- Webinar on biofortification, today.
- Book on Asian underutilized plant species, which we somehow missed when it came out in 2014. Unless it didn’t.
- The Millennium Seed Bank isn’t just great in and of itself, it also sits in a wonderful garden: the man who has been keeping that going for the past decade has just retired. Best wishes!
- A map of French cheese. Internet surrenders.
- North Jersey donates organic seeds to Zimbabwe. In related news, they also sending coals to Newcastle.
- Online bibliography of food history. There goes the morning.
- All hail the eucalyptuzzzzz genome.
- The unintended consequences of WW2: oregano.
- Follow the construction of the Crops for the Future Centre HQ. Over 10 episodes, mind, so gird your loins.
- Breaking down crop rotation.
- Malaria drugs through the ages. Make mine a G&T.
- Yes, how is quinoa doing in Colorado?
- New pineapples for the Pacific. They’ll probably end up canned.
- Good news: Clumber Park has a Rhubarb Weekend. Bad news: we missed it. Ditto the Goa Mango Festival.
- Mapping every monkey puzzle tree in Britain. Well, someone has to.
- Transgenic chestnuts taking over New York State. You can bet someone’s going to map them.
- The US potato renaissance we all knew was happening finally hits the headlines.
- The latest on coffee improvement, including news from the CATIE collections.
- Tulipmania: The video.
- The father of hybrid corn.
- Would he have approved of saving seeds? I suspect yes.
- Chinese agriculture adds a few (thousand) years.
- Europe has agroforestry too, and lots of it.
- Think I missed something? Check if Jeremy caught it in his Tasty Morsels.
British crop wild relatives on show
I fear we may have omitted to mention that a selection of Britain’s crop wild relatives would feature in one of the gardens on show at the Royal Horticultural Society’s Malvern Spring Festival. This was the brainchild of the McLaughlin sisters, Caitlin and Tessa.
Well, the show has come and gone, and the Genetic Conservation Garden, as it is called, has come away with the silver medal. Very well done, Caitlin and Tessa!
The @StanbrookAbbey @amazing_venues #RHSMalvern sponsored garden achieved Silver medal today! Over the moon! pic.twitter.com/6Ehs8f5uK0
— Tessa McLaughlin (she/her) (@Tessa_teaching) May 7, 2015
Brainfood: Chinese CWR, Black-bone goat, Agrobiodiversity & nutrition, Niger rice, Rabbit diversity, On farm, Adding value, Native Americans & Svalbard, USDA wheat core, Cooperatives & food security, Maize & CC
- China’s crop wild relatives: Diversity for agriculture and food security. 871 wild species related to crops important in China, some of them endemic and endangered.
- Black-bone goat: An investigation report on new genetic resource of farm animal. Out of China…
- Effects of agricultural biodiversity and seasonal rain on dietary adequacy and household food security in rural areas of Kenya. More dietary diversity is better for your kids’ nutrition, and so is rain.
- Farmers’ rice knowledge and adoption of new cultivars in the Tillabéry region of western Niger. The landrace is hippopotamus-resistant.
- An invasive non-native mammal population conserves genetic diversity lost from its native range. Same for some crop wild relatives?
- Diversifying mechanisms in the on-farm evolution of crop mixtures. Diversity within mixture of 4 French wheat landraces changes in different ways in different places.
- The Role of Local Sheep and Goat Breeds and Their Products as a Tool for Sustainability and Safeguard of the Mediterranean Environment. Cheese made from local breeds is better. Well, at least different.
- Saving seeds: The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, Native American seed savers, and problems of property. “…the Svalbard Global Seed Vault is unique in its potential ability to cross the political and cultural divide over the ownership and conservation of seeds and thereby promote the vital ecological need for both ex situ and in situ seed preservation.”
- Genetic Diversity among Wheat Accessions from the USDA National Small Grains Collection. Geography is a good basis on which to base a core collection.
- Food sovereignty, food security and fair trade: the case of an influential Nicaraguan smallholder cooperative. They can all be integrated, but food security is the difficult one.
- Maize migration: key crop expands to higher altitudes under climate change in the Andes. 10m a year.
Nibbles: Chontaduro, Pandanus, African seeds, Bangladesh veggie seeds, Black locust, Agroecology, Food security research, Deforestation, Ancient Caribbean
- Colombia plants a bunch of peach palms. Hope they had some genetic diversity in there.
- Crop wild relative can tell you where diamonds are.
- Africa might need better seeds.
- Bangladesh certainly does.
- The black locust made America. The tree, not the insect.
- Another pean to agrobiodiversity.
- Towards a Research Agenda for Global Food and Nutrition Security: meeting at Expo 2015 organized by the EU. It’s today, though, and this is the first we hear of it. Sorry. Will genebanks even get mentioned? Well, if this tweet is from that meeting, it seems not.
- Cutting down forest bad for more than trees. How many crop and livestock wild relatives endangered by deforestation?
- Cubans ate cultivated plants a thousand years earlier than thought.
Nibbles: Food supplies, Food fotos, Forest foods, Diverse foods, Caribbean cassava, Wild foods, Expo 2015, Gates & SDGs, Nanoparticles
- What the World Eats: The Infographic.
- What the World Eats: The Photo Competition.
- What the World Doesn’t Eat: Forest Foods.
- What the World Should Eat More Of: The Presentation.
- What Grenada Eats: Cassava
- What Christopher McCandless Should Not Have Eaten: Not ODAP After All?
- Gulf states big stars in Milan. So that’s all right then.
- Gates Foundation really doesn’t like the SDGs.
- Boffins find promiscuous Phytophthora killer. Breeders surrender.