- Sudan’s date-gin brewers thrive despite Sharia. There’s date gin? h/t Brendan.
- A very interesting account of virus resistant papayas.
- Whole grains are good for you. And could be better.
- Swiss cow culture.
- Like pocket pigs? You’re gonna love the pocket horse.
Nibbles: Figs, strawberries, seed bombs, micronutrients^2, conservation, saffron
- Lloyd Kreizter gives a fig. And then some.
- Strawberries for spacepeople?
- Calling all garden guerillas. You can now buy seed bombs.
- Nicola at Edible Geography takes orange-fleshed people to a whole new level.
- BMGF takes photo story of orange-fleshed sweet potatoes to a whole new level.
- How to preserve biodiversity: take a cutting of it.
- Kashmiri saffron is beset on all sides … but help is at hand.
Nibbles: Recognizing breeds, Cannabis in New Zealand, Farming systems data, Maize inbreds, Zinc in wheat, Markets for nature, Ramie, Milk and drought, ELBARN
- Computer program recognizes cattle breeds.
- NZ dope getting stronger? Maybe, and I hope so, but probably impossible to tell from this study.
- Need farming systems data?
- Psst, wanna know how to determine the essentially derived status of maize inbred lines?
- High zinc wheat works.
- Michael Jenkins of Forests Trends on using markets to save biodiversity.
- The phylogeny of ramie and its wild relatives sorted out. Sort of.
- Pearl millet landraces are the best under drought.
- Area action plans for local breeds in Europe are out.
An orange revolution in the Pacific
Via our friend Lois Englberger comes news of the nth project involving orange crops, where n is a large positive integer. This one is on orange-fleshed sweet potatoes — and indeed other high beta-carotene crops — in the Solomon Islands. The International Potato Centre (CIP) has a catalogue of orange varieties for Africa. I just hope everyone is not forgetting all the other varieties.
School gardens
[I]nstead of building up and knocking down an army of straw men from a distance, Luke Tsai actually visited the [Martin Luther King, Jr. Middle School in Berkeley, California] garden to see how it works and talked to the teachers and principal about the Edible Schoolyard.
What a strange idea, to go and look at something you’re reporting on and see what the people involved make of it, rather than just using your own gut feelings. But Luke Tsai did just that before he wrote about The Edible Schoolyard. Let’s hope this kind of effort never catches on. The Ethicurean wrote about Tsai’s piece and gives lots of context and links.