Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog » Nibbles

Nibbles: No dam, Pollination video, Study the Commons, Cashew genebank, Quebecois varieties, Poultry, Prehistoric globalisation, Options for Southeast Asia, Inforgraphic, Viking beer

Jeremy — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 13:48:28 +0000

I’ve long thought that getting rid of the Aswan High Dam would be the best way Egypt could improve its food security.
New video from Biofortified, how to pollinate carrots and beets.
Hey Lawyers; time to study the commons! Including genetic resources? h/t capri.
Today’s gene banks will save the world story is about cashews.
Today’s rich world saving heritage varieties story is from Quebec.
Today’s old stories given new legs story is about paying farmers for ecosystem services.
Wired magazine discovers pastured poultry. Can the rest of the world be far behind?
Proposal for a conference session on prehistoric globalisation of food. I’d be there if I could.
And more from the Archaeobotanist, another journal special issue on Near Eastern domestication.
CCAFS highlights (and links to) ICRAF report on climate change options for Southeast Asian Farmers
Danforth Center depicts evolution of plant science, devaluing the word inforgraphic [sic] beyond repair.
Viking beer. Sköl, or something.

Nibbles: Cover crops, Barley tempeh, Irish biodiversity, Veg research, Landwirtschaft in einer anderen Dimension, Farmers Markets

Jeremy — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 09:54:55 +0000

Higher maize yields? Plant cover crops between the rows.
Barley tempeh! My kind of food exploration.
Danny Hunter impresses Irish Times with need to conserve biodiversity.
UK devotes millions to research for “bigger yields of better quality fruits and vegetables”.
Germans embrace high-tech urban agriculture — cautiously.
Put farmers’ markets near medical centres for added benefits. What happens when everyone’s so healthy they don’t need the doctor?

Nibbles: Marker assisted selection, Ecoagriculture, Tomato grafting, Food sovereignty, Rice genomes, Other genomes, Molecular toolkit, Yaks, Evotourism, Sandalwood

Jeremy — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 07:53:13 +0000

Yale University magazine drinks the fast-track breeding KoolAid panacea.
Compare and contrast. Repeat. Endlessly.
Grafting tomatoes is hot for lots of reasons; but how does it protect against leaf-borne diseases? And not just tomatoes, actually.
Getting the lowdown on that “food sovereignty” farrago.
And today’s DNA sequencing will solve world hunger and cure bunions story.
Genomics also good for “health, agriculture, livestock, fisheries and biodiversity” in Philippines. Have we forgotten anything?
Well yeah, you forgot your handy molecular toolkit.
Meanwhile, back in the real world, the choice is between forests and yaks.
More hard choices: evotourism destinations. But check it out, there be agricultural biodiversity too!
And another one: to go to the International Sandalwood Symposium, or not to go?

Nibbles: PGR course, Vegetable seed kits, Maize data, Rice metabolomics, Rewilding, Sheep diversity, Llama economics, Canary flora, Cuba urban ag, Ducks, Cynara, Food sovereignty

Luigi — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 08:30:27 +0000

The annual Wageningen agrobiodiversity conservation course is in India this year. Hannes says it’s really good.
AVRDC’s veggie seed kits are a hit in Orissa.
CIMMYT swimming in data. Waving, not drowning.
IRRI not doing badly either. But “quantitative train loci” is a new one on me.
Australia thinking about introducing elephants. Yeah because that sort of thing has been such a success in the past.
Well, actually, with sheep, I suppose it has, in a way. And the genetics says breeders have a lot of diversity to play with still.
Your mama is a llama.
The Island of Dogs has crop wild relatives. No, not the one in London.
Cuba goes for new urban crops. And not for the first time, Shirley. But what about the old ones?
Quick, duck! This piece has been rather a hit for me over on Facebook.
VII International Symposium on Artichoke, Cardoon and Their Wild Relatives: The (Very Expensive) Book.
Food sovereignty “started in New England”. Huh? And proponents “want to eat and sell the food they grow free from interference from state and federal regulators”. Huh?

Nibbles: Musa taxonomy kerfuffle, Vouchers, Foodies, Aroid roundup, MAS is ok, Sierra Leone conservation

Luigi — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 08:55:11 +0000

Banana boffins at each others’ throats over alleged new species. Great spectator sport.
What does a Musa voucher specimen look like, I wonder.
Fancy shmanzy Bangkok restaurant links up with heirloom seedbank.
Aroid network working really hard.
Marker-assisted selection: a biotechnology we can all get behind. Can’t we?
Conservation in Sierra Leone. No agrobiodiversity, natch.

Nibbles: Mike Jackson blog, Philippines genebank fire, Ancient garden, USA maps, Horse domestication, Gnats, Livestock training, Chocolate, Epigenetics, Indian nutritional security, Kew fund, GM bananas, Reconciling databases

Luigi — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 08:34:53 +0000

Mike Jackson gets himself a pulpit. Welcome to the blogosphere, Mike!
More on the Filipino ex-genebank.
What they grew in an ancient Israelite garden. Can they really tell Citrus species apart from their pollen?
More American maps to mashup with obesity and food insecurity: land use, renewable energy sources…. I do hope someone is keeping track. Even of the more esoteric stuff, of course, like the names of softdrinks.
Yet more on horse domestication.
Another organic farming externality for your consideration. Thanks, Robert.
ILRI gets innovative on this whole training thing.
“The future of chocolate” revealed.
Boffins look at fossil bison epigenetics to investigate adaptation to climate change. What will they think of next. Well, applying it to chickens, for a start.
Other boffins move potato anti-nematode genes into bananas. No word on the epigenetics of it all.
Indian report on how to strengthen role of agriculture in nutrition.
Kew has money for fieldwork.
Cleaning messy taxonomic data. Useful in Genebank Database Hell?

Nibbles: Mulberries, Cucumber powder

Jeremy — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 16:51:06 +0000

Mulberries, on the Mast Tree Network
Cucumber powder. If only I had a dehydrator.

Nibbles: Ancient animal DNA, Augustine Henry

Jeremy — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 18:17:04 +0000

Big grant for TC Dublin to create DNA matrix of ancient livestock, will identify parchments too.
Kew unites Augustine Henry’s letters with the objects and specimens he collected; agrobiodiversity included.

Nibbles: Neolithic foods, Diplomacy, San, Bango, Urban Navy beas, Veg Celebs, Seed swaps

Jeremy — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 09:13:29 +0000

What wild foods did Neolithic farmers eat? Archaeobotanists want to know. So do we.
British Foreign Office promotes economics of biodiversity and ecosystems in SE Asia. Nothing to say on agrobiodiversity.
Maybe they could learn how to use Nature to profit from the San in Namibia?
You say mango, I say bango, lets call the whole thing off.
Is this now the biggest urban farm in the world?
Silly veg stuff on Twitter. My favorite so far is Okra Winfrey.
Seedy Sunday, approaching fast in the UK, cries out for some silliness.

Nibbles: Educashun, Landscapes, Botany, AnGR, Tourism, Ham museum, Native American seeds, Ancient Egyptian grain storage, Ancient beer

Jeremy — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 09:37:50 +0000

Want to teach about agrobiodiversity? Help is at hand.
Want to learn about agrobiodiversity? Stay here.
Want to know what’s going on in biodiversity conservation at Cambridge? Here’s how. Tell us if agriculture gets a look-in. If it doesn’t, come back here. But I bet there’ll be something about landscapes.
What is a landscape? “The answer … differs tremendously depending on the respondent,” it says here. Wow, those Cambridge boffins will be so shocked.
Want to know about the plants in that landscape whose definition is so much in the hands of respondents? Most were discovered by just a few botanical superstars. But how many women?
And if that landscape is Turkish and there are (is?) livestock in it, this is what you’ll see.
Want to tour the world’s top evolution sites? Here’s the first stop. Now, how about crop evolution (and domestication, natch) sites. Like some livestock- and crop-wild-relative-discovered-by-a-botanical-superstar-filled Turkish landscape, perhaps.
Or what about sites connected with food production and marketing more generally, for that matter. No, that list would be too long. Interesting, but too long. Would need to prioritize ruthlessly.
One thing for certain, though, it should include a couple of community genebanks.
Where it is not inconceivable that seeds would be protected following age-old practices. Which may or may not be taught in fancy courses.
Oh, and beer.