- Round-up of stuff that’s been accumulating over past few days because we were busy putting food on the table.
- Marker assisted selection of tomatoes makes it to Washington Post. When will African crops do the same?
- “The history of humanity is a history of hunger.” Maybe MAS of African crops will help.
- USDA money for minor crops. Including African crops?
- Nigerian minister of agriculture on biofortification. Of African crops.
- African smallholders need to get together. They have nothing to lose but their chains. And their fake seeds. Which is not a problem for their Central American brethren.
- Someone mention Central America? Listen to a talk on maize diversity therein. And at the other end of the region’s diversity spectrum: oil palm.
- NASA wants to grown stuff in space. Organically, of course. African smallholders nonplussed.
- In space, nobody can hear you riot over food prices.
- Saving cacao from climate change: The colloquium. We’ve had cassava. Cherries next?
- Hold everything: there’s a framework for this business of crop diversity and climate change.
- Deconstructing strawberry flavour. Apples next? Not sure Indian farmers will care much.
- GBIF wants you to tell them how your data should be licensed. And some background.
- You can lobby the EU on fois gras. If that’s your thing.
- If you’re in Vancouver on May 6, you can celebrate five years of the Biodiversity Research: Integrative Training and Education (BRITE) Internship Program.
- You can also intern at Globefish, which links global fish-trade information networks comprising 85 countries.
- Great Great Lives podcast on Sir Hans Sloane, whose connections with agricultural biodiversity are multiple.
- Something else whose connections with agrobiodiversity are many, though this could have been highlighted more in the article in question: the Silk Road.
- What’s the late Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s connection to crop diversity?
Nibbles: Genebanks trifecta, Marley Coffee, Sorghum noodles, Biofortification Q&A, African oils, Cow diversity, Coffee course, Fructose deconstructed, Vanuatu chocolate, Candy bar phylogenies, Japanese copycats, Charger beer
- CIP’s genebank in the limelight.
- Egypt’s genebank in the limelight.
- Australia’s genebank in the limelight. Limelight fast running out…
- Ah, but genebanks not the only ones with cool videos: farmers in the limelight.
- Yeah, it’s not just about the genebanks. Markets can help, I suppose. Especially if you have a famous name.
- As with coffee, so with sorghum. Biofortified or not. All we need now is an agribusiness incubator, and here it is, courtesy of ICRISAT. But what will Japanese farmers think?
- Same again for assorted African oils?
- The diversity of cows has been driven by markets too.
- Coffee 101 at UCDavis. Maybe they’ll invite Mr Marley to teach.
- You want fructose in that coffee? No, probably not.
- Maybe you prefer chocolate. From Vanuatu, natch. Looks like high quality stuff too, but even crap chocolate has its uses, like teaching taxonomy for instance.
- No, you’re more a Japanese bourbon person, aren’t you? Wait, do you need barley for that? I’m sure those young Japanese farmers will be all over this.
Nibbles: Foley Heinz award, C4 rice history, Fish feeding Africa, Sustainable harvesting, Sorghum death, Carver, Improving crops, Commodity production
- Jonathan Foley, @GlobalEcoGuy, lands well deserved award for his straight-talking on food issues.
- I wonder what he’d say about C4 rice.
- Not sure he’s ever written about fish, but he probably will.
- Sustainable harvesting of Prunus africana maybe not so sustainable after all. Well, I guess that’s science.
- Encomium to the recently-deceased “Father of Sorghum.”
- Shame he missed the round-up on improving abiotic stress tolerance in crops, linked to by AoB Blog.
- Wouldn’t it have been cool if the Father of Sorghum had met the Peanut Man?
- Global production of 10 top commodities has increased 130% since 1960, population by 89%. Draw your own conclusions about world hunger and malnutrition.
Nibbles: Variety adoption data, Georgian biodiversity, Species migration, Agroforestry shindig, Perennial breeding, Pacific history, Livestock emissions, Dandelion rubber
- New database on the adoption of modern varieties. No doubt will eventually include the ones coming out of this shiny new rice regional hub in Burundi.
- Useful summary of what’s happening in agricultural biodiversity in Georgia. No mention of ITPGRFA ratification, alas. You can find previous editions of the newsletter of the CGIAR Regional Program for Sustainable Agricultural Development in Central Asia and the Caucasus here.
- CSIRO come up with map of where and how fast species will move due to climate change.
- And Google Earth now has the underlying climate data you need to do that kind of analysis.
- World Congress on Agroforestry off the ground. You can follow on Twitter, #WCA2014. Also, you can read the blog. Do you remember when this type of thing didn’t even have an RSS feed?
- Did we miss this thing of perennial grain breeding at the Land Institute when it came out a year ago?
- Nice long podcast and Q&A from the Bishop Museum on the footprint Hawaiians left on their islands before contact. Great stuff on GIS analysis of suitability of ancient landscapes for taro and sweet potato. And, coincidentally, an equally long video clip on Pacific island landscapes more generally, and how they shaped the culture (and agriculture) of the Polynesians.
- ILRI DG chides The Economist on article suggesting that the only way to decrease livestock emissions is to go industrial: “There simply is no moral equivalent between those making poor food choices and those with no food choices at all.”
- New EU project on Russian dandelion does not seem to include boffins who recently turned off the rapid polymerization gene. And will they use the right species? And do some ex situ conservation? I’m not holding my breath on that last one.
Nibbles: Bovine flatulence, New bananas, Cyperus, Pepper history, Ancient rice, Indian Act, Indians act, CIFOR achievements, Pooch podcast, Milk, Buzz, Commons, Sorghum sociology, Water spinach meme, AGRF
- The taxonomy of cow farts. Can’t improve on that title.
- What the hell is Hawaiian Plantain, and why is it needed in Panama?
- Ever eat a sedge?
- Bet they could do with some pepper.
- Ancient Japanese rice found. Let the DNA extraction begin.
- Indian farmers can now claim royalties on traditional varieties. What could possibly go wrong?
- How about paying them to preserve “traditional and fast disappearing millets“?
- Video on CIFOR’s greatest successes. I think the greatest failures would be more instructive.
- Self-consciously cool (but don’t let put you off) podcast on the domestication of the dog.
- The evolution of human lactose persistence, however, is not all about calcium.
- Today’s theory about honeybee deaths is sure to be discussed at today’s honeybee health summit.
- Can participatory mapping save the commons? Probably not, but fun nevertheless.
- Fun? How about the successful defence of a thesis on “The social structure of cultivated plants: the influence of exchanges, representations and practices on sorghum diversity in Mount Kenya’s people”.
- Keep calm and eat kangkung. Don’t you love it when one meme eats another?
- Say you want an African Green Revolution Forum … Well, you know, go to Maputo.