- Nth regional meeting on Pacific crop genetic resources under way.
- ICRISAT has climate-ready crops. Well, I find that reassuring.
- England has a new fruit genebank. Wait, what? I thought it was having trouble holding on to the old fruit genebank. Rational national system, anyone?
Featured: Biofortification
Anastasia finds our disparaging remarks frustrating:
I have to say I find your disparaging remarks frustrating.
Read why. What do you think?
Nibbles: Disease, Tobacco, CGIAR, Food Security, Nutrition, Soil, Popcorn, Quinoa, Aegilops
- How to breed a better brassica.
- Kenya encourages farmers to switch from tobacco to food.
- The King is dead … Long live the King.
- A very long post about Challenges to Genetic Diversity and Implications For Food Security in South Asia.
- Plumpy’nut set free, more or less.
- Dirt, the movie — I’d like to see that.
- Real popcorn, Yaqui style.
- Quínoa andina podría cultivarse en desiertos del mundo. Don’t they have their own orphan crops?
- Red List assessment of nine Aegilops species in Armenia. New wheat wild relatives paper.
Earth Engine and crop wild relatives
The other recent Google Earth innovation is Earth Engine, where you can check out a bunch of interesting visualizations of environmental data. Spurred by something Julian said, I downloaded the MODIS VCF global tree cover change dataset (2000-2005). And then I went to Genesys and downloaded data on wild beans (Phaseolus spp). It was not very difficult to put the two together in Google Earth. In the map below, which just looks at central Mexico, orange means high deforestation, and green afforestation. Is it me, or do germplasm accession seem to be concentrated in areas of high deforestation? Anyway, with a little work, this could be a cheap and cheerful way to identify particularly threatened areas for germplasm collecting.
Who wants to be the first to put crop wild relatives data in Earth Engine?
Nibbles: Australia, China, Turkey, Slovenia, Soybeans, Grapes, Consultation
- Australian breeders discover the joys of participatory breeding — for Oz farmers too.
- Chinese biodiversity symposium a huge success.
- Weird, and weirdly broken, GEF Small Grants Programme reports on a Turkish landrace project. Why here? Why now?
- “Biodiversity: why should we care?” Slovenia’s answers.
- Soybean ability to use iron affects its ability to use nitrogen. Full paper here.
- Missouri grapes to save the world. Show me!
- First ever Regional Consultation for the Strengthening, Conservation and Sustainable Use of Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture in the Pacific Island Countries kicked off yesterday. Where are our people on the spot?