- CIFOR has a blog!
- Nice series of videos on eating weeds.
- Video on Peru’s “Andean rodeo.” You heard me.
- Africa needs drought-tolerant maize. Ok, fair enough, but here’s my question. Shouldn’t they have done this study before doing all that breeding? Oh, who knows, maybe they did.
- “Biofortification will thus remain relevant to poor rural populations in the years to come, as their incomes will still be far too low to afford a more diversified diet.” What? Who says a diversified diet need be expensive?
- Russia faces looming buckwheat crisis. At least the genetic resources are safe in the Vavilov Institute. Unless of course somebody decides to, I don’t know, build luxury villas there, or something.
Nibbles: Melaku Worede, Musa, Coconut water, Gates outreach, Bolivian food, Ag and health, Climate change, Diet, Macadamias, Maya Nut Institute
- An interview with the legendary Melaku Worede.
- Rwanda has to go from 100 to 30,000 ha of bananas, apparently.
- Coconut water good for athletes. And the rest of us too, actually.
- Gates Foundation launches a “community page.”
- Bolivians going back to their food roots.
- “…better integration of health and agricultural interventions and policy” needed. Seconded.
- “[A] graphical accounting of the limits to what one planet can provide.” Groovy climate change stuff.
- And if that left you gasping for more, here’s “Socioeconomic consequences of climate change in Sub-equatorial Africa related to the agricultural sector”.
- “Mediterranean” diet set for World Heritage Listing. Maybe. Spaniards, Greeks to object?
- Kenya’s macadamia crop threatened, but help is at hand. In other news, Kenya has a macadamia crop.
- Equilibrium goes Nuts.
Trouble for livestock
Nibbles: Eggplant, Cactus domestication, Berries, Conservation, Drought, Conference, Chaffey, Rice relative, Cornus, Adansonia, Pavlovsk, Genebanks, Dams
- How can you do Eggplant’s Rich History and not wonder why this generally huge, generally purple thing is called an eggplant?
- Domestication of the Gray Ghost Organ Pipe cactus; exceedingly complex. Oh and there’s a cool photo here.
- How berries protect the brain from age-related malfunction. Are you listening, Dmitry?
- Protect medicinal plants, says letter-writer.
- The world doesn’t understand drought tolerance, says another letter-writer.
- Agrobiodiversity in Mesoamerica conference.
- Chaffey’s Plant Cuttings from Annals of Botany. Must-read stuff.
- A wild relative contributes trait for early morning flowering to rice, allowing it to escape sterility induced by high temperatures.
- The Cornelian Cherry and the Baobab explained.
- Voice of America devotes Special English report to Pavlovsk. If that ain’t viral, what is?
- Genebanks on a roll in China. In Australia, not so much.
- Dam dataset online. Let the mashups proliferate.
Nibbles: Oca etc, Diseases, Pigs, Dzud, Sex, Rice
- There’s a Facebook group for that: unusual root crops, sponsored by the inimitable Rhizowen.
- ILRI says herders are important to identify disease outbreaks in livestock. Makes sense to me.
- ILRI also says local breeds should be included in Indian pig-breeding programmes. Again, no argument.
- More on livestock: what Mongolia’s harsh winter has wrought. BTW, there’s also a discussion at DAD-Net of the effect of Pakistan’s floods on livestock.
- Aspen trees need occasional sex. Don’t we all.
- Climate change not good for rice. I knew that, I think.