- Good COP, bad COP? Registration opens for Agriculture and Rural Development Day 2010, at COP16, the Climate Change COP.
- Maya in Haiti? Jamaica? Institute expands its reach.
- India considering making the right to food an actual right to food. But how?
- Science magazine shares the Pav-Love-sk.
- “From 28 August to 3 October, the Curried Sausage Field is open to visitors on Diedersdorfer Weg in Berlin. This is BfR’s second didactic plant labyrinth.” Don’t even ask.
- Bananas for juice. Power type juice.
- New book explores history, future of international agriculture. Anyone reading it?
- Hear Bioversity’s DG warn Pacific islanders of fast food health risks.
- “Without the yeast, beer would be nonalcoholic and noncarbonated.” Yeah, but then what would be the point? The Ecological Society of America considers beer — and issues a delightful apology.
- Video on saving Ankole cattle.
- Amphibians find it hard to move higher in response to climate change. And plants? Crops? Wild relatives? Has anyone done the modelling?
- The pristine Amazon. Not.
- Wild tomatoes and drought.
- The best plants for pollinators.
- When are different crops sown around the world? Gotta love meta-analyses.
- Apparently conservationists interested in the economics of it all must abandon the “straightjacket of the Walrasian core.” So now there’s no excuse.
Agriculture improves nutrition improves agriculture
[W]e know that if we can get better micronutrients and get better total nutrition into kids in particular, we know that we can save many, many, many lives, and we know that we can do that in a more cost-effective way. Similarly, we know having healthier populations can contribute to food production and improved economic outcomes that then lead to improved nutrition. So it works in both directions, and we’re committed to making that link a productive one.
That’s Rajiv Shah, head of USAID, in an article in Nature Medicine, noted and linked by our friend Jess. Only one question remains: where you going to source the micronutrients, Rajiv?
Nibbles: Kew, Diversity, Allanblackia and Acacia, Pulses, GIS, Poverty, Early morning flowering, Agrobiodiversity and climate change, Breeding, Genebanks, Perenniality, Blogs, AGRA, Potato diversity, Witchweed, Mexican potatoes, Salvia, Old Sicilian chestnut, Tropical maize
- Guardian has whole piece on the importance on Kew’s collections without once mentioning Millennium Seed Bank. Anyway, the Paris herbarium is not so bad either, though they are no match for the Kew press machine.
- Hybridization is good for plant diversity. Well, yeah. What am I missing here? Oh and here’s more about things that maintain variation, and more still. You see what I did there?
- Allanblackia is the next big thing in agroforestry. Which probably means its name will soon be changed.
- Conclave meets to discuss
election of next Popepulse productivity. - Videos from Africa GIS week.
- Meeting to review 10 years of research on chronic poverty. Must have been deeply depressing.
- Helping rice to keep its cool. A crop wild relatives story.
- “The Ministry of Science and Technology should emphasize the need to undertake research programmes on unexplored and underutilized crops as these could constitute the genetic base for genes for improved nutritional quality of foods.” In India, that is.
- “We need to mine that diversity to provide genetic material in an adapted background more readily to be used by plant breeders.” From CIMMYT. How many times have I heard that? Here’s my problem: who will do it?
- That IRIN feature from a few days ago recycled with a new pic. Which is of a genebank not included in the list in the text. The person shown is my friend Dr Jean Hanson, recently retired head of the ILRI genebank.
- DIY perennial cereals.
- “Biodiversity scientists and agricultural scientists have tended to approach their interests in very different ways. I think there’s a lot we can learn from each other.” Wait, what?
- Another best biodiversity blogs list. Ahem.
- A “very clear action plan” for a ‘Green Revolution’ in Africa emerges from AGRA meeting. You will however look in vain for the details on the scidev.net piece.
- The last Inka treasure. Yep, the potato.
- Boffins find anti-Striga gene. No, not really, settle down.
- Rachel Laudan is really rude about Mexican potatoes.
- Cur moriatur homo cui salvia crescit in horto? Good question.
- Finding the 100-Horse Chestnut.
- Getting to grips with photoperiod sensitivity in maize.
Sudan gets a helping hand from Oxfam.
“I am hoping that with the diversification of food sources, we can cope with the drought without being hungry.”
Oxfam is dispensing seeds and advice in the Sudan. I wonder what varieties of sorghum and other seeds they gave those farmers?
Nibbles: Nagoya, Popghum, Pavlovsk, Water, Climate change, Plumpy’Nut, Buckwheat
- The essential guide to the 10th Conference of the Parties to the convention on Biological Diversity. Unmissable.
- Popghum? What genius came up with that name? And now that it’s big in Virginia, can Africa and Latin America be far behind?
- Jeremy Bentham excoriates the Russian Federation on Pavlovsk. And gets it mostly right. Yes, that Jeremy Bentham.
- Apparently water diversity is also a good thing for food security.
- Climate change! Huh! What is it good for? Absolutely nothing! Huh!
- “Plumpy’Nut is not a miracle cure for global hunger or for global malnutrition.” Say it isn’t so!
- Never mind wheat, here’s the great buckwheat panic of 2010, kasha chaos.