Luigi Guarino

November 19, 2014November 19, 2014

Moroccan medicinal mint tea

photo (34)

That’s me on the right in Rabat last week, having a post-prandial drink with Dr Ahmed Amri, head of the ICARDA genebank. I post the photo (taken by my colleague Charlotte Lusty) by way of explanation for the lack of blogging lately, and also as an excuse to link to the beta version of Kew’s Medicinal Plant Names Service, which I have just become aware of. You see that bit of greenery on the tea tray? It’s a plant that’s sometimes added to mint tea in Morocco during the winter. It’s called “absinthe” there. If you want to know the Latin name, you can look it up here.

November 18, 2014

Global Nutrition Report calls for better integration with agriculture sector

The share of nutrition-sensitive investments in agriculture, social protection, water, sanitation and hygiene, education, and women’s empowerment programs needs to expand. The success of these sectors is important for nutrition improvement but they could do much more for nutrition while furthering their own goals. From the available evidence, the authors suggest that nutrition-sensitive expenditures are currently a small percentage of expenditures in these sectors. Partly this is because nutrition allies in the different sectors may not know what to do to make their nutrition programs more nutrition sensitive or why it is in their interests to do so…

That’s from the synopsis of the just-released Global Nutrition Report, the first of its kind. Their point is perhaps illustrated by another just-released report, this one on diabetes. When you finally manage to click through to the bit on prevention, there’s very little on diet, let alone the role of the food system as a whole.

November 17, 2014November 18, 2014

Brainfood: Pea spectroscopy, Phaseolus diversity, More beans, Brazilian rice, Trees in landscapes, German cherries, Appalachian apples, Sicilian sheep, Diverse livestock systems, Barley seed longevity, African wild veggies

Using Fourier Transform Near-Infrared Spectroscopy For the Evaluation and Regional Analysis of Pea (Pisum sativum L.). Fancy maths reveals a low-protein content group, a high total polyphenol group and a high protein, starch and oil group in Chinese pea germplasm.
Total phenolics, flavonoids, tannins and antioxidant activity of lima beans conserved in a Brazilian Genebank. No fancy maths used to figure out that they vary among accessions, but not necessarily only due to genetics. Actually, that goes for the previous one too.
Potencial de uso de cultivares crioulas de feijoeiro no sistema de cultivo orgânico. Bean landraces do no worse than cultivars under organic conditions in Brazil.
Evaluation of rice genotypes for sugarcane borer resistance using phenotypic methods and molecular markers. Resistant materials (a couple out of 34 tested) are genetically similar, and will now be used as parents in Brazilian improvement programme. No word on whether the results will be any good under organic conditions.
Functional and phylogenetic diversity of scattered trees in an agricultural landscape: Implications for conservation. Brazil again. Scattered trees may not look as nice as closed forest, but they represent decent proportions of both its functional and taxonomic diversity.
Physicochemical characterization of fruit quality traits in a German sour cherry collection. Some accessions are not only better, but more consistent, than commercial varieties. No word on to what extent they can be found scattered across the German countryside.
Climate Change and Apple Diversity: Local Perceptions from Appalachian North Carolina. Heirloom apple growers are largely climate change deniers. That doesn’t make their orchards (no scattered trees for them) any less cool.
Genome wide linkage disequilibrium and genetic structure in Sicilian dairy sheep breeds. Valle del Belice, Comisana and Pinzirita dairy sheep breeds are variable, though some more than others, yet they don’t overlap.
Agricultural diversity to increase adaptive capacity and reduce vulnerability of livestock systems against weather variability – A farm-scale simulation study. Fancy maths show that more diverse livestock systems are better for ya. In France anyway. And that diversity doesn’t seem to include livestock diversity.
Genome-wide association mapping and biochemical markers reveal that seed ageing and longevity are intricately affected by genetic background, developmental and environmental conditions in barley. Title pretty much says it all.
Dietary contribution of Wild Edible Plants to women’s diets in the buffer zone around the Lama forest, Benin — an underutilized potential. Important sources of Cu and Fe, but even so not enough.

November 16, 2014November 23, 2014

Nibbles: Chocolate, MAS, Cash crops, Medicinal plants, Rice domestication, Cat genome, Banana research, Artichoke history, Root vegetables, Diabetes data, eMonocot, Paris herbarium, Appleseed, Seed saving, Potato safety duplication, Seed atlas, Botanical Jurassic Park, Mapping urban fruit, Midwest road trip, Iraqi marshes, World Digital Library, World Parks Congress, Plant demography

Ok here goes, there’s a week’s work of Nibbles we’ve got to catch up on.
World running out of chocolate! Tell that to Cologne.
Yeah well I prefer tea to cocoa.
Greenpeace: “Smart breeding” will save us, not GMOs. Breeders: All breeding is smart.
Guess the world’s biggest cash crop. Yeah, that one.
Alas, it’s not included in the recent strategy for conserving medicinal plants. Not that it would need conserving.
The domestication of the world’s biggest crop, period. Deconstructed. And if you want to drill down.
And of the world’s biggest fruit.
And of the world’s biggest pet.
And of the world’s most difficult to eat vegetable.
Root “vegetables” made simple. Because winter.
And why you must eat your veggies, including the difficult ones.
Videos on Kew’s monocot database and on the renovation of another famous herbarium.
The real Johnny Appleseed.
But you too can save seeds, just like Johnny.
But don’t forget to safety duplicate, like CIP has done, at Embrapa.
And this shows you what those seeds can look like.
You don’t necessarily need seeds to save plants, though.
Mapping fallen fruit. Because we can.
Road trip!
Boat trip!
Selected Techniques in the Art of Agriculture. From French to Turkish to Arabic. One of many nifty agriculture-related resources in the World Digital Library.
Oh yeah, the IUCN World Parks Congress has been on and its all over the intertubes. Including with neat visualizations, natch.
How many of the species in the COMPADRE database of plant demography information are in protected areas? How many are crop wild relatives? I need an intern.

November 16, 2014

Maize field day in Mexico

Dr Denise Costich, head of the CIMMYT maize genebank (MGB) sent out a very compelling invitation a couple of days back:

Attached is the official invitation to our field day, to be held next Friday, 21 November, starting at 10:00 AM at the Toluca Station (please note the change of date). We are showcasing our beautiful materials from the high altitude Andean germplasm that, up to now, the MGB has had great difficulties in regenerating here in Mexico. We also included a demonstration plot in our nursery, featuring long forgotten genetic pools developed at the Toluca Station in the 80s and 90s, as well as, popcorns, cacahuacintles, and other landraces from the region. We are targeting the smallholder farmers from areas around 2600 masl and above. We couldn’t have done this without funding from the Global Crop Diversity Trust and ICAMEX. We also thank the Toluca Station Manager, Fernando Delgado, for his great support, interest, and encouragement. Thanks also to Hans Braun, who extended an invitation to the “maiceros” of CIMMYT to plant at this wonderful station… I’m sure I have missed people who might be interested in attending the field day. You are welcome to forward this invitation to them. However, everyone, please RSVP, so that we have enough food and catalogs!

It sounds like great fun, and I wish I could go, but I can’t. Maybe you can?