- The International Buffalo Knowledge Resource Service has a website. No, really.
- Plants for a Future website includes crop wild relatives. No, really.
- Thai jasmine rice trademark pirated. No, really?
Nibbles: Tomatoes, African rice, Entebbe, Coconuts, Wild relatives, Economic botany
- “On the contrary, ‘doesn’t come true from seed’ is another way of saying ‘has lots of exciting diversity’.” Rebsie rounds up her tomatoes.
- Domestication of African rice explored at the Vaviblog.
- Entebbe Botanical Gardens has a genebank. That’s all I know.
- Roland continues to dream of a South Sea genebank paradise; one island, one coconut variety.
- “Cary Fowler explains the vital importance of crop wild relatives to address the future challenges to agriculture,” it says at the Trust website.
- Let them eat bread. Foreign Affairs on food riots. h/t Rachel, who has some interesting things to say on the subject.
- Fascinating behind the scenes insights into Economic Botany collections at Kew and elsewhere.
Maps of Russian agrobiodiversity online, again
We blogged about AgroAtlas some years back, but a big article in USDA’s newsletter gives us a welcome opportunity of pointing out again how cool it is. The much-awaited GIS layers are in a funny format, though, which I’d be interested to know how to convert to something that can be viewed in Google Earth.
Nibbles: Micronutrients, Population, Opium, Nixtamalization, Chocolate, Seed swap, Dog domestication, Meeting, Biofuel failure, Mesquite
- “Organic management practices appear to result in elevated levels of grain micronutrient concentration.” By no means the whole story.
- Tom too takes The Economist to task.
- Afghanistan’s opium growers. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
- Nixtamalization for the rest of us. More than you could ever want to know. Rye tortillas!
- Chocolate began with leftover beer? Seems unlikely.
- Take the fight to the monster’s lair. Swap seeds in Brussels. h/t Patrick.
- Dogs or dholes? Yeah I didn’t know what they were either.
- There was a workshop on “Seed System and Climate Change” in Bhutan a month ago.
- Big biofuel project in Tanzania bites the dust. And the land they “leased,” what happened to that?
- Ancient grinding holes. Might mesquite be another edible never domesticated?
Ancient wild relatives
While we’re on the subject of radicchio diversity, old Roman medicines and the like, we were pleased to be sent a link to Renaissance Herbals, a collaboration between the Smithsonian Institution and the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Roma. There are some lovely images to peruse and use, like this one, of wild chicory, Cichorium intybus.:
One could complain, of course, that the links between the illustrations and other sorts of information are non-existent. But hey, you can’t have everything.