Policy

Nibbles: ICRISAT award, CGIAR funding, Chinese medicine, Gut bacteria, Bee research, Sri Lankan law, Wolf Prize, Field Guides, Tapa exhibition, GFFA2014

Today in dodgy journalism, part 1: ICRISAT gets a new mandate crop? What was the picture editor thinking. And smoking.
Today in dodgy journalism, part 2: Two typos in the obsolete name of the CGIAR.
Dissecting Chinese traditional medicine. Or would that be puncturing?
Hunter gatherers have special gut bacteria.
Bees: “That’s the beauty of the research. Because we’re still short on info, everything’s worth knowing about.”
Maple syrup tasting. Nice gig if you can get it.
Activist objects to proposed new seed law in Sri Lanka.
UC Davis wheat geneticist Jorge Dubcovsky wins 2014 Wolf Prize in Agriculture. Congrats.
Sandy Knapp on what she does all day.
The future of field guides. Yes, they have one.
Tapa cloth, in Cologne of all places. Don’t think there were any from Palau, though.
Abschlusskommuniqué of the Global Forum on Food and Agriculture 2014 supports conservation and use of agricultural biodiversity. Phew.

Google Map of British protected food names. Where’s fish and chips? Or the cream tea. Japan next?
Indian genebank in the record books for characterizing wheat.
And with no help from CIMMYT!
Getting those damn smallholders to innovate already.
Ghana gets a new cowpea to innovate with. Well, almost.
And there I was thinking smallholders had been innovating for thousands of years. Even in the frozen north. Winter may be coming, but we’ve got grog. Which you know is good for you.
As is chocolate, so go ahead and submit your heirloom cacao beans for evaluation. But don’t be tempted to cheat. We’ll know if you are.
Oh damn, it’s Green Week.
The story behind the methods used in a recent paper on dog diversity. Wonkish.
We seem to have slipped off the Berry Go Round treadmill, which means we missed some gorgeous photos of broad beans.
And another belated treat: UNESCO’s round up of World Heritage agricultural landscapes.
…one of which is not tea in China, but maybe it should be, before it’s too late.

USDA should think about agroecology more. Or at all?
The latest from PAGXXII. Lots on domestication, genebanks, crop improvement, all that cool stuff.
There’s also AETFAT going on, and it’s just as cool. Maybe more so. Though less socially networked, I guess.
How public gardens should build up living plant collections. You’d have thought they’d know.
An update on plant genetic resources from ISHS. Lots happening…
How to support agrobiodiversity through sustainable sourcing.
KFC must have read that slideshare above.
Breaking down the terroir. And not for the first time.
Does vanilla have terroirs? I bet it does. Should ask the world’s expert.
Dye mushrooms? Are you kidding me?
ARCAD, DIADE: No matter how you spell it, lots of French interest (and money) in crop and livestock genetics.
Likewise in India, it looks like from this piece on NBPGR.
The Bioversity Policy Unit is apparently still alive and kicking.
European eels a conservation success story?
Let the ancient DNA sequencing begin!