- Normal Russians hunt mushrooms.
- Committee on World Food Security meets. Not many people hurt.
- Normal Indian farmers go back to the future. So, in a different way, do Egyptian farmers. Rikin Gandhi probably knows all about it, and has made videos of it.
- I wonder if they’ve told the folks at the new, very agroecological Berkeley sustainable food institute. Though some would suggest they’re on a hiding to nothing there.
- You want past and future? Historical records used to predict spread of pests.
- When is development aid not development aid?
- Cherfas on Cavagnaro on seed saving. Trifecta.
- Cool ACIAR videos take me back to my stint in Fiji.
- International Conference on Utilization and Conservation of Crop Wild Relative (CWR) and Landrace (LR) Diversity for Crop Improvement. First order of business: think of a new name.
- Eden has a Baobab Festival. No word on the factsheet situation. But maybe you’d rather play it safe and try a peanut festival instead? OK, how about Coconuts of the Caribbean? No? Agrotourists of the Caribbean, then?
- Our Food. Our Future. Sustainability: The Bottom Line. Their presentations. Tell me if you find any agrobiodiversity in there. Well I dunno, maybe there will be some in the upcoming 2020 Policy Consultation on Building Resilience for Food and Nutrition Security, in 2014.
- Can you grow baobabs in a pot, I wonder? Or hydroponics for that matter.
- Salt-tolerant bacteria assist rooting in degraded soils. Easier than breeding, I guess.
- No consistent effect of domestication on stomata. Worth a try.
- Bayer goes to Hyderabad. To be near ICRISAT?
Nibbles: Gardeners meet, Aussie wheat breeding, Sunflower Man, Crop phenology, AEGIS on rye, AVRDC birthday, Long tail, CWR talks
- 5th Global Botanic Gardens Congress coming up in Dunedin, New Zealand. Isn’t that somewhere near the Shire? And one garden’s engagement with agricultural biodiversity.
- “It’s 2050, and Australia’s bounteous wheat harvest has been saved.” You see, as a total amateur at this lark, I’d have started with that.
- Loren Rieseberg, interviewed.
- HarvestChoice using fancy remote sensing imagery to improve crop calendars, give themselves excuse to quote Byrds classic.
- European rye collection a little closer to reality.
- WorldVeg turns 40.
- Bellon and Ntandou-Bouzitou explore the tail. Talk about local innovation…
- Old friends talk about crop wild relatives.
Happy World Chocolate Day!
The previous post about the International Treaty on ITPGRFA allows me to segue seamlessly to today’s World Cocoa and Chocolate Day event at the University of the West Indies in Trinidad. Seamlessly, I hear you ask? Stretching a point, surely. Well, no, because everyone knows that the International Cocoa Genebank, maintained at said institution’s Cocoa Research Centre, is one of the collections which are available in the Multilateral System of the Treaty under its Article 15. You can tour the place, you know. Anyway, I’m hoping one of my inside people will come through with some photos of the celebrations. Stay tuned.
Nibbles: Coca, Rice breeding, Artisanal cheese, Win win, Microbes, Potato dyes, Beans, Agroforestry & conservation, Sweet potato marketing
- Bolivia ramps up coca production. Sniff.
- Tamil Nadu ramps up rice breeding.
- Bulgaria ramps up artisanal cheese production.
- Collaboration between organic and biotech ramped up. In other news, pigs fly.
- Ramp up use of microbes, microbiologist says. Nobody surprised.
- Americans ramp up production of purple potatoes.
- Everyone ramps up bean production. To save the planet, no less.
- Can agroforestry be used to ramp up tree conservation? Well, maybe?
- Need to ramp up sweet potato marketing.
Nibbles: Weeds, Poverty, Mycorrhizae, Gluten-free wheat, Vanilla, Different apples, Pashmina wool
- Oh dear, someone else has fallen for the “weeds are better for you” line, cautious question-mark notwithstanding.
- And guess what? The poor don’t buy nutritious foods. How silly of them.
- Great post explaining the great unseen: mycorrhizal fungi as drivers of plant diversity.
- Gluten-free wheat? Really (even if the links still don’t work).
- What would you video on honeymoon in Mexico? A visit to a vanilla plantation. What else?
- Conserving apples and earth apples at opposite ends of the world.
- Oh, no, pashmina’s in trouble!