- New cassava varieties saving Zanzibar. Good to hear, though as ever one worries about what’s happened to the local landraces.
- Alder’s photos of the Potato Park. Do follow her travels around South America in search of agrobiodiversity.
- Namibia looks for other marula products.
- Saving the taimen in Mongolia. That would be a fish. A mighty fish.
- Interesting Indian symposia: wild fruits; “lifestyle floriculture.” Oh, to have more information.
- “Gariguette strawberries are an old variety and are non-licensed.” Crazy, eh?
Nibble: Conservation ag, Sahelian famines, Homegarden fertility, Annals of Botany news roundup, Carrot geneflow, Cyanide in crops, Texas rice breeding
- “…conservation tillage in Europe may indeed have some negative effect on yields, [but] these effects can be expected to be limited: the overall average reduction we found was ca. 4.5%.” Well I guess it’s good to have the data.
- Today’s solution for the Niger famine is fertilizer micro-dosing. I kid you not. But you should read that first link.
- Homegardens good for soil fertility. Well I guess it’s good to have the data.
- Nigel Chaffey’s Plant Cuttings. Priceless.
- “High outcrossing and long-distance pollen dispersal suggest high frequency of transgene flow might occur from cultivated to wild carrots and that they could easily spread within and between populations.” Transgenic carrots? Well I guess it’s good to have the data.
- Kenneth Olsen interviewed on cyanide in plants. Nice enough, but you read about this stuff here first.
- “Rice breeders seek yield advantage.” Do they now.
Nibbles: Wetlands, Cucurbit phylogeny, Herbology, Malnutrition, Fungi, India, Livestock, Ug99, Madagascar, Beer
- Conserving dambos for livelihoods in southern Africa. How many CWRs are found in such wetland habitats around the world, I wonder.
- Cucumis not out of Africa.
- Exploring “the connection between traditional knowledge of herbs, edible and medicinal plants and media networked culture.” And why not.
- PBS video on malnutrition.
- Fungal exhibition at RBG Edinburgh.
- Indian Council on Agricultural Research framing guidelines for private-public partnerships in seed sector. That’ll stop the GM seed pirates.
- Conserve African humpless cattle! They’re needed for breeding.
- UG99 — and crop wild relatives — in the news. The proper news. The one people pay attention to.
- Vanilla lovers better start stocking up.
- Kenyan farmers earning money selling sorghum to brewers. What’s not to like.
Nibbles: Breeding, Art, Bison, Pumpkin seeds, Sweet potato, Bambara groundnut, Carnival
- Cary Fowler on the need to breed.
- MRIs of fruits and vegetables. Well, why not?
- The genetic consequences of bovine inter-specific sex explained. SFW.
- How Mrs Joséphine Enoce Bouanga makes milk from squash seeds in Pointe-Noire.
- Gates Foundation orange sweet potato project in Mozambique. Still waiting to hear what they’re going to do with all those useless landraces they’ll be replacing.
- Nourishing the Future does Lost Crops of Africa 101. Beginners, start there, but don’t expect to be taken anywhere interesting.
- Blog carnival Scientia Pro Publica #35 is up, but what’s with the verse alphabetical order? Harummph.
Nibbles: Oil palm, Breadfruit, Barcoding, Guyana genebank, Wheat and heat
- Palmhugger, an oilpalm advocacy group, likens Greenpeace to Goebbels. Who are they really? CIFOR is linking to them on Facebook, so they’re probably kosher, right?
- Nice story on breadfruit in Hawaii.
- More barcoding stuff.
- Reader: We must have a bank of seeds of our fruits and vegetables. Minister of Agriculture: We do!
- Australian wheat boffins: “Adaptation strategies need to be considered now to prevent substantial yield losses in wheat from increasing future heat stress.”