- How can you do Eggplant’s Rich History and not wonder why this generally huge, generally purple thing is called an eggplant?
- Domestication of the Gray Ghost Organ Pipe cactus; exceedingly complex. Oh and there’s a cool photo here.
- How berries protect the brain from age-related malfunction. Are you listening, Dmitry?
- Protect medicinal plants, says letter-writer.
- The world doesn’t understand drought tolerance, says another letter-writer.
- Agrobiodiversity in Mesoamerica conference.
- Chaffey’s Plant Cuttings from Annals of Botany. Must-read stuff.
- A wild relative contributes trait for early morning flowering to rice, allowing it to escape sterility induced by high temperatures.
- The Cornelian Cherry and the Baobab explained.
- Voice of America devotes Special English report to Pavlovsk. If that ain’t viral, what is?
- Genebanks on a roll in China. In Australia, not so much.
- Dam dataset online. Let the mashups proliferate.
How would you promote agricultural biodiversity?
Here’s the scenario: the civic authorities have decided to install a home garden somewhere in the centre of the city. This is in a country with a very conservative attitude to its food culture, where tradition runs deep (although not as deep as to recognize that several staples of the cuisine arrived as interlopers from other lands, roughly 500 years ago.) And because your organization is based in that same city, and has a reputation for knowing about agricultural biodiversity and home gardens, the authorities have asked you to contribute in some way.
You don’t exactly know why the civic authorities are constructing the garden, although you suspect it has something to do with being seen to be green, to care about food and about diversity. And you don’t know what they want, either, or what kind of experience they are planning to offer the visiting public. A gawp at vegetables in the ground rather than in plastic? Surely not. The country hasn’t lost its agrarian roots that completely. Edumacashun? Yeah, but what is the message? You also don’t know what they want. Advice? Expertise? Something to give to visitors?
So you decide to offer them plants that might be found in a home garden far away, specifically, the nutritious African leafy vegetables that you’ve been promoting for better health, incomes and environmental sustainability. But you fear that the civic authorities might not be too keen. You fear they are likely to say something like: “Why should we plant your strange African vegetables in a garden here? What’s the point?”
What one, killer argument would you offer to persuade them?
Nibbles: Huitlacoche, Failure, Food sovereignty, Cold storage, Hunger, Prices
- Mat Kinase discover best smut ever.
- World Bank embraces failure. Now there’s an idea. More here.
- I really don’t have time today for Food sovereignty in Africa: The people’s alternative. Anyone care to interpret?
- Kremlin now tweeting in English. No word yet on Pavlovsk.
- Kenya invests in new market facilities … to improve exports of food.
- Rachel Laudan considers hunger — and celebrates David Livingstone.
- Speaking of which, wanna understand food price spikes? Me too.
Nibbles: Malnutrition, Ethanol, Kenyan tea, Ethiopian coffee, Botanic garden trends, Emmer, Vietnam fish, Guerrilla gardening, Garlic speculation, Brazil and Africa, Cactus, African veggies, Ducks and rice, Salmon
- Nepal’s malnutrition rate apparently the highest in world. But the Micronutrient Initiative is on it. But what about homegardens, I hear you ask. And rice biofortification?
- The advice I’ve been waiting for all my life: better nutrition through alcohol.
- The plight of Kenyan tea workers.
- Harlem church helps Ethiopian coffee farmers.
- Botanic gardens drop flowers, do food. About time too. And botanical art too.
- Jeremy’s farro photos.
- “Iconic” catfish in trouble due to Mekong dam. Everything is an icon these days. Something to do with post-modernism, I guess.
- Seedbomb something today. You’ll feel better.
- WTF is it with garlic in China?
- EMBRAPA reaches out to Africa.
- KARI scientists push Opuntia for livestock. Ok, but surely there are enough native desert plants in Kenya to be going on with? Well, maybe not.
- Zimbabwe market turns to sun-dried vegetables. Wish I knew what umfushwa was, though.
- The Rice-Ducks Integrated Farming System sounds like great fun.
- Why the salmon thrives in Oregon: “Tribal people have practiced a natural, sustained-yield conservation since time immemorial and are taught to plan seven generations ahead.”
Nibbles: Plant breeding book, Ug99, NGS, Monitoring, Genetic diversity and productivity, Adaptive evolution, Amaranthus, Nabhan, Herbarium databases, Pepper, Shade coffee and conservation, Apples, Pathogen diversity, Phytophthora
- Book on history of plant breeding reviewed.
- Rust never sleeps.
- Ask not what next generation sequencing can do for you.
- Long-term datasets in biodiversity research. Nothing about genetic diversity though. Bummer.
- And genetic diversity is important, is it? Yep, it increases productivity, at least in Arabidopsis.
- No evidence of adaptive evolution in plants. What? Surely some mistake? I’m serious. And don’t call me Shirley.
- The latest from Worldwatch on African leafy veggies. Again, some links would have been nice.
- And Worldwatch also interviews Gary Nabhan on Vavilov.
- You can browse Tropicos specimens in Google Earth.
- Using pepper to protect stored rice.
- More evidence of the goodness of shade coffee.
- The diversity of Bosnian apples.
- Mammal plus bird species richness explains 72% of country-to-country variation in the number of human pathogens. Diversity begets diversity. But which way does the causality go?
- Phytophthora infestans in Estonia: “…higher proportion of metalaxyl resistant isolates from large conventional farms than from small conventional farms or from organic farms.” Metalaxyl is a fungicide.