Tourism

Nibbles: C4 rice breeding, Tomato genes, Fruit/nut wild relatives, Peruvian cuisine

C4 rice: it’s really very, very complicated. And Ford Denison on the reason. Kinda.
Speaking of tradeoffs, this tomato taste vs colour story is everywhere. What is it about the (lack of) taste of tomatoes that gets people so riled up? And I wonder what the ones grown in Alaska taste like.
I International Symposium on Wild Relatives of Subtropical and Temperate Fruit and Nut Crops: the abstracts are online. Does it include the tomato. Nope, not getting into that one.
There are several subtropical and temperate fruit involved in Peruvian cuisine. Right? Come on, help me out with these segues.

How to do impact evaluation. Required reading.
Podcast on the history of coffee from Linn. Soc. Required listening.
How to intensify agriculture sustainably. Meah.
It may well involve patient capital though.
This thing will look for all the species names in a piece of text or website. Bound to come in useful one of these days.
How to use Google properly. And a vaguely agricultural quiz to see if you’ve been listening in class.
Protecting ancient irrigation system on the West Bank.
And finding the oldest agricultural site in East Asia.
The good and bad side of Prosopis in Africa.
CIMMYT in China.
The banana as a weapon.
Touring UK plant science sites.
Mapping breadfruit to save the world.
“Over 78 million Europeans (15–64 years) have tried cannabis…” Purely medicinal purposes, man.
“We wanted to see how farmers are reacting to this global climate change…” Bean farmers, not cannabis farmers.
If you’re at the Noosa Botanic Gardens, Cooroy, you can see rare macadamias. Yeah but can you smoke ’em?
Organic seed systems in California. No, not cannabis, settle down.

Slate puts a fork in, well, the fork.
Gotta love the Prairies.
Mysterious Cattle Deaths Caused by GMO Grass: not GMO, not particularly mysterious.
Gotta love the Spice Islands.
How scientists can extract impact from their ~~navel-gazing~~ research.
Gotta love online mapping platforms.
Another journal starts a blog.
Horses in agriculture, and history.
Gotta love za’tar. It’s about thyme.
Sweeter than sugar. Mauritius goes for fair trade and diversification.
Dying for batik.

Rejoice, the new edition of the FAO/Bioversity Multi-Crop Passport Descriptors (MCPD) are now available on-line!
Pollinators good for pollination shock. No, kidding apart, this is Pollinator Week and we should take note.
Another step in building plant breeding capacity in West Africa.
How to get quinoa cake on the menu of posh Bolivian coffee shops.
Virtual tour of my old stomping ground at the Cambridge University Botanical Garden includes a chemical trail. Which alas does not in turn include the main chemical we used to consume there.