- 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.
Nibbles: Climate change & yields, Eucalyptus genome, Pacific breeders, Iranian barley breeders, Food Policy Report 2013, Titan, Gluten allergy, FGR podcast, Rice culture, NERICA and gender, WCC2014, CWR article, Malnutrition myths, Halophytes
- 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.
Nibbles: Genomes galore: beans, sheep, citrus, Breeding from “weeds”, Talks, Old wheat, Adaptation, Popped sorghum, Managing BXW
Can’t move for genomes today.
- First off, Phaseolus vulgaris.
- Next up, sheep: one genome, three stories:
- And citrus diversity: “Citrus has incestuous genes. Nothing is pure.”
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.
Nibbles: Neolithic farmers, Minoan DNA, Cretan food, Olive history book, Organic dreams, Fairtrade experiment, Value chains, Jamaican breadfruit exports, Climate smart successes
- 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.
Nibbles: De Schutter, Madagascar beans, Beer!, Cocktails!, CIAT strategy, Segenet, FGR, Risotto again, Domestication, Quinoa, Medieval workplan, Late blight
- “Productivism” skewered one last time. Until the next time.
- The Malagasy Bean Renaissance. No, really.
- The science of beer foam. Now there’s no excuse.
- Cocktails can be biodiverse too. You bet they can.
- CIAT’s new strategy makes a splash. Genebank front and centre.
- New ICIPE director tells all. She used to work at CIAT, did you know?
- First edition of The State of the World’s Forest Genetic Resources is out. Now to do something about it.
- Italy’s traditional rices preserved. Yes, Italy’s, you heard me.
- Agriculture was invented in the current interglacial. Why then, and not in the Eemian?
- Quinoa macronutrients exzzzzzzzamined.
- Your what-to-do-now guide to the medieval farm. Progress? Not what it’s cracked up to be.
- People of the Toluca valley! Expect researchers looking for wild potato genes resistant to late blight.