- Nourishing the Planet featured in Madison paper. Fame at last.
- Tomato Party!
- What, no more maple syrup? Something Must Be Done!
- Nepal gets a citrus genebank.
- Guyanese women farmers switch to coconuts (and other things) to cope with flooding.
- Indian farmers demand another Green Revolution.
- Uh-oh. “GMO corn falls prey to bugs it was supposed to thwart“.
- First news of apple festivals, in Vancouver, CA.
Homegardens and night blindness
Sometimes a paper comes down to just one diagram or table. Like the one above. There’s a few ins and outs to this study, a few whys and wherefores. And you should probably read the whole thing and take notes and follow up the references and maybe drop a line to the authors for clarifications. But there’ll be no getting around the fact that kids who had access to homegardens didn’t need vitamin A supplementation to avoid night blindness, whereas kids who didn’t, did. Thanks to Jess for the tip.
Brainfood: Roots, Ethnopharmacology, Heat tolerance, Food origin myths, Trees outside forests, Wild fruit tree agroforestry, Viruses in genebank, Reintroduction
- Breeding crop plants with deep roots: their role in sustainable carbon, nutrient and water sequestration. Good for soil structure, good for C sequestration, good for yields. What’s not to like?
- Ethnopharmacology, food production, nutrition and biodiversity conservation: Towards a sustainable future for indigenous peoples. Ethnopharmacologists need to think more generally about nutrition, and a lot more about conservation. And a view on the whole “wonder herb” thing from two botanical garden boffins who protest way too much as far as I’m concerned.
- Modelling predicts that heat stress, not drought, will increase vulnerability of wheat in Europe. It’s the heat, not the humidity. But maybe wild relatives can help.
- The Virtuous Manioc and the Horny Barbasco: Sublime and Grotesque Modes of Transformation in the Origin of Yanesha Plant Life. Maize is the result of a virgin birth, chili peppers of a fart. I’ll buy that.
- Is there a forest transition outside forests? Trajectories of farm trees and effects on ecosystem services in an agricultural landscape in Eastern Germany. Yes, but.
- Biodiversity and socioeconomic factors supporting farmers’ choice of wild edible trees in the agroforestry systems of Benin (West Africa). Those factors are: how important the trees are for food and medicine and how accessible they are. Still no cure for cancer. Anyway, here’s what ICRAF thinks should come next: domestication, natch.
- Pome fruit viruses at the Canadian Clonal Genebank and molecular characterization of Apple chlorotic leaf spot virus isolates. There’s a lot of them. Well that can’t be good, can it?
- A long-term view of rare plant reintroduction. A previous review is way too pessimistic.
Nibbles: CWR, Agroecology, Innovation, Tree domestication, Ancient pigs, La vida locavore
- Our friends at CIAT showcase our friend Colin showcasing crop wild relatives.
- The latest from Olivier De Schutter on agroecology.
- How to identify and nurture those elusive agricultural entrepreneurs.
- So that they can help you with tree domestication, for example?
- Pigs in ancient Egypt.
- Is the whole local food thing being taken too far?
Nibbles: European diversity, Cassava bugs, Livestock funding, Malnutrition
- Genetic diversity in European men and one of the organisms they exploit. And another.
- CIAT cassava entomologist rings warning bell.
- ILRI boffins point out why they don’t have enough money. Yeah, but what’s to be done about it?
- Malnutrition in Kenya and Guatemala. Are school gardens an/the answer? FAO thinks so.