- All of BGCI’s ex situ surveys on one cool page. Have they re-modelled their website?
- Harvard’s glass flowers are totally cool.
- The world’s coolest trees.
- Rhubarb is cooler than you think.
- I’m not sure paying over a thousand pounds for a pumpkin seed is all that cool.
- Conventional breeding is cooler than genetic engineering. Cool quote of the week: “I tell my students they should drop acid before they go to the field, and just look at the plants and let them tell you what they are doing.”
- Is the coolness over for quinoa? Jeremy unavailable for comment.
- Cool Pakistani bug may help with citrus greening in the US. But don’t stop looking for resistance, y’all.
Talking non-biotech coffee
I have said before that I would have a priori doubts about anything calling itself Talking Biotech. But I stand by what I also said in that post about the actual podcast of that name, by Dr Kevin Folta of the University of Florida, being largely free — though by no means entirely, alas — of the narrowness, nerdiness and preachyness that the name conjures up, at least for me. And so I congratulate Dr Folta on receiving a few days ago the Borlaug CAST Communications Award, given out annually by the Council for Agricultural Science and Technology (CAST). The recent episode on coffee, which we have have already Nibbled, is a pretty good introduction to his podcast, if you’re new to it. And I don’t say that just because I’m somewhat involved in the development of the coffee genetic resources conservation strategy mentioned therein.
Nibbles: Drying seeds, Saving citrus, Shakespeare’s food, Ganja double, TPP, Aurochs art, Coffee diversity, Biofortification, Training, Breeding booklet
- Zeolite finds its genebank niche. Remember when we blogged about it?
- The USDA citrus genebank at Riverside gets the podcast treatment.
- Shakespeare, because it’s the 400th anniversary of his death: food and animals.
- Weed, because weed: taxonomy and breeding. Could literally apply to any other crop on earth.
- What will the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) do to farm-saved seeds?
- Bring back the aurochs!
- Barista Magazine on coffee diversity. In other news, there’s a Barista Magazine.
- The chemistry of banana carotenoids.
- Master of Arts in Food Studies in San Francisco! What’s not to like.
- From plant to crop: The past, present and future of plant breeding. Nice booklet.
Nibbles: Vavilov double, Huge avocado, African urban ag, Agarwood threat, Double coffee, Sequencing beer, Sloane ranges, Chinese bees, Gendered breeding, Access to seeds/meds, Genebank funding, Quinoa prices, Organic ganja
- VIR on Atlas Obscura, with pic goodness courtesy of yours truly. And on the same site, something Vavilov would have approved of: a very diverse Tajik apple orchard.
- A new avocado to conjure by.
- Urban agriculture won’t cut the mustard.
- Trees that named Fragrant Harbour disappearing.
- The downside of coffee. But never fear, there’s a strategy coming!
- The beernome!
- Happy birthday Sir Hans Sloane, for many botanical reasons!
- Chinese pollinators in trouble. Enough of the exclamation marks.
- Do you have any examples of “plant or animal breeding that has successfully incorporated gender considerations into its strategies and end products”? Contact these people.
- Can seeds learn from meds, policy-wise?
- Bioversity DG lobbies for genebanks.
- Get your fill of quinoa, courtesy of Jeremy.
- Sustainable pot. ‘Cause that’s the California Way, man.
Nibbles: Sapote taste, Coffee breeding, Genes to ecosystems, Medicinal trifecta, Ganja, Aboriginal fire, Lupins, Endophytes, Oil algae, Schultes maps, Yeast diversity, Bees & diversity, CSA
- You know you want to try black sapote.
- Podcast on how to save coffee. And it probably needs it.
- Once we’ve saved the cultivated species, maybe we should save it in the wild as well?
- If not, there are other species, other drugs, I guess. No, really.
- Indigenous fire management in Australia.
- Everything you need on lupins. You’re welcome.
- Is anyone collecting endophytes? Or microalgae for that matter?
- Marvellous interactive atlas of the botanical collecting of Richard Evans Schultes in the Amazon.
- Wine yeasts are way inbred. Which can’t be altogether good.
- Watermelons need flower diversity.
- One does feel for climate-stupid varieties.