- Seed Hunter visits genebank. Not many people hurt.
- I’d like to visit this Corn Palace.
- Rice domestication: not once, not twice, three times. Well, really, who’s to say maybe even more than that? Maybe even in Australia?
- Solomon Islands cacao wins award. Looking forward to tasting it one day. But is it certified?
- Bread, Wine, Chocolate: The Giveaway.
- Researchers hoping to science the shit out of threat to Thanksgiving.
- Genetic resources and gastronomy in Brazil.
- Pineapple gets a genome.
- Sunflower saves soybean? What wizardry is this?
Sourcing the seeds of restoration
Are you involved in the restoration of degraded land? If so, Bioversity International has a survey for you. It’s all because Sustainable Development Goal 15 “affirms the earlier commitments to restore 150 million hectares of degraded landscapes and forest lands by 2020 and at least another 200 million hectares by 2030.” But how to get hold of all the seeds that will be needed? Yeah, not so easy, is it…
Brainfood: Wild maize, Elderberry phenolics, Barley & boron, Land sparing trifecta, Sustainable diets, Chinese apple diversity, Turkish okra diversity, Barcoding yams, Plant diversity levels, Biotic velocity
- Presence of Zea luxurians (Durieu and Ascherson) Bird in Southern Brazil: Implications for the Conservation of Wild Relatives of Maize. Well there’s a turnup for the books.
- Fruit Phenolic Composition of Different Elderberry Species and Hybrids. Some interspecific hybrids have high phenolics levels.
- Diversity in boron toxicity tolerance of Australian barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) genotypes. There’s variation beyond the 4 known boron tolerance loci.
- Agriculture and the threat to biodiversity in Sub-Saharan Africa. Intensification is good for biodiversity, but not yet.
- Land for Food & Land for Nature? The former, according to modelling. But it depends. See above.
- Wildlife-friendly farming increases crop yield: evidence for ecological intensification. Trifecta!
- Is a Cardio-Protective Diet Sustainable? A Review of the Synergies and Tensions Between Foods That Promote the Health of the Heart and the Planet. Yes, but it will take some work.
- Genetic diversity of Malus cultivars and wild relatives in the Chinese National Repository of Apple Germplasm Resources. The varieties from the former Soviet republics and Japan are different to each other and to the canonical European/North American/Chinese material.
- Genetic and phenotypic variation of Turkish Okra (Abelmoschus esculentus L. Moench) accessions and their possible relationship with American, Indian and African germplasms. Turkish okra comes from all over the place.
- DNA barcoding of the main cultivated yams and selected wild species in the genus Dioscorea. 16/21 species I guess is a start.
- Plant responses to climatic extremes: within-species variation equals among-species variation. For a bunch of European grassland plants, within species variation in response to climate was as high as that among species.
- Biotic and Climatic Velocity Identify Contrasting Areas of Vulnerability to Climate Change. Tropical species can’t move fast enough.
Nibbles: EATx Cali, Gourds, Armenian wine, Wheat chemistry, Genomics of domestication, Soybean breeding
- Svalbard among things being discussed at EATx Cali today. Who knows, maybe other genebanks too?
- The cucumber’s wilder relatives.
- Armenian wine going back to the future.
- Whole grains deconstructed.
- Unpicking domestication in chickens and cattle. And the original paper on the latter, featuring the aurochs genome.
- Breeders have bred omega-3 alpha-linolenic acid (ALA) out of soybeans, but are now going back to wild relatives to breed it back in.
A periplus to the geography of food
This Article Selection has been created in order to highlight some of the huge body of research on the topic of Food across Geography, Planning and Development journals. In recent years, we have published an increasing number of articles on this topic, from a very wide range of perspectives, and interest continues to grow today.
Great idea from Elsevier.