Tourism

Nibbles: Brazil flora & urban ag, Telling species apart, Canary seed for humans, Training breeders, Solitary bees, Tajik protected area, Rennell Island, Nordic grubs, Belize TV

Brazil’s flora moves online. And its agriculture into its favelas.
Taxonomy 101.
Wish the people who wrote this press release on “canary seed” had taken a taxonomy course. It’s Phalaris canariensis, it turns out.
African breeders to be trained at UCDavis. Ok, but what about WACCI? What’s going on? Cornell-Davis smackdown?
Further proof, if any were needed, of the importance of wild bees.
Tajikistan gets its first World Heritage Site. Includes most of the Pamirs, so surely a whole lot of agricultural biodiversity, both wild and cultivated, plant and animal. Not that that was the prime mover for protection, probably.
Incidentally, there’s a list of World Heritage Sites in danger, and it includes Rennell Island in the Solomons. The reason I bring it up is that it is famous for a local coconut variety. Hope that’s not endangered!
Nordic Food Lab gets money to experiment with cooking insects.
Belize TV looks to agrobiodiversity to cope with climate change.

If you can map neglected diseases by phone, can you map neglected crops? I bet you can.
It’s the turn of Samoans to be chided for not eating enough leafy greens.
I had no idea AfricaRice had a podcast.
Now we gotta worry about G&T too? Enough, already.
Video on the wild yams of Sri Lanka. Not just yams, though, by the look of it.
100 recipes to understand the history of food? Count me in.
More on the Polymotu Concept from our friends at SPC. Great gig if you can get it.

Dog domestication explained. In a bunch of different, mutually incompatible ways, but what the hell.
But don’t worry about that, revel in this ancient beer infographic. Ancient beer, not ancient infographic. And more: can never have enough about ancient beer.
And speaking of ancient foodstuffs, how about bread? Jeremy unavailable for comment.
Bread too mainstream? Why not support breadfruit planting for food security? You can. But make sure you tell them to plant lots of different varieties.
Or how about the Chilean plum yew tree, for that matter.
Breadfruit and Chilean plum yew tree not mainstream enough? FAO not losing faith with good old quinoa. Oh no siree. There’s even a series of tasting events here this week.
You want more nutrition, I’ve got more nutrition: here’s how to improve nutrition through agriculture in 10 easy steps, and here’s how we’re doing in monitoring how well we’re doing in improving nutrition through agriculture.
Which is comprehensively ignored by USAID’s new Biodiversity Policy. Agriculture, that is. USAID handles support to the CGIAR, so they should know about agrobiodiversity and its conservation. Not really good enough. But hey, you can send in your comments.
Nice pics of how people drink tea around the world. Could do with some myself just now actually, after that little lot…

A toolkit to help indigenous communities do conservation. Should they need one.
On the other hand… Half of Japan’s endangered species hotspots are found in satoyama, which are under pressure. Compare and contrast with rice farming in Thailand.
Learn all about some medicinal plants of the Amazon, minus their scientific names. Not including runa tea. Lots of other opportunities out there, though.
Maybe even including oysters.
Jeremy no doubt to feast on the mollusc after spilling the beans on the EU seed regulations at the Seed Savers jamboree.
Wonder what Calestous Juma thinks of those regulations.
But I bet he (and his father, who introduced the crop to his region of Kenya) would like this cassava website to rule them all.
The Volcani Institute‘s gifts to the world…
…probably include new strawberries, but not this one.
Scientists straining, failing to find plant to meaningfully compare to the giant panda.
Bioversity does up its iButtons.
And gets a namecheck in a paean to the FAO Commission on GRFA on its 30th birthday. All this FAO stuff is because its Conference is on this week. I don’t suppose any of it will be more important than Amartya Sen’s speech.

Companies should pay to protect ecosystems.
Like these? Hope they include some agricultural ones. Maybe even urban ones.
Why you’d want to is not least because of these plants. Which can be better for micronutrients. Not to mention mainly outcrossing.
Yeah, not all species are equal. Right?
I wonder if any of this philanthropic training money will go to work on rice wild relatives.