Pollinators

Nibbles: Diversification talk, Gene award, Community genebanks, GCARD, Natural products, Nutrition talk, Wild bees, GM for drought fail, Face of breeding, Cheese, Bird, Cacao smuggling, CWRs, Perreniation

ICRISAT DG agrees with Bioversity DG. Kinda. CGIAR DGs communicating via blog. Who’d have thunk it.
Borlaug Global Rust Initiative gives its first Gene Stewardship Award to Nepali breeders. I wonder if they work with community genebanks at all. Or what they think about them. Or even if they know they are there.
GCARD 2 is coming, socially networked up the wazoo. Be afraid.
Authenticating natural health products via barcoding.
FAO discussion on making agriculture work for nutrition.
Nice photos of wild bees.
Not sure if we already linked to the big report on why biotechnology is not delivering drought-resistant crops.
Meet a Breeder. Conventional, natch.
Who moved my artisanal cheese?
Bird diversity on intensive farms like happy Tolstoyan familes: the same everywhere.
What’s a poor cacao farmer to do? Obey the law and make a loss, or break it in the hope of breaking even?
Kew does the crop wild relatives thing for Plantwise, and check out that picture!
Nature discovers perreniation as salvation of African soils; can resilieficiency be far behind?

Faidherbia albida gets another push. To quote from the recent Crops for the Future dissection of neglected/underutilized species: if it’s so good, how come it’s not used more?
The Indo-European roots of names for pulse crops. Not nearly as boring as it sounds. Oh, and since we’re on the subject…
Human biodiversity files: athleticism, foodism.
Huge EU project monitors pollinators. What could possibly go wrong?
Cleaning up DNA Sequence Database Hell.
Nice biodiversity hotspot maps. No plants. Definitely no agrobiodiversity.
A philosopher’s take on that organic agriculture meta-analysis.
Not Musa, but still edible.

Honeybees create a buzz in Nepal.
Gene for silly equine walks.
Men and Women Farming Together Can Eradicate Hunger. Headline says it all, really.
We’re not the only ones wondering what’s going on at the 2nd global conference on agriculture, food security and climate change, which started yesterday.

“Most people are not aware of the fact that 84% of the European crops are partially or entirely dependent on insect pollination.” Right. I could have sworn it was 82%.
That’s not their main concern in Nilgiris Biosphere Reserve in India, where Honey is Life.
I had no idea yardlong bean was really a cowpea. The genes say so.
Crop Wild Relatives & Climate Change, a new website from the Global Crop Diversity Trust, with just the right number of RSS feeds.
And if it’s conference information you’re after, previews from the ASA, CSSA and SSSA Annual meetings:

As ever, if you’re there and want an outlet, we’re here.