- Badass sheep genomes sequenced.
- FAO assesses drylands.
- Sun shines on enkir again.
- Beans good for anemia. Keep you regular too.
- Jacksy‘s the next breadfruit.
- De-extinction is no back door to conservation.
Nibbles: Maize domestication, Seaweed as food, Holy plants, Pre-Columbian Amazon, Pulses, Myanmar rice, Ghana cassava, Chocolate festivities, Tobacco biofuel, Evidence base, Brazilian agrobiodiversity
- Maize domestication video from CONABIO.
- Why has a seaweed never been domesticated?
- Any seaweeds mentioned in the Bible?
- Series of talks on ancient Amazonia.
- Africa needs pulses.
- Myanmar needs salinity tolerant rice.
- 30% of Ghanaian cassavas are improved varieties, but you wouldn’t know it from their names.
- Wait, what, we missed World Chocolate Day?
- Tobacco for airplanes, no warning label required.
- Latest list of conservation interventions that work tackles forests.
- Brazil lists nutritious native species.
Brainfood: Med diet, Rice relatives, Local breeds, NGS, Extremophiles, Farmers’ rights, Wild foods
- Prototypical versus contemporary Mediterranean Diet. They’re basically the same.
- Development of Oryza sativa L. by Oryza punctata Kotschy ex Steud. monosomic addition lines with high value traits by interspecific hybridization. A very distant relative finally succumbs.
- Local breeds – rural heritage or new market opportunities? Colliding views on the conservation and sustainable use of landraces. Apparently, both is not an answer. At least in Finland.
- Exploring Genetic Diversity in Plants Using High-Throughput Sequencing Techniques. No excuse now.
- Extremophyte adaptations to salt and water deficit stress. Any crop wild relatives, though?
- Seed wars and farmers’ rights: comparative perspectives from Brazil and India. Stewardship vs ownership.
- Quantifying the economic contribution of wild food harvests to rural livelihoods: A global-comparative analysis. Three quarters of rural families use wild foods, but their contribution to income averages only 4%. Must be the nutrition, I guess.
Nibbles: Wild pig, Indicators, Ethiopian agrobiodiversity, Traditional crops, Purple haze, Fraises des Bois, Chef prize, Breadfruit, Sorghum nutrition, Moringa, NWFP, Barcoding, Arnold Arboretum
- Warty pig saved by genomics.
- So apparently there’s a Biodiversity Barometer. Via the Biodiversity Indicator Partnership.
- Traditional crops survive, but under threat, in Ethiopian highlands. And a whole issue of Farming Matters on why it’s important that they do survive.
- More on that purple wheat heirloom variety coming back from the brink.
- Going back to the original European strawberry. No, I’m not going to make any jokes about that.
- There’s going to be a Nobel for chefs. If they can make use of breadfruit, they’ll deserve it.
- Yes, sorghum rotis can taste good. And they’re good for you.
- Big Moringa shill makes case for next superfood :)
- Did I already say that FAO’s Nonwood Forest Products Newsletter seems to have been resurrected? Do subscribe.
- On my work blog, I say genebanks could be a bit more like supermarkets.
- Collecting trees.
Nibbles: Bush tucker, Amazonian tea, Bolivian genebank, Global diets, Heirloom wheat, Clam gardens
- Aussie native vegetables on the menu. No Latin names, but Rhizowen Radix tell me: youlk = Platysace deflexa; kulyu = Ipomoea calobra.
- Another non-scientifically named plant is set to save the Amazon. Turns out it’s Ilex guayusa. Probably.
- World Bank to build genebank in Bolivia.
- World Coffee Research puts out nice variety catalogue.
- Our paper of a couple of years ago on globalized diets makes it to Scientific American and gets mashed up with the latest one.
- Purple patch for Purple Straw?
- Yes, you can garden clams.