- Lots to catch up on, strap yourselves in.
- The South’s original peanut is the Carolina African runner, and it is in need of help.
- Saudi Aramco World does its usual class number, this time on chili peppers. And, in a similar vein, more than you probably want to know about Tabasco sauce.
- The evolution of DNA sequencing. In 76 slides, no less, but worth it.
- Japanese rice grown in Uruguay for U.S. hipsters. Gotta love globalization.
- Sustainable salmon at long last?
- Mind the gender gap.
- Latest modelling suggests 2% crop yield decline per decade, assuming modest 2 degree C rise in temperatures by 2050. The original paper. We are so screwed. (Well, Uruguayan rice growers and U.S. hipsters aren’t, not so much.) No, really. No, wait…
- You know, if we need supercomputers to tell us that forest corridors are good for seed dispersal, it’s no wonder we can’t stop global warming. Just kidding, I think it’s great that supercomputers get a break from climate models every once in a while. Oh, and isolated trees not entirely useless either.
- Native wild bumblebees also in trouble, not just honeybees.
- So did you miss us? Even more tomorrow to clear the decks.
Nibbles: Seeds for Needs, Agroecology, Costa Rican climate change, Pollinators
- IFAD and Bioversity, sitting in a tree …
- Don’t mimic nature on the farm.
- But don’t ignore it either. Learn from nature.
- Costa Rican farmers have done both, to adapt to climate change.
- There’s no imitating pollinators though.
Brainfood: Weird coconut, Rainforest management, Pollinators and grazing, Pre-Mendel, Italian grapes, Indian fibre species, Cereal relatives, Brazil nut silviculture
- Scope of novel and rare bulbiferous coconut palms (Cocos nucifera L.). Produces bulbils instead of floral parts.
- Holocene landscape intervention and plant food production strategies in island and mainland Southeast Asia. Like the Amazon.
- Grazing alters insect visitation networks and plant mating systems. More outcrossing in grazed birch woods.
- Imre Festetics and the Sheep Breeders’ Society of Moravia: Mendel’s Forgotten “Research Network.” Before peas, there were sheep.
- Genetic Characterization of Grape Cultivars from Apulia (Southern Italy) and Synonymies in Other Mediterranean Regions. About half are also grown somewhere else.
- Fibre-yielding plant resources of Odisha and traditional fibre preparation knowledge − An overview. 146 species, no less.
- Functional Traits Differ between Cereal Crop Progenitors and Other Wild Grasses Gathered in the Neolithic Fertile Crescent. How do cereal progenitors differ from all the other grasses our ancestors used to eat? Adaptation to competition and disturbance. They were weeds, basically.
- Testing a silvicultural recommendation: Brazil nut responses 10 years after liana cutting. Biodiversity bad for Brazil nuts.
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.
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.