Luigi Guarino

October 29, 2014October 29, 2014

Lots of talking out there

In the interest of completeness, I should mention that the International Rice Congress is competing for the attention of us all with a couple of other shindigs:

12th Asian Conference and Expert Consultation on Maize for Food, Feed, Nutrition and Environment Security #12AMC
6th All Africa Conference on Animal Agriculture #AACAA

You pays your money…

October 29, 2014October 29, 2014

Green Revolution 2.0

At 1:10 in the afternoon of 31 July 2008, ignoring the advice of his neighbors, Mr. Pal made the decision not to plow under his severely ravaged and sick-looking rice crop. His field had been submerged for 17 days from two floods.

And that is when the second Green Revolution began, according to Dr Bob Zeigler, DG of the International Rice Research Institute (IIRI). Read more about it on his blog. ¹ And follow developments at the International Rice Congress, including on Twitter. As for me, I’d like to speed up that GR 3.0.

zeigler

And if Dr Zeigler wants to know where those untapped Oryza species are to be found, I know where he should look.

October 29, 2014October 29, 2014

Apple pie

It must be the season, but there’s been a ton of stuff on apples on the interwebs recently. Here’s a little sampler:

Problems with Kazakhstan’s apples.
Problems with Britain’s apples.
Cambridge has a solution for those, though.
Solutions, actually.
And then there’s Dan Bussey‘s way.
And Rowan Jacobsen‘s. (He of the Apple Renaissance.) Which basically means documenting every last variety you can find.
They can then all — or the ones you can still find — go into the Seed Savers Exchange collection, say.
I’ll drink to that!
And a teaser…

October 28, 2014November 1, 2014

Remembering the Irish Potato Famine

Came across this monument in Boston last week. A stark reminder of what happens when crops are not diverse enough.

October 27, 2014October 27, 2014

Brainfood: Filipino rice synonyms, Jatropha breeding, Polish oats, Amazonian peppers, Wild lentils, Indian pigeonpea, Russian peas, Pulse markers, Wild pollinators, Phenotyping platforms, Almonds & peaches, Cerrado roads, Arboreta conservation

Multiplex SSR-PCR analysis of genetic diversity and redundancy in the Philippine rice (Oryza sativa L.) germplasm collection. 427 rice accessions in the national collection with similar names resolve to about 30 unique profiles. I think. The abstract is a little hard to follow, and that’s all I have access to.
Quantitative genetic parameters of agronomic and quality traits in a global germplasm collection reveal excellent breeding perspectives for Jatropha curcas L. 375 genotypes, 7 locations and 3 years get you quite enough data to plan a decent breeding programme.
Studies on genetic variation within old Polish cultivars of common oat. Forward into the past.
Morphoagronomic peppers no gender pungent Capsicum spp. Amazonia. Actually nothing to do with gender. That’s a mis-translation of “genus,” if you can believe it. Paper basically says that Amazonian peppers are really variable, which is not as interesting as it might have been.
Global Wild Annual Lens Collection: A Potential Resource for Lentil Genetic Base Broadening and Yield Enhancement. The core collection of wild annuals (which is actually a somewhat novel concept) comes mainly from Turkey and Syria, and it’s got diversity that’s not in the cultigen.
Pigeon pea Genetic Resources and Its Utilization in India, Current Status and Future Prospects. Indian genebank evaluates the ICRISAT core and mini-core. Then does some mutation breeding :)
Molecular genetic diversity of the pea (Pisum sativum L.) from the Vavilov Research Institute collection detected by the AFLP analysis. Molecular data does not correspond with subspecies nor ecogeographic groupings. Back to the drawing board.
Characterization of microsatellite markers, their transferability to orphan legumes and use in determination of genetic diversity among chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) cultivars. Chickpea SSRs are ok for other, less studied, crops too.
From research to action: enhancing crop yield through wild pollinators. Go wild.
Integration of phenotyping and genetic platforms for a better understanding of wheat performance under drought. You really need managed environment facilities. Didn’t a paper in Brainfood last week say what you needed was a network of field sites? I guess you need both.
Wild almonds gone wild: revisiting Darwin’s statement on the origin of peaches. He was not entirely wrong.
The role of roadsides in conserving Cerrado plant diversity. 70% of species is not bad, I guess. No word on whether that includes wild peanuts, but I suspect yes.
Do living ex situ collections capture the genetic variation of wild populations? A molecular analysis of two relict tree species, Zelkova abelica and Zelkova carpinifolia. Yes and no. But this is in botanic gardens and arboreta, what about seedbanks? The cerrado people want to know…