minutes, and counting.
Nibbles: Evolution, Kimchi, Ancient date, C4FRC, US wine history, Fishing, Kew Cucurbita erection, Old wine, Orange cassava
- Enjoying a mango, lychee or cashew? Thank the Eocene-Oligocene glaciation.
- A grand tasting of Korean kimchi, in New York next week. #wishiwerethere.
- The “Methuselah date” continues to thrive. How soon before we have a comparative sequence? (We missed an earlier report.)
- You know what else is thriving? The Crops For The Future Research Centre, that’s what.
- The home state of US winemaking? You’ll never guess.
- Fishing myths busted. No, not the one about giving someone a fish vs providing capacity building in a piscatorial framework. Carpe carpam!
- Kew builds a pyramid! Of pumpkins, settle down.
- A well-aged wine to go with those cucurbits? How about this 6000 year-old Greek number? I think you’ll be amused by its presumption.
- Nice enough story of cassava improvement from CIAT, except that it is missing the beginning (the genebank?) and the end (blindness prevented).
Nibbles: Access to Seeds, Bunch of meetings, CGIAR on the job, Smartt obit, Soybean mysteries, Apple grafting, FAO food security report
- “The Access to Seeds Index measures the performance of the leading companies in the seed industry independently, which will result in the publication of a ranking every two years.” Will need to keep an eye on this. As no doubt also will the CGIAR…
- …which met in Lisbon to discuss the Generation Challenge Programme and presented on NUS at Tropentag, having moved on from the Science Forum in Bonn, which had a lot on nutrition. No doubt some of them will be in Lillehammer to discuss plant genetic resources and climate change. How do they keep on top of it all?
- And when they are not meeting, they are surveying the use of Gnetum, sampling goats, and making videos about their genebanks among many other worthwhile things…
- Speaking of the IRRI genebank, Mike Jackson’s obituary of his friend Dr Joe Smartt, “geneticist and renowned grain legume expert,” is online at GRACE, but behind a paywall. Fortunately, you can get a condensed version on Mike’s blog.
- Legumes, I hear you say? “Two big mysteries in soybeans have captured my attention.” And I’m sure that sentence captured yours. Corn+Soybean Digest reveals all.
- Time for dessert. I see your 300-variety mango of Malihabad and I raise you a 250-variety apple of Chidham.
- But lest we forget why we’re doing all this meeting and goat-sampling and fruit-grafting, here comes FAO’s latest report on food insecurity.
Nibbles: Hunger, Food surplus, Bananas not killing crocs, Overpopulation matters, NUS 2013, Berry go Round, Call for articles, Wild cabbage
- How to solve world hunger, eat a new report.
- Or send them the UK’s surplus oats and wheat.
- Our friend Anne Vezina lets the reptiles of the press have it right between the eyes: Crocs and banana plantations: What the media missed.
- And Erik Hammar is peeved about a New York Times op-ed pooh poohing the problem of overpopulation.
- Glad we’re not too late to point you to the write-up of the 1st day of the NUS 2013 conference. More to come?
- There’s a new Berry go Round botany blog carnival up, with nothing of agricultural interest. I guess we missed the call for content. Again.
- Farming Matters wants your articles on agricultural biodiversity.
- In a cabbage taste test, wild is best.