- Genetics will save coffee.
- And probably chocolate too, but not alone: new podcast from Simran Sethi.
- Must be catching.
- Native American foodways get a resource guide.
- Cultivated plants have larger seeds than wild relatives. Well I never.
- Wanna breed oca?
- A chicken after my own black heart.
- Even tasty fruits can be deadly.
- Commonwealth Potato Collection goes to Svalbard.
- Got milk! Jeremy’s latest pod.
Brainfood: Wheat elements, Coconut movement, Wild lettuce, Pacific yams, Wild VIR oats, PREDICTS, Potato leaves, Perennial wheat, Wheat adoption
- Genetic Nature of Elemental Contents in Wheat Grains and Its Genomic Prediction: Toward the Effective Use of Wheat Landraces from Afghanistan. Only one significant marker, for Zn.
- Strategies for exchange of coconut germplasm in Brazil. Zygotic embryos in Petri dish containing Y3 culture medium without sucrose can last a couple of days without bacterial infection.
- Phylogenetic relationships within Lactuca L. (Asteraceae), including African species, based on chloroplast DNA sequence comparisons. The African species are probably not Lactuca at all.
- The Pacific yam (Dioscorea nummularia Lam.), an under-exploited tuber crop from Melanesia. It can be improved through crossing with itself, or with other species.
- Eco-geographical assessment of Avena L. wild species at the VIR herbarium and genebank collection. Some more collecting to be done.
- The database of the PREDICTS (Projecting Responses of Ecological Diversity In Changing Terrestrial Systems) project. Including 15,000 plants. No word on whether any of them Avena.
- Your Poison in My Pie—the Use of Potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) Leaves in Sakartvelo, Republic of Georgia, Caucasus, and Gollobordo, Eastern Albania. Only used as first vegetable in spring in isolated high mountain areas in the southern Balkans.
- Toward a taxonomic definition of perennial wheat: a new species ×Tritipyrum aaseae described. Not entirely clear why naming it as a new species is necessary, but it’s still pretty cool.
- Dynamics of variety change on wheat farms in Pakistan: A duration analysis. For marginal farmers, it’s about yield, for others, quality. No word on how perennial wheat might do.
Nibbles: Trees on farms, Biodiversity hotspots, Coconuts, Banana genebank, Fiddleheads, Hybrid wheat, Buckler prize, ITPGRFA hatchet job
- Trees are good for African farmers.
- A basic universal income for people in biodiversity hotspots. Agrobiodiversity hotspots too?
- Coconut History 101.
- 30 years of bananas in Belgium.
- Eat up all your fiddleheads.
- Hybrid wheat is coming at last.
- Ed Buckler wins big. Unclear if he’ll be allowed to tweet about it.
- Nonsense piece on the ITPGRFA.
Nibbles: Heirloom collection, Booze, Grape history, CWR training, New perennial wheat species, Brazilian cacao, Smelly durian, CIAT genebank
- “Every heirloom plant seed grown for food has a story…”
- The history of alcohol.
- The history of a particular alcohol-producing plant.
- U. of Minnesota students travel to crop cradle.
- They could just have gone to Washington State University.
- Brazil is back in the cacao game.
- Deconstructing durian’s smell is easier than you thought.
- The CIAT genebank in Scientific (Latin)American.
Nibbles: Catching up edition
- And we’re back.
- India wants to set up a fish genebank. Because climate change, which is scrambling up climates everywhere. And fish are important, so don’t scoff.
- Nepal’s community seed banks in the news. Also Brazil’s. And New Zealand’s, since we’re at it.
- Don’t forget India’s. And not just the community sort, either.
- Our friends at Kew on the wonders of genebanks.
- Someone mention genebanks? Latest photos from Ft Collins.
- You can make your own. Genebank, that is.
- Podcast on a really long-term seed viability experiment.
- It’s not just about the genebanks, though. Or all that biotechnology for that matter. Indeed not, as iPES-Food reminds us.
- Italian monks help rebuild earthquake-hit town. With beer.
- French monks are at it too. Beer, that is.
- Go ahead, have that piece of cheese with that monk-brewed beer.
- Or with a nice IPA for that matter.
- Or a banana beer.
- Sure, take all the romance out of beer, why don’t you.
- The Mesoamerican, entomological roots of the colour scarlet.
- Don’t keep people out if you want to protect forests. I can’t understand why this still needs to be said.
- The story of the quest for super-sweet corn. And a celebration of the life of a giant of corn (as in maize) research.
- And for the “ultimate” avocado.
- How about ultimate dope?
- The traditional, end-of-year, save-the-apple and the-end-of-frankincense stories. Actually there were two on apples. And it’s not all bad news for frankincense.
- Saving the Tamworth pig in Australia. And the camel in Rajasthan.
- Cool map of French traditional foods.
- For your next Saturnalia feast.
- The Met has a “corne field.”
- Earliest evidence of potatoes from the central Andes. What, not Canada?
- Neolithic hunter-gatherers of the Libyan Sahara liked their veggies. Which we all should. But not at these prices. Ah, wait, though, is the melon a vegetable, or a fruit?
- Some crops come, some go.
- Which seems a good place to bring this first, gigantic Nibble of 2017 to a close. Did you miss us? I know you did. But did we miss anything over the holidays? Let us know.