Untitled

April 20, 2016April 20, 2016

Featured: Breeding quinoa

Rick Jellen has an answer to our question about quinoa breeding: Regarding the question of whether there has been a proportional increase in resources dedicated to quinoa breeding, the answer is … NO! Allrighty then, Rick. Care to tell us more?

April 19, 2016April 19, 2016

Have your fill of quinoa yet?

Jeremy has followed up his monumental NPR post on the effects of high quinoa prices on Andean growers ((Spoiler alert: They’re not bad, on either livelihoods or nutrition, though it’s not all sweetness and light. And as for the consumer…)), and his subsequent handy round-up right here, with a podcast over at Eat this Podcast. …

Continue reading “Have your fill of quinoa yet?”

April 19, 2016April 19, 2016

Nibbles: Vavilov double, Huge avocado, African urban ag, Agarwood threat, Double coffee, Sequencing beer, Sloane ranges, Chinese bees, Gendered breeding, Access to seeds/meds, Genebank funding, Quinoa prices, Organic ganja

VIR on Atlas Obscura, with pic goodness courtesy of yours truly. And on the same site, something Vavilov would have approved of: a very diverse Tajik apple orchard. A new avocado to conjure by. Urban agriculture won’t cut the mustard. Trees that named Fragrant Harbour disappearing. The downside of coffee. But never fear, there’s a …

Continue reading “Nibbles: Vavilov double, Huge avocado, African urban ag, Agarwood threat, Double coffee, Sequencing beer, Sloane ranges, Chinese bees, Gendered breeding, Access to seeds/meds, Genebank funding, Quinoa prices, Organic ganja”

April 1, 2016

How to get over your quinoa guilt trip, kinda

We’ve poked fun in the past at people who think that high prices for quinoa are taking food out of the mouths of poor farmers in Bolivia and Peru, but here’s a confession. We didn’t have actual objective evidence that this was not the case. Just a gut feeling, based on experience and knowing people …

Continue reading “How to get over your quinoa guilt trip, kinda”

March 22, 2016March 22, 2016

Nibbles: Coffee taxonomy, Agarwood trade, Apios promotion, Dog species concept, Seed collecting, Kudzu control, ICARDA chickpeas, Ancient maize beer, Quinoa landscapes, History of domestication, Breeding mistakes, EU breeding value, Priming, Wild flower ecotypes, Vitellaria use

Coffee botany resources. Uncovering the illegal agarwood trade. Developing the potato bean. First step: find a new name. Dog taxonomy explained. Project Baseline sets a, ahem, baseline, for studying plant diversity under climate change. Ok, random shout-out for my niece Francesca’s work on kudzu bug natural control. Because I can. And she’s fabulous. Blooming chickpeas! …

Continue reading “Nibbles: Coffee taxonomy, Agarwood trade, Apios promotion, Dog species concept, Seed collecting, Kudzu control, ICARDA chickpeas, Ancient maize beer, Quinoa landscapes, History of domestication, Breeding mistakes, EU breeding value, Priming, Wild flower ecotypes, Vitellaria use”