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Tag: Fonio

Posted on February 17, 2010February 17, 2010

Nibbles: Cassava, fonio, apples, Salicornia, aurochs, seeds

  • Nagib Nassar challenges the wisdom of GM cassava. Cultivate indigenous and wild varieties of the crop!
  • Or fonio (Digitaria exilis). New paper on its diversity.
  • And for dessert? Wild apple diversity?
  • Need salad? How about Salicornia then?
  • Nice aurochs steak to go with the salad?
  • Not too soon to start planning a future harvest, if you’re in Ireland and want seeds.

Fresh Nibbles

    • All of IFAD’s 5 investments that will help nourish the world need crop diversity. Prove me wrong.
    • And yet we still have to have articles on communicating the importance of genebanks.
    • Cosmos tries to do it by pointing to the science.
    • Smithsonian Magazine tries to do it by saying it’s tricky.
    • Genebanks try to do it by having nice new websites and talking to the media. Some of the biggest media.
    • CGIAR tries to do it by calling them an Accelerator.
    • IIED tries to do it by saying even botanic gardens can help farmers.
    • SwissAid thinks “[n]ational and international gene banks should give farmers’ organizations low-threshold access to their collections.” No argument there.
    • Maybe we should have songs about genebanks, like the Maxakali have about the Atlantic Forest.
    • Or we could just talk about food, food, glorious food.
    • Could also just fall back on the good old canonical lost-heirloom-apple-found story.
    • Or the canonical medical case for “ancient grains” story.
    • Though even there the heirlooms vs hybrids debate will rage I suppose…
    • But, whatever we do, let’s not take it to extremes, shall we?

    Published on May 16, 2025

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