- The Australian paradox: A substantial decline in sugars intake over the same timeframe that overweight and obesity have increased. Wait … there’s an Australian paradox too?
- Phytophthora blight of Pigeonpea [Cajanus cajan (L.) Millsp.]: An updating review of biology, pathogenicity and disease management. The wild relatives are sources of resistance, but that won’t be enough.
- Effects of crop mixtures on chocolate spot development on faba bean grown in mediterranean climates. Intercropping with cereals reduces the disease.
- Combining high biodiversity with high yields in tropical agroforests. It can be done, for smallholder cacao in Indonesia.
- And elsewhere … Cost benefit and livelihood impacts of agroforestry in Bangladesh. An entire book.
- Resource concentration dilutes a key pest in indigenous potato agriculture. Monocropping can be sustainable. Via.
- Community versus single-species distribution models for British plants. Overall, better stick with the single species kind, but it was worth a try.
- Quantitative trait loci for salinity tolerance in barley (Hordeum vulgare L.). They exist, and there are markers.
- Climate, competition and connectivity affect future migration and ranges of European trees. Well, doh.
- Quantifying carbon storage for tea plantations in China. All the tea in China…sequesters a lot of C. But plant type doesn’t count for much.
Nibbles: #Agchat, AGree, Tree genebank, Potato genebank
- Straws in the wind or portent of change? Why Farmers Are Embracing Social Media: the #AgChat Story
- Straws in the wind or portent of change? AGree (geddit?) Transforming Food and Ag Policy. See also Marion Nestle’s commentary and comments therein.
- More on the medicinal trees genebank in Nairobi.
- And just look at the new website of the International Potato Center genebank. Part of a complete makeover.
Sunday delight: pollinators take flight
Spend a few minutes watching this wonderful Ted Talk by Louie Schwartzberg, a film-maker with a thing for time-lapse flowers and slo-mo birds, butterflies, bluebottles, bees, and bats.
H.R. Clinton favours increased crop diversity shock
This just in from our colleague with the FAO building pass. (Photo hacked from IFAD’s Facebook page.
Just went and heard Hillary at FAO. She was brilliant and spoke very sensibly about food security.
She said we need higher quality seeds (more nutritious, more drought tolerant and disease resistant), we need to connect farmers to local markets and local markets to global markets. She also said we need to increase crop diversity!!
Hopefully the full transcript will be available on the FAO website at some point – she spoke very quickly!
She ended by saying that in spite of all the current headlines, she keeps her eye on the ‘trendlines’ and that we need to make advancing food security a cause for our time and deal with it now, or else we may never catch up.
LATER: Here’s the audio.
Nibbles: Red rice, Feed the Future, Heat, GM seed mixtures, Sorghum, Millet, Sturgeon, Vaccinium
- Anissa makes a meal of red rice from Western China eco-museum.
- Want to influence the US Feed the Future “global hunger and food security initiative”? Course you do.
- Peak heat and maize yields in the US. Bear it in mind when you read today’s flurry of interest in a new study from David Lobell et al.
- Seed mixtures not a good idea? Say it isn’t so!
- $4 million to continue development of biofortified sorghum.
- Cooking up a storm, millets edition.
- They’ve outlasted the dinosaurs, but they still need help.
- USDA gets blue in the face about blueberries.