- “È curioso che il grano Cappelli, ora diventato un simbolo della “pasta da gourmet”, fosse una volta il comune grano della pasta di tutti i giorni, e che venga da alcuni considerato “autoctono” quando in realtà è una varietà tunisina.” Curious indeed.
- A woman’s crop? Not as straightforward as it may sound.
- State of the World’s Plants symposium, 11-12 May.
- Above will no doubt consider crop wild relatives such as the peanut’s.
- More on the urban vegetable gardens of Istanbul.
- Tree DGs in the garden getting coffee. On International Forest Day.
- The “Bernie Sanders” vision of biofortification.
- Cowpea to get a genome.
- Q&A with John Torgrimson of Seed Savers Exchange.
- The resilience of rice: “You never find a crop that can span this latitude and altitude.” Really? Wheat?
- Cacao and coffee have a microbial terroir.
- Crop mixes are geographically stable.
- Prof. Kathy Willis of Kew on Feeding the World, including using crop wild relatives. IRRI Kew genebanks featured.
- Denmark interprets EU law to allow seed saving.
Brainfood: Chinese royal jelly, Diverse wine yeasts, Heirloom values, Oil and biodiversity, Grassland management, Maize and culture, Minimum viable populations, Good coffee
- High Royal Jelly-Producing Honeybees (Apis mellifera ligustica) (Hymenoptera: Apidae) in China. China supplies 90% of the global market?
- Taking Advantage of Natural Biodiversity for Wine Making: The WILDWINE Project. Back to the future, via yeast diversity.
- Conservation of Landrace: The Key Role of the Value for Agrobiodiversity Conservation. An Application on Ancient Tomatoes Varieties. Fancy maths shows farmer maintaining heirloom tomato variety in Perugia could be charging more.
- Are changes in global oil production influencing the rate of deforestation and biodiversity loss? Less oil production, more agricultural expansion, more biodiversity loss.
- Grazing vs. mowing: A meta-analysis of biodiversity benefits for grassland management. Grazing. Probably. The data sucks.
- Maize diversity associated with social origin and environmental variation in Southern Mexico. Ethnicity trumps altitude in genetic patterning. Morphology is all over the place.
- Genetics in conservation management: Revised recommendations for the 50/500 rules, Red List criteria and population viability analyses. One we missed. 100/1000 is the new 50/500. Multiply by 10 for census population sizes to avoid inbreeding and retain evolutionary potential, respectively.
- Advances in genomics for the improvement of quality in Coffee. We’ll need to sequence the wild species too.
Nibbles: PPB, AnGR, Children of the corn, African wildlife & China, Japanese plastic food, Hedge balls, Falanghina et al., NY hipster kava bar, Genetics & diet
- The next step in the evolution of participatory plant breeding is evolutionary plant breeding.
- 1458 livestock breeds are in trouble.
- A blast from corn’s past. In more ways than one, as this article from High Country News is kinda old.
- The Chinese market in African wildlife is bad for both.
- Let them eat plastic.
- Maclura pomifera is apparently all the rage in Iowa.
- There’s more to Italian wine than chianti.
- “You can’t really get fucked up on kava.” I beg to differ.
- Two independent pieces on the continuing evolution of humans to cope with their diet: starch, milk and meat.
Nibbles: Variety names, Biotech infographic, Satoyama, Wendell Berry, Eating bugs
- Mike Jackson wants to know how many crop varieties you can name. Please tell him. My number is 42.
- This is what CRISPR looks like. In an infographic, that is.
- Japan’s rice terraces were better for biodiversity when they were, you know, full of rice.
- A Wendell Berry biopic?
- Yep, more on eating insects. It’s definitely a thing now.
Nibbles: Banana trouble, Celebrating Ethiopia, Potato nutrition, Kenyan veggies, Coffee history, Twitty book, Biodiversity loss vid
- The musapocalypse gets an infographic.
- Celebrating agricultural biodiversity in Ethiopia.
- High calcium potato wild relatives in the news. No, really.
- NY Times catches up with the Kenyan leafy green revolution.
- The world’s prettiest (only?) coffee genealogy poster.
- The great Michael Twitty’s long-awaited book on African-American foodways is out.
- Nice video on biodiversity loss actually opens with Svalbard Global Seed Vault.