- If you’re going to grown switchgrass as a biofuel, grow it in variety mixtures.
- The two wild parents of the cultivated peanut get sequenced.
- As also does common bean from its Mesoamerican genepool. Happy International Year of Pulses.
- New wild Aussie tomato gets a cool name. No word on when it will be sequenced. Or how long it will last.
- Speaking of climate change in Australia, wine might be in trouble.
- And more from Down Under: new book on indigenous Australian foods. Some of which may have been cultivated.
- Lots of herbarium specimens have the wrong name. Well I never.
- CIMMYT and ICARDA collaborate on wheat diversity.
- Roman wine rising again from the ashes of Pompeii.
- Exhibition on Colombia’s food plants.
- Portuguese green broth is no doubt very nice, but definitely needs a new name.
- The ancient urban gardens of Istanbul live on.
- Kenya gets on top of using biodiversity for climate change adaptation. Or on top of developing a strategy for doing so, anyway.
- Ola Westengen has a strategy, but you have to speak Norwegian to hear about it.
- Hybrid wheat is 5 years away. How long have they been saying that?
- The latest Rice Today has an article on genebank tourism by Mike Jackson (p. 39), who should know.
- Iowa State University is offering $900 to eat 3 orange bananas.
- Sahaju: saving agricultural biodiversity in India the organic way. Cheaper than $900 too.
- Want to multiply up coconuts really fast? They know how to do it in the Philippines.
Colin on genebanks, and more
Our friend Colin Khoury was interviewed live by Radio New Zealand about genebanks the other day. Apparently, you’ll be able to hear the results on their website for only a couple of weeks, though. So we’ve downloaded the mp3 for your long-term listening pleasure.
You’re welcome.
Nibbles: Oyster wars, Bitter veggies, Saffron, Ag & development, Cannabis taxonomy, Mold evolution, Svalbard & ICARDA, Blueberry taste
- The land sparing vs sharing debate encapsulated in a controversy over San Francisco oyster farming.
- Bitter is good.
- BBC’s Farming Today on saffron in England, among other things.
- Want sustainable development? Invest in agriculture.
- Growing weed: here comes the science.
- “When you chew on a Camembert rind, you’re eating a solid mat of mold.” And probably GM to boot.
- Why do I sound so totally unprepared?
- Breeding better blueberries.
Prize for plants programme
It’s not clear whether it was due to her magisterial BBC programme Plants: From Roots to Riches, but Prof. Kathy Willis has won the Royal Society’s prestigious Michael Faraday Prize for excellence in communicating science to UK audiences. You’ll remember the programme features genebanks quite prominently. Well worth listening to. Congratulations to Prof. Willis, who is Director of Science at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.
Talking about Talking Biotech
Frankly, something called Talking Biotech would not normally get a second look from me. Too narrow. Too nerdy. Probably too preachy. But I’d be wrong in the case of Dr Kevin Folta’s podcast. It is nerdy, but in a good way; and it isn’t preachy (well, mostly not too preachy). And, despite it’s title, it’s not just about biotech. There tends to be a section in each hour-long weekly episode, usually towards the end, where an expert talks to Dr Folta about how a crop evolved, and how it is being improved: recent episodes include Dr David Spooner on the potato, Prof. Pat Heslop-Harrison on the banana, and Drs Shelby Ellison and Philipp Simon on the carrot. You can subscribe in iTunes, where you can also leave a review.