Podcasts

March 14, 2015March 15, 2015

Nibbles: Old pretzel, Wine podcast, Nordic podcast, Tea history, Pacific pests app, Eating bugs, Chicken history, African superfoods, Gender, Access to seeds, Sorghum beer, Making mead, Cumin, Bolivian school meals, MLN, Hidden hunger conference, CIP & IK, Potato Park, CIP’s Sawyer, Saving wheat, Resettlement, Sustainable cacao, Deforestation map, Language map

Again, sorry for slow blogging last week. Work, you know. Here we play catch-up.

While we were away, we reached 6000 Twitter followers! Thanks, everyone!
And Germans found a 250-year-old pretzel. Wait, you can get those at Kamps every day though. (Bonn inside joke.)
Oh, and Jeremy talked to a wine expert about how to become a wine expert.
But he has competition from the Nordic Food Lab now. What are you waiting for, subscribe to both!
Since we’re on podcasts, Laszlo Montgomery’s monumental ten-part blockbuster on the history of tea in China recently came to a close.
Talking of iTunes, ver. 2 of the Pacific Pest and Pathogens app is out.
Don’t want to get into the whole eating insects thing? Feed them to your chickens instead.
There’s even an infographic about that now.
But what will it do to the poor old chicken?
Cooking up some African superfoods. No insects (or chickens) were harmed in the making of this article.
Yeah but who will be doing the cooking?
And where to get the seeds? Maybe African Seed Access Index will help, though I somehow doubt it. At least for baobab.
Oh well, there’s always beer I guess. (Though even that you can’t take for granted these days.)
Or mead, at a pinch.
I bet the Sumerians put a pinch of cumin in their beer. And mead.
What about Latin America superfoods, though? Bolivians put them in their school meals, that’s what.
Maize was a Latin American superfood once. Having trouble in Africa now, though.
Wait, what, there was a 2nd International Congress on Hidden Hunger at the University of Hohenheim last week? And all I got was this t-shirt? Any superfoods on the menu there, I wonder?
CIP on how it deals with traditional knowledge.
For example at the Potato Park. Where I’ll be next week, incidentally. Stay tuned… But again, I rather fear that blogging will be on the light side next week.
CIP has come a long way since its first DG, Dr Richard L. Sawyer, who sadly just passed away.
Modelling the effects of climate change on wheat. Again. Can never have enough data. Anyway, wild relatives the answer?
Mongolian nomads settle down. And not in a good way.
There’s more to sustainable cacao than productivity. Fortunately, some people are on that. Meanwhile, at the other end of the poverty spectrum…
Don’t think I’ve ever seen a nerdy interactive map like Global Forest Watch go mainstream. Hope for us all. Mash it up with this next?

February 25, 2015February 25, 2015

Nibbles: Citrus greening, Deforestation, OFSP, Sugarbeet breeding, Poverty & conservation, Indian tribals, Eat This Podcast, Musalit, Solomon Island bananas, Potato somaclonal variation, Genebank data management, WorldVeg DG search

Getting to grips with citrus greening.
A review of the effect of oil palm, soybean, and jatropha production on biodiversity and ecosystem functions in tropical forests is in the offing. Here’s what will be done.
Sweet potatoes are good for the health of children. If you can get them to eat the things.
The history of monogerm sugar beet.
There’s no best way to link poverty alleviation and biodiversity conservation. The Global Meeting of the Indigenous Peoples’ Forum came up with a few ways, I’m sure.
Vegetarian tribe in India is certainly doing that conservation, but the poverty alleviation?
Jeremy takes a stroll around the allotment.
Musalit is back in the game. And speaking of which, who would not have wanted to be at the Makira Banana Festival?
Squeezing the most out of Russet Burbank. Oh, look at some new landraces, already!
Portugal becomes second genebank to adopt GRIN-Global.
AVRDC is looking for its next leader. Must know his/her onions.

February 8, 2015February 8, 2015

Is cocoa still cursed?

It is always fun seeing what other people do with a story you’re reasonably familiar with. So it was listening to The Chocolate Curse, a recent episode of Planet Money. ¹

Long story short: Ecuador’s fabled cacao industry went bust in the 1920s because all the wonderful old trees fell prey to witches’ broom. Along comes a diminutive, independent cacao breeder who, on his 51st cross, produced a diminutive cacao tree that is resistant to witches broom. Alas, the variety, called CCN51, tastes like “rusty nails,” and worse. That’s it in the picture.

We’ve actually been here before: Unintended consequences of cacao breeding. What has changed, according to Planet Money, is that the big chocolate manufacturers have found ways to make use of the less than tasty CCN51 beans. Ecuador has planted it like there’s no tomorrow, and it has spread to lots of other cacao-producing areas too.

Yay!

Two things surprised me about the story, as told by Planet Money.

1. Nobody seemed to think that, having seen their original cacao industry devastated by a disease, a similar thing might possibly happen when more than half of the cacao trees in Ecuador are just one variety.

2. Having seen their original cacao industry wiped out by a disease, nobody made the connection with the fruit Ecuador is even better known for: bananas.

January 31, 2015February 1, 2015

Nibbles: CWR conservation, Small farms & food security, iPlant, Forgotten edibles, James Wong, Google Earth Pro, Wageningen course, Journalism fellowship, Vavilov-Frankel

Draft technical guidelines from FAO on conserving crop wild relatives at national level.
Small farms are beautiful.
Finding the climate adaptation needle in the genomic haystack. Hint: supercomputers needed. DivSeek alerted?
Emma Cooper asks: “…have you got a favourite ‘forgotten’ edible plant that you’d like to champion?”
James Wong talks about that kind of thing too, and much else garden-related besides, on his new website.
Rejoice, Google Earth Pro is now free!
Wageningen UR course on Food For All.
UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism is offering ten $10,000 postgraduate Food and Farming Journalism Fellowships. ‘Nuff said.
Speaking of fellowships: the 2015 call for Bioversity’s Vavilov-Frankel Fellowship is open.
Possible new Cannabis species from Australia: watch them do the DNA work and spoil it. Gap analysis, anyone? … As you were, didn’t need DNA after all.

January 29, 2015January 30, 2015

Nibbles: FAO Commission, Private genebank, DivSeek duo, Biofortified sorghum, African supermarkets, Enset, Health crops, Breadfruit conference, Denison podcast, Saving chocolate, Paramo app, CIMMYT genebank video, Pig milk

FAO says genes are good for climate.
India’s first private sector genebank established.
Well, at least one person is really excited about DivSeek.
And one major journal.
DuPont video on increasing sorghum Fe and Zn levels in Africa.
Will they sell it through local vendors or supermarkets?
Let them eat enset. Which is not, however, on this list of today’s top healthy crops.
Neither is breadfruit, but that shouldn’t stop you going to this conference in Trinidad.
Ford Denison writes about his appearance on Eat This Podcast.
Enough with the scary chocolate stories already.
Here, go play with this app about the flora of the paramo from Missouri Botanical Garden.
The CIMMYT genebank in the news.
Pig milk in your tea, vicar?