Vegetables

Nibbles: Marker assisted selection, Ecoagriculture, Tomato grafting, Food sovereignty, Rice genomes, Other genomes, Molecular toolkit, Yaks, Evotourism, Sandalwood

Yale University magazine drinks the fast-track breeding KoolAid panacea.
Compare and contrast. Repeat. Endlessly.
Grafting tomatoes is hot for lots of reasons; but how does it protect against leaf-borne diseases? And not just tomatoes, actually.
Getting the lowdown on that “food sovereignty” farrago.
And today’s DNA sequencing will solve world hunger and cure bunions story.
Genomics also good for “health, agriculture, livestock, fisheries and biodiversity” in Philippines. Have we forgotten anything?
Well yeah, you forgot your handy molecular toolkit.
Meanwhile, back in the real world, the choice is between forests and yaks.
More hard choices: evotourism destinations. But check it out, there be agricultural biodiversity too!
And another one: to go to the International Sandalwood Symposium, or not to go?

The annual Wageningen agrobiodiversity conservation course is in India this year. Hannes says it’s really good.
AVRDC’s veggie seed kits are a hit in Orissa.
CIMMYT swimming in data. Waving, not drowning.
IRRI not doing badly either. But “quantitative train loci” is a new one on me.
Australia thinking about introducing elephants. Yeah because that sort of thing has been such a success in the past.
Well, actually, with sheep, I suppose it has, in a way. And the genetics says breeders have a lot of diversity to play with still.
Your mama is a llama.
The Island of Dogs has crop wild relatives. No, not the one in London.
Cuba goes for new urban crops. And not for the first time, Shirley. But what about the old ones?
Quick, duck! This piece has been rather a hit for me over on Facebook.
VII International Symposium on Artichoke, Cardoon and Their Wild Relatives: The (Very Expensive) Book.
Food sovereignty “started in New England”. Huh? And proponents “want to eat and sell the food they grow free from interference from state and federal regulators”. Huh?

Revitalising socio-ecological production landscapes. It’s all the buzz, even though it doesn’t trip off my tongue.
And the buzz keeps building for AgBioDiv 2012 in Ireland, 9 February.
The great house of Veitch — but not a word about their many veg varieties.
The first “really” purple tomato now available as seed.

More evidence of India’s fascination with little-known indigenous
cattle breeds.
Forbes reviews Borlaug bio.
FAO Forestry has a nifty new mobile app. No idea why.
VI International Symposium on Brassicas and XVIII Crucifer Genetics Workshop looking for sponsors. Any ideas?
Prof Pat Heslop-Harrison is today’s “Face of Plant Cell Biology“.
Of course it is a daft idea to claim rights over the word “agave”. But will anyone listen?
Blimey! A penguin is like a lime juice.

Unlike spring, we’re late to The Guardian’s citizen science map of “weird nature”. Please Sir, can we have one for agriculture?
Apples in French Indochina; more histoire des pommes française, or something.
Scaling up food supplies — in ancient Egypt.
“Conserving biodiversity could benefit the world’s poor,” it says here.
South Asian boffins launch regional vegetable research network. Only 5 crops, but open-pollinated varieties will be included in the trials.
“Ending malnutrition is a matter of political will. If India wanted to address childhood malnutrition in any serious way, it could.” Marion Nestle lays it on the line.
Diversity in drylands linked to greater resilience. A press release, and a news report.