Category: Tourism

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Nibbles: Public breeding, Millet Man, Strampelli museum, Ghana community seedbanks, genebank trifecta, CWR, Illegal Canadian potatoes, Açaí GI, Mayocoba bean, Spartan Actinidia, Bitters

  1. Public sector plant breeders are disappearing.
  2. The Millet Man of India is still there though. And why he’s important.
  3. A museum to public sector breeder Nazareno Strampelli appears in Italy.
  4. Another couple of community genebanks appear in Ghana.
  5. We can never have too many discussions on the importance of genebanks, so here’s another one. Not much on the community sort, though. Here’s another example: Ireland. Even the Arab States of Asia want one!
  6. And a deep dive on crop wild relatives in genebanks to round things off.
  7. A community saves illegal potatoes in Canada. Yeah, I know, there’s a lot to unpack there.
  8. Maybe that humble illegal potato needs a geographic indication, like that superfood, açaí.
  9. The Mayocoba bean as a superfood is a bit of a stretch, but there’s plenty of other pulses out there making waves.
  10. The Michigan State kiwi could probably do with a geographic indication too, come to think of it. Cold-hardy and smooth-skinned? Super!
  11. Ok, this is probably the last Nibbles before Christmas, so let’s celebrate with a drink: with bitters of course.
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Nibbles: Fonio beer, ICRISAT seed kits, Dark Emu, China potatoes, 3D genebank, Bioculture, Microbiome genebank, Nutrition, Michigan kiwi

  1. You can make beer from fonio.
  2. ICRISAT providing Niger and Chad with sorghum and pearl millet seed kits. Fonio next?
  3. No, Echinochloa turneriana next. In Australia. I love the Dark Emu Hypothesis, and not least for its name.
  4. CIP is helping China improve its potato crop.
  5. Won’t be long before China’s genebank has 3D images of all its holdings. I’d love to see the potatoes.
  6. Want to see the earliest known site of domestication of teosinte?
  7. UK builds first crop biome cryobank.
  8. How the private sector can help with a more nutrition-sensitive agriculture. Should it want to.
  9. You can grow kiwi in Michigan. Should you want to.
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Nibbles: China seeds, Dixie apples, USDA genebanks, ASU dates, IPR, IFG grapes, Pick-a-mix, Coffee ESG, French heirlooms, Belgian brewing, Tanzanian sorghum, Horse-bread, Roots & tubers, Guyana cassava, SDG indicators

  1. China announces a slew of seed-related measures.
  2. A slew of seeds kept apples diverse in the US South, but not so much any more.
  3. Fortunately there’s a slew of apples, among many other things, in the USDA genebank system.
  4. Dates too, probably, but this article is actually about the (complementary?) collection at Arizona State University.
  5. A slew of intellectual protections has been good for seed companies. But consumers?
  6. IFG no doubts benefits mightily from intellectual property protection of its grape varieties. The diversity of which you can peruse on this nice website.
  7. Speaking of nice websites, this one helps farmers pick-a-mix of crops. Intercropping is diversity too.
  8. How the coffee industry is trying to cope with a slew of sustainability rules. Yeah, sometimes IP protection is not enough.
  9. But who owns heritage varieties?
  10. Including heritage varieties of Belgian malting barley and other cereals.
  11. Speaking of malting, they use sorghum in Tanzania.
  12. It’s unclear what heritage varieties went into making horse-bread, but I’d like to taste the stuff.
  13. But who needs bread (or beer?) anyway? There’s a slew of root and tuber crops in Africa and elsewhere just waiting to solve hunger…
  14. …as Guyana knows well.
  15. Wanna keep track of (most of) the above? FAO has you (sorta) covered via a slew of indicators.
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Brainfood: Biodiversity review, History, Maize history, Maya ag, Agroecology, Ancient curry, IK, Culture & policy, Breeding review, Pacific PGRFA, Pacific breeding, Epidemics, Xylella