Threats

Nibbles: Eyzaguirre speaks, Hunger, India in Africa, Aquaculture, Mutation breeding, Climate info, Micronutrients, Peanuts, Crops from space, CIMMYT in Africa, Cassava beer, Heirloom onion, Coffee research, Newton’s apple, Gastronomica

An anthropologists speaks about landscapes.
ILRI says: “Landscapes, I’ve got your landscapes right here.”
India makes its play for African agricultural landscapes. I hope there will be scorecards and women. And access to Indian genebank holdings…
Will there be fish though?
And will India be pushing its mutation-bred varieties in Africa? Not that there’s anything wrong with them.
Or using climate information?
Or mining technology for that matter.
Surely there will be dual-purpose groundnuts.
Doesn’t India have a satellite?
~~Meanwhile, CIMMYT is making its own African play. Maybe some of the stuff it is doing there could be useful in India too?~~ Two dead links
~~Africa could teach India some other stuff too.~~ Dead link.
Pretty sure this nearly-extinct-onion-rescued story is totally irrelevant to both India and Africa.
Unlike coffee research.
I don’t suppose I can interest anyone in a not very nice tasting, disease-prone but historical apple?
And speaking of historical connections… Well that was quite a journey.

NERICA shmerica.
Did you know that the Society for Advancement of Breeding Research in Asia and Oceania (SABRAO) 12th Congress from 13-16 January 2012 in Chiang Mai, Thailand. No, neither did I.
Whither wild wheat?
Koraput and its agrobiodiversity, including aus rice, makes it on the Globally Important Agricultural Heritage System (GIAHS).
GBIF has many duplicates. I’m shocked. Shocked, I tell you.
Amazonia was densely populated. No it wasn’t. Yes it was. No it wasn’t.

Modelling chestnut biogeography for American chestnut restoration. As all 7 species have very similar climatic niches, if you could get a blight-resistant hybrid, it would probably be adapted to North American conditions.
Ex situ conservation programmes in European zoological gardens: Can we afford to lose them? No, and therefore the EU needs to step in. Whoa, talk about a non sequitur.
The Fine Scale Ethnotaxa Classification of Millets in Southern India. Malayali farmers can consistently recognize more phenotypes than DNA analysis, and some of the cryptic landraces might be really useful.
Diversity of cassava (Manihot esculenta Crantz) cultivars and its management in the department of Bouenza in the Republic of Congo. High, but decreasing, at least in some villages. But overall? Any collections made?
Indigenous agroforestry in a changing context: The case of the Erumanen ne Menuvu in Southern Philippines. Despite being divinely-sanctioned, the pengegnewiran swidden system is changing, in response to socio-economic changes. It needs to, and blaming the people because you don’t like the result is not very helpful.
Variation in biochemical composition of baobab (Adansonia digitata) pulp, leaves and seeds in relation to soil types and tree provenances. Soil has a big effect. At least in Benin.
Comparing silvopastoral systems and prospects in eight regions of the world. They’re all going to need more active management.

Seven forest myths exposed. And more on the work debunking one of them. Yeah I know we already Nibbled it, get over it.
And you know what, here’s another one we already Nibbled, on collecting seeds in Central Asia. But I just read it again in the hardcopy version and it’s really cool and I like seeing people I know in funny shorts. Incidentally, the dead tree version has a link to Vaviblog that is unaccountably missing online.
Will no one buy me this fabulous banana book? (Not if you keep being rude to your reader. Ed.)
Second installment of that we-farm-because-we-like-beer thing. I’m not sure about the theory, but I like the way this guy writes. Yes, it’s a little look at me, look at me. But sometimes you need that.
Tales of the cucumber. Does anyone remember if we blogged about this paper?
More to myrrh than meets the eye. And more than most folk need to know.
Oxford boffins say a pox on both your houses: “environmentally friendly” farms better than conventional and organic.
National Geographic tackles the dog. Amazingly, all the photos are of, ahem, dogs.
What’s with all this stuff about cacao lately? Has someone sequenced another variety or something?

GardenSearch just got way more complicated.
Today’s silver bullet is an Australian grasspea variety. Actually the first Australian grasspea variety.
Our friend Nik goes to town on IRRI’s wild relatives.
How to breed sweet potatoes. The saga continues.
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme.
ILRI uses the particular to make points about the general. Clever.
Californian fine-foraging. I wonder if any of the diners will also read the following piece and be inspired to do their foraging further afield.
Angelenos learn about Vavilov’s Principle.
A forester argues for forests in the Rio+20 process. Mandy Rice-Davies applies.
Tanzanian Regional Commissioner urges farmers to sow sorghum and millet. If necessary, they can learn from …
Farmers in Tamil Nadu, who helped scientists learn lots more about local millets, and got a publication into the bargain.
Who’s doing what in Kenya in climate change adaptation and mitigation. Genebank scrapes in, though not by name, under KARI.