Threats

Nibbles: Agave pollination, Sanjaya Rajaram, PGR policy history, Ex situ conifers, Botanic garden theft, Kyrgyz forests, Home nurseries, American chestnut, South Pacific action

Tequila and bats. Two of my favourite things.
Continuing the Mexican theme, we have a World Food Prize 2014 winner.
I wonder what he thinks of the changes he’s seen during his illustrious career in the international system for PGR conservation and use.
I bet there’s a few endangered conifers, and maybe some ex situ collections, in Mexico.
I hope there weren’t any among the plants stolen from the RBG Edinburgh recently.
But perhaps there were some fruits and nuts from Kyrgyzstan?
Well, the way to go is home nurseries, clearly.
Maybe even with the GM chestnut, why not?
Meanwhile, in the South Pacific, CePaCT has been really busy.

Sensors for volatile organic compounds will detect crop diseases for ya. Then a drone comes in and zaps them?
Breeding better bees.
“So why not simply replace the traditional variety with Dhanshakti?” Answers on a postcard, please.
Bringing back the passenger pigeon.
The impact of land rights around the world. Including on conservation of agricultural biodiversity?
What the Mongols ate, and how we know it. Some millet. Maybe some passenger pigeons. Interesting concept of land rights.
Sorry we’re one day late celebrating Barbara McClintock’s birthday.

Yeah, on this climate change thing? We’re doomed.
Oh crap, there’s another genome: eucalyptus this time. Here’s the paper, you geeks. Great news for koalas, whose genome we still await, incidentally. Yeah, where are we with that?
SPC trains some breeders with Treaty money.
I wonder if they were told about Evolutionary Plant Breeding.
IFPRI has its new food policy report out. More on this later from us, I suspect.
The Bonn Titan Arum blooms! Well, I’m calling it a crop wild relative.
That gluten allergy? Don’t blame modern wheat varieties.
Podcast on the importance of genetic resources to sustainable forests.
Why rice? The Filipino view.
And the African view. NERICA’s good for women. And bad.
Bioversity blogs about World Cocoa Conference 2014, gets dates wrong. It’s on now.
Crop wild relatives in The Scientist. But I’m biased…
Busting malnutrition myths. Because they’re there.
There’s probably a few myths out there about halophytes too.

Can’t move for genomes today.

But there is other stuff too.

How weeds could feed billions. Not by eating them but by breeding from them. Are crop wild relatives really all weeds?
TED talks on biodiversity. I suppose we should be grateful for 1.5 out of 30.
A New York baker has been exploring tumminia wheat. Without telling us.
Adaptation to climate change hardly worth it, according to econ 101.
So you want to make your own popped sorghum? All you need is a microwave and a paper bag.
ProMusa reports on an easier and better way for banana farmers to manage Xanthomonas wilt.

Neolithic farmers spread into Europe by sea.
And it looks like the ones who got to Crete eventually gave rise to the Minoans.
And ate food not unlike what Cretans ate up to a hundred years ago.
Well of course the olive is important to all that.
Ten thousand years later, we find that organic is an impossible dream.
And Fairtrade may or may not work.
But value chains will make you free. Although that’s easier said than done.
And you have to be climate-smart to boot. Really, who’d be a farmer, in the Neolithic or now.