Luigi Guarino

July 14, 2017July 14, 2017

CILY jumps to cassava?

You know that disease that we said about a year ago was threatening coconut plantations (and, incidentally, a coconut genebank) in Côte d’Ivoire? Yeah, Côte d’Ivoire lethal yellowing phytoplasma (CILY) that’s the one, well remembered.

Well, it looks like it may be affecting cassava as well.

That’s not good. Not good at all.

To our knowledge this is the first report of a phytoplasma affecting cassava in Côte d’Ivoire. The findings suggest that cassava may be a potential alternative host for the CILY phytoplasma, which poses a serious threat for the food security of the smallholder coconut and cassava farmers, especially women in Grand-Lahou, Côte d’Ivoire.

July 14, 2017July 14, 2017

Nibbles: Dwarf rice, Ricestoration, Tarostoration, Biorepositories, Sustainable coffee, Cactus wars, Goaty portraits, Spandrels, Potato genebank, Forests and nutrition

The long and short of Green Revolution rice.
Restoring historical slave-worked rice fields in North Carolina.
Kinda similar, but taro in Hawaii.
There’s a bank for milk diversity.
Nice review of sustainable coffee production.
Opuntia: tasty but deadly (to some).
Handsome goat pix.
Festoons of fruits at the Farnesina: Jeremy is incensed.
Great new webpages for the CIP genebank.
Another report on a report that living close to forests is good for nutritional security, up to a point. But bushmeat?

July 11, 2017July 11, 2017

Nibbles: Visionary edition

New guy in charge Peter Wenzl gives us his vision for the CIAT genebank.
Agriculture and Irrigation Minister of Peru gives us his vision for the Peruvian genebank.
CIMMYT’s annual report gives us a vision of conserving maize in Guatemala.
Farmer Somashekhara gives us his vision for finger millet farming in India. And two makes a trend…
Retired agriculture expert Malcolm Hazelman gives us his vision for Samoan gardens.
A Tagorean vision of radical relocalization involving perennial edimentals.
Lots of people give us their vision for saving the wild apple.
IFPRI gives us their vision for the future of food in a changing world. With infographic goodness.
Natalie Mueller et al. give us their vision for reviving the forgotten crops of the Eastern Agricultural Complex.
A vision of a planet protected in situ, in multiple ways. Yes, even pigeons. And yes, even cities, though agrobiodiversity neglected as usual.
A vision of permanent identifiers everywhere.
DNA gives us a vision of domestication explained. Yes, even sugarcane.

July 11, 2017

Creating a Global Seed Conservation Directory

This form will be used to populate an online Seed Conservation Knowledge Hub – a directory of facilities, individuals, and expertise in all aspects of seed conservation. Your participation completing this form is supporting the development of a tool that will benefit the seed conservation community. The information you provide in this form (apart from your contact information, unless specified) will be included in an online directory on BGCI’s website.

Now why hasn’t someone thought of this before?

July 10, 2017July 10, 2017

Brainfood: Wild foods, Maize in Guatemala, Wild lentils, Sorghum gaps, Ethiopian erosion, Chikanda barcoding, Brazil nut systems, Wild carrots, Ancient wild potato use, Wild wheat grains

The role of wild fruits and vegetables in delivering a balanced and healthy diet. Not great, until they’re domesticated.
Maize Diversity, Market Access, and Poverty Reduction in the Western Highlands of Guatemala. Forget maize.
Evaluation of Wild Lentil Species as Genetic Resources to Improve Drought Tolerance in Cultivated Lentil. Environment explained drought response in wild lentils better than molecular classification.
Geographical distribution, diversity and gap analysis of East African sorghum collection conserved at the ICRISAT genebank. Both Sudans.
Explaining the Ethiopian farmers’ perceptions on potential loss of traditional crop varieties: A principal components regression analysis. Poor farmers know more, and care more, about loss of traditional landraces.
High-throughput sequencing of African chikanda cake highlights conservation challenges in orchids. Those are very biodiverse cakes, but not in a good way.
Revisiting the ‘cornerstone of Amazonian conservation’: a socioecological assessment of Brazil nut exploitation. It’s actually in pretty good shape, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be improved.
Phylogenetic Prediction of Alternaria Leaf Blight Resistance in Wild and Cultivated Species of Carrots. Look for taller material in clade A.
Starch granule evidence for the earliest potato use in North America. S. jamesii may have been used for 10,000 years in Utah.
Genome-Wide Association Study of Grain Architecture in Wild Wheat Aegilops tauschii. Two genetic lineages, with big differences in grain width and weight.