What I want to know is how they harvest on those slopes.
Brainfood: Wild barley diversity double, Sesame diversity, Coconut genome size, Giant anteater, Sucking mangoes, Teff development, PhilRice, Korean soybeans, Coffee forest management, Switchgrass diversity, Yam diversity
- Analysis of Correlations Between Climate and Molecular Adaptive Evolution of Wild Barley with Geographical Information Systems (GIS). Some genes are associated with climatic variables in wild barley, others not so much.
- Molecular Genotyping of Historical Barley Landraces Reveals Novel Candidate Regions for Local Adaption. Latitudinal structuring in northern European barley landraces down to 7 SNPs. Not clear if related to above.
- Morphological and genetic diversity assessment of sesame (Sesamum indicum L.) accessions differing in origin. Not much geographic structure.
- Ploidy and domestication are associated with genome size variation in Palms. Tall coconuts show more variation in genome size than dwarfs.
- Protected areas effectiveness in maintaining viable giant anteater (Myrmecophaga tridactyla) populations in an agricultural frontier. I just wanted to link to a paper on the giant anteater.
- Genetic Diversity in Seedling Populations of Mango. What exactly are “sucking purposes”?
- Diversifying crops for food and nutrition security — a case of teff. Hipsters will save orphan crops.
- Conservation of Rice Genetic Resources for Food Security. In the Philippines genebank, that is.
- Soybean [Glycine max (L.) Merrill]: Importance as A Crop and Pedigree Reconstruction of Korean Varieties. 168 of 178 varieties released in the last 100 years in Korea can be traced to 4 pedigrees.
- In-situ Conservation of wild forest coffee — Exploring the potential of participatory forest management in south west Ethiopia. It’s the communities, stupid.
- Switchgrass Germplasm Resources. Upland and lowland ecotypes, different ploidy levels, latitudinal differentiation, and a national collection at USDA to play with.
- Participatory evaluation of Guinea yam (Dioscorea cayenensis Lam.–D. rotundata Poir. complex) landraces from Benin and agro-morphological characterization of cultivars tolerant to drought, high soil moisture and chips storage insects. 5-15% of over 400 varieties (including duplications) are good for one thing or another.
Hibiscus lost and found
Hibiscus storckii is one of the original, native species hibiscus plants that is a probable ancestor to the modern hibiscus hybrids. It was discovered and named by a botanist visiting the island of Fiji in the 1800s. Expeditions to the island since then have not located any surviving examples of this species of hibiscus still growing on Fiji. The flowers are pink and white, and the bush is small, full, and well-branched. Kew Botanical Gardens in England received cuttings of this species directly from the botanist who discovered it and fortunately has been able to grow it continually ever since.
Yeah, well, the bit about the species not being found in Fiji is happily no longer the case. Because my friend Lex Thomson has just posted this photo on Facebook:
And, to make you (and me) even more envious, here’s where it was found:
I do love it when a wild relative, and a beautiful one at that, turns up in something other than an herbarium specimen. Thanks to Lex and his CSIRO colleague David Bush for letting us bring you the news, and the pix.
Nibbles: Tea & climate change, Insectophagy, Argentinian wine, Native food companies, Honey bunny
- Tea: what’s bad for Kenya is good for the UK.
- Enough with the stories about edible insects, I beg you.
- Malbec might be in trouble.
- Native American food companies does not necessarily mean Native American crops, but that’s ok I guess.
- The best honey in the world comes from where?
Nibbles: Seed Treaty, Grelo festival, Large tomatoes, Saffron collecting, Enset redux, Grassland diversity, Census 2016, Organic definition, Dalit seeds, Ancient wheat DNA, Ancient American farmers, Tree adaptation, Syrian crops at OFN
- What civil society said at the latest Governing Body meeting of the ITPGRFA earlier this month.
- Google Translate fail puts spotlight on the cruciferous crop I’ve always known as fiarielli but which is sometimes called rapini. Both names kinda suck.
- That’s one huge tomato.
- That’s one expensive spice.
- Rediscovering enset.
- Grassland biodiversity good for resilience to climate change.
- Global agriculture: here comes the data.
- Deconstructing organic. The word, that is.
- Empowering dalit farmers by recognizing their knowledge of seeds.
- That ancient underwater wheat DNA wasn’t so ancient after all. Maybe.
- It was migrants who forced the ancestors of the Pueblo people to move.
- Local adaptation in trees: what has it ever done for us?
- Another way to safeguard Syrian crop diversity.