Nutrition

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.

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).

“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.

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.

Colony collapse disorder. It’s still complicated.
The Botanist in the Kitchen is at it again, with an in-depth treatment of okra, slime and chocolate.
But seriously, why don’t Anglo-Saxons eat equids? It’s all down to religion.
Nigeria embraces UNCTAD report that warns against monoculture.
An interactive map of crop wild relatives. If it showed barley too, I know someone who would be in heaven.
As so often in these matter, Kew comes to the rescue.
A history of the peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich. My kind of dietary diversity.