- Beer with shrooms. Well, not quite, but one can hope.
- No more corn detasseling? Say it ain’t so.
- “Oman to Plant 100,000 Coconut Trees in Dhofar.” That’s in the south of the country, a fascinating area. And one asks, as ever: What varieties, and what’s going to happen to the local material?
- Be like the bamboo, man.
- From DAD-Net, news of a mini-conference on the camel. And an article on same.
- The struggle for forest grazing rights in India.
- Dump blueberries, eat local berries, Brits told. Pavlovsk still in trouble.
Nibbles: Grain ID, Garlic ID, Funding, Pest control, Sorghum, Grains, Cowpeas
- How to identify small grains.
- Can you identify a garlic?
- “You can’t expect a starving person to save a tree.” I s’pose not. But is that any reason to endow a chair in conflict resolution and development?
- “A farmer needs to let the garden get wild in order to protect it from the wild.” Course she does.
- Sorghum a huge success in Kitui, Kenya.
- Field trip to a grower of old grain varieties.
- New cowpea varieties selling like hotcakes, FARA told. And the old cowpeas?
Nibbles: Cassava virus, Peru’s Potato Park, Marula, Taimen, Meetings, Cornish fruits and veg
- New cassava varieties saving Zanzibar. Good to hear, though as ever one worries about what’s happened to the local landraces.
- Alder’s photos of the Potato Park. Do follow her travels around South America in search of agrobiodiversity.
- Namibia looks for other marula products.
- Saving the taimen in Mongolia. That would be a fish. A mighty fish.
- Interesting Indian symposia: wild fruits; “lifestyle floriculture.” Oh, to have more information.
- “Gariguette strawberries are an old variety and are non-licensed.” Crazy, eh?
Nibbles: Wetlands, Cucurbit phylogeny, Herbology, Malnutrition, Fungi, India, Livestock, Ug99, Madagascar, Beer
- Conserving dambos for livelihoods in southern Africa. How many CWRs are found in such wetland habitats around the world, I wonder.
- Cucumis not out of Africa.
- Exploring “the connection between traditional knowledge of herbs, edible and medicinal plants and media networked culture.” And why not.
- PBS video on malnutrition.
- Fungal exhibition at RBG Edinburgh.
- Indian Council on Agricultural Research framing guidelines for private-public partnerships in seed sector. That’ll stop the GM seed pirates.
- Conserve African humpless cattle! They’re needed for breeding.
- UG99 — and crop wild relatives — in the news. The proper news. The one people pay attention to.
- Vanilla lovers better start stocking up.
- Kenyan farmers earning money selling sorghum to brewers. What’s not to like.
Nibbles: Breeding, Art, Bison, Pumpkin seeds, Sweet potato, Bambara groundnut, Carnival
- Cary Fowler on the need to breed.
- MRIs of fruits and vegetables. Well, why not?
- The genetic consequences of bovine inter-specific sex explained. SFW.
- How Mrs Joséphine Enoce Bouanga makes milk from squash seeds in Pointe-Noire.
- Gates Foundation orange sweet potato project in Mozambique. Still waiting to hear what they’re going to do with all those useless landraces they’ll be replacing.
- Nourishing the Future does Lost Crops of Africa 101. Beginners, start there, but don’t expect to be taken anywhere interesting.
- Blog carnival Scientia Pro Publica #35 is up, but what’s with the verse alphabetical order? Harummph.