- The latest bit of CGIAR navel-gazing is about whether research should be for or in development.
- The Futures of Agriculture: Brief No. 42. No, really, 42. Love that plural, though
- And of course UNEP needs to have its say too.
- Oh, wow, someone actually doing something.
- How about a visionary use for tree seeds? Burn ’em!
- Then there are visions of potato diversity.
- And a vision of a world covered in soybeans.
- And DNA sequences as far as the eye can see. So, can we get all those wild relatives done now, just for the heck of it?
- Can you take one more vision? Here’s one of rewilded Europe.
Nibbles: Sesamum publications, Organic China, Melaku Worede biopic, Pre-breeding smackdown, Price of spice, Pineapple breeding
- A bibliography of sesame. Good to have.
- All you want to know about organic farming in China. Who knows when it might come in useful.
- The legacy of Melaku Worede. Proud to know him.
- European pre-breeding meeting. Would be good to go.
- The Spice Trade 2.0. Good gig if you can get it.
- Coconut-tasting pineapple. Why?
Nibbles: Vegetables, UK funding, Oz funding, Oz genebank, Jefferson, Hawaiian food, Markets, Tree seeds, NUS journal, Geographic targeting, ITPGRFA, Arabica and climate, Protected areas, European farmland biodiversity, Sustainable use, Ethiopian seed video
- Palestinian rooftop gardens. Including crucifers, no doubt.
- Brits support work with rice and wheat wild relatives. Among other things. They’ll probably use some of these genomics things.
- Aussies support sweet potatoes. HarvestPlus rejoices.
- That new Australian genebank. Will it have any sweet potatoes?
- The agricultural legacy of Thomas Jefferson. It doesn’t say here, but I bet he was into sweet potato.
- Hawaiian menus. What, no sweet potato?
- Forget biotech, the road to sexy agriculture is via the supermarket. Where you can buy sweet potato. Maybe even of the organic persuasion.
- Or maybe better tree seeds. Even in the Nordic countries. Or the US. Is cacao a tree?
- Plans for special edition of Sustainability on neglected crops. Like amaranth?
- Geographic targeting reaches roots/tubers. Using this newfangled atlas? Or no?
- Treaty and Consortium love-in filmed. Thanks for sharing. It’s all part of this CGIAR perestroika thing, no doubt.
- What that Kew coffee extinction paper really said.
- Protected areas need work. Especially for coffee (see above).
- Yeah but protected areas is not the only way to go, and Europe now has a bunch of biodiversity indicators for farmland. I guess it’s all part of some big plan.
- Policy brief on sustainable use of PGR. Or, as we used to call it, on farm conservation.
- Which you can kind of see happening here.
UK Chancellor backs plant breeding
#OsborneSci Uses the @royalsociety's 'sustainable intensification' line. Nods to JIC and Rothamsted. I can feel @bbsrc beaming from here.
— Jack Stilgoe (@Jackstilgoe) November 9, 2012
Does that mean the UK’s genebanks are safe? More here. And here.
I wonder if he might be interested in what’s going on in Brussels at the same time. No, probably not.
Nibbles: Value chains, CAP, Intercropping, Tree trouble, Phenotyping
- Sustainable value chains made easy. Perhaps too easy.
- An end to crazy EU agricultural subsidies? Don’t hold your breath. What would it mean for agricultural biodiversity?
- Yesterday it was rotation, today it is intercropping, and more. Is there something in the air?
- Ten new things we learned about trees this year. The one I would add is that eucalypts are rain forest species.
- Way more about high-throughput phenotyping than I need to know. But somehow still less than I’d like to know. Thanks, Tom.