Jeremy Cherfas

October 17, 2011October 16, 2011

Brainfood: Ectomycorrhiza, Synthetic peanuts, Ancient Greek amphorae, European bison, Pea breeding, Animal domestication

Ectomycorrhizas and climate change. One more damn thing to worry about.
Meiotic analysis of the hybrids between cultivated and synthetic tetraploid groundnuts. It’s normal. The meiosis I mean. Why isn’t this sort of thing done with more crops?
Aspects of Ancient Greek trade re-evaluated with amphora DNA evidence. More than just wine and olive oil.
Reconstructing range dynamics and range fragmentation of European bison for the last 8000 years. More eastern and northern than thought, and more affected by the spread of farming than climate change in the Holocene.
Resistance to downy mildew (Peronospora viciae) in Australian field pea germplasm (Pisum sativum). It comes from Afghanistan.
Deciphering the genetic basis of animal domestication. Despite all that selection and all those bottlenecks, they really are diverse.

Don’t forget the open Mendeley group for the papers we link to here.

October 17, 2011October 17, 2011

Women with Cows #BAD11

Thanks Miss Haworth for the tip-off. This does look like a documentary worth seeking out.

October 16, 2011October 16, 2011

Nibbles: Book, Breeding, Labour, Tallante’s chickpea, Bacardi yeast, Solutions, Sandwiches, Mapping resistance, Cucumber history, Maya nuts

Can a person called Rushing really have written a book on Slow Gardening?
Genetic Engineering vs. Breeding. No contest, really.
Georgia peaches, rotting in the sun. Can the consequences of clamping down on immigrant labour really have been unintended?
Tallante’s chickpea back from the brink. No, I don’t know why as species of Astragalus is called a chickpea. Is it even a CWR?
Bacardi and its yeast. A tale of derring-do and intellectual property rights. h/t CAS-IP.
Back40 takes aim at Solutions for a Cultivated Planet, so we don’t have to.
UK productivity 5,263 beef sandwiches per hectare(bsp/h), compared to 2,439 bsp/h in the mid-18th century. h/t The Tracing Paper.
Another great interactive map, this time of bacterial diversity of the worst kind.
Cucumbers in Europe: a history. AoB blog explains all.
The good old Maya nut to the rescue again.

October 11, 2011October 12, 2011

Featured: Taro leaf blight

Afiniki Bawa Zarafi remains concerned about taro leaf blight:

Please what has been the finding of CABI/ Global plant clinic in respect to this coocyam leaf blight/ taro leaf blight? I am also interested in the result /findings of other scientists working on this disease.

And he’s right. More than a year ago in a comment to the same post Zachee Ngoko promised:

More information will come out as soon as available. Stay tuned!

Afiniki, and the rest of us, are still tuned. So what’s the news?

October 10, 2011October 11, 2011

Brainfood: Indian domestication, Canna domestication, Indigenous knowledge, Sunflower history, Diets and diversity, Immature grains

Finding Plant Domestication in the Indian Subcontinent. Maybe five independent centers of domestication, but maybe not. It’s complicated.
The Origin of Southeastern Asian Triploid Edible Canna (Canna discolor Lindl.) Revealed by Molecular Cytogenetical Study. It’s simple. C. indica var. indica and C. plurituberosa.
Diversity of Plant Knowledge as an Adaptive Asset: A Case Study with Standing Rock Elders. You’d be amazed what they know. It’s diverse.
Morphometric Analysis of Sunflower (Helianthus annuus L.) Achenes from Mexico and Eastern North America. It’s interesting. Size is a better descriptor than computerized shape analysis.
A Systematic Review on the Contributions of Edible Plant and Animal Biodiversity to Human Diets. It’s lacking; there isn’t nearly as much good evidence as you might expect.
Experimental approaches to understanding variation in grain size in Panicum miliaceum (broomcorn millet) and its relevance for interpreting archaeobotanical assemblages. It’s misleading. You need to make allowances for immature grains.

Don’t forget the open Mendeley group for the papers we link to here.