- Wild and semi-wild leafy vegetables used by the Maale and Ari ethnic communities in southern Ethiopia. 30 of them.
- Collection and Conservation of Cold Adapted Indigenous Rice Landraces from Western Ghats, South India. 56 of them.
- Exploring Germplasm Diversity to Understand the Domestication Process in Cicer spp. Using SNP and DArT Markers. 3 populations among domesticated types; more diversity in the wilds.
- Genetically-Improved Tilapia Strains in Africa: Potential Benefits and Negative Impacts. Mean present value of introducing an improved strain to Ghana is 1% of GDP, but you could get same with better management. Both would of course be best.
- Diversity in oil content and fatty acid profile in seeds of wild cassava germplasm. Some species could be oil crops.
- The Study of Genetic Diversity and Phylogenetic Evolution in Indigenous Horses (Equus caballus) of Gansu. If I understand the abstract correctly, this suggests, among other things, that some local horse breeds can be traced back to Przewalski’s Horse, maybe.
- Microsatellite Diversity, Population Structure, and Core Collection Formation in Melon Germplasm. In China. Frankly not nearly as interesting as the horse story.
- Optimal sampling of seeds from plant populations for ex-situ conservation of genetic biodiversity, considering realistic population structure. 25–30 individuals per population from few but widely-spaced populations.
- Exploring genetic variation in the tomato (Solanum section Lycopersicon) clade by whole-genome sequencing. 20x more diversity in the wilds than the cultivated, correlated with habitat.
- Understanding Sustainable Diets: A Descriptive Analysis of the Determinants and Processes That Influence Diets and Their Impact on Health, Food Security, and Environmental Sustainability. The determinants of sustainability are agricultural, health, sociocultural, environmental and socioeconomic, and fiddling with one to improve it may screw up another.
- Anchoring durum wheat diversity in the reality of traditional agricultural systems: varieties, seed management, and farmers’ perception in two Moroccan regions. Farmers grow both improved varieties and landraces, the latter mainly for their quality characteristics.
- Unraveling the nexus between water and food security in Latin America and the Caribbean: regional and global implications. Production has increased, but at the cost of the natural capital of the region, and nutritional problems persist.
Conserving horticultural species, one at the time
Another report from one of our correspondents at the International Horticultural Congress in Brisbane, this on the symposium on Utilization of Plant Genetic Resources:
The full day symposium keynote by Dr Ehsan Dulloo of Bioversity International covered the broad topic of developing strategies for conserving plant genetic diversity. Individual presentations covered a wide range of topics and crops, including: roots/tubers (sweet potatoes, yams, cassava), aroids and breadfruit in the Pacific Islands; use of native species to restore costal landscapes impacted by cyclones in Fiji; conservation of wild temperate small fruit species such as Vaccinium in Canada (blueberries and cranberries); use of the underutilized tea tree (Melaleuca alternifolia) in Australia; conservation of mango landraces on-farm in India; characterizing the morphological and genetic diversity of baobab (Adansonia digitata) in Kenya; and the cryopreservation of clonal genetic material of apple, peach and nut trees (Juglans spp), among others. The common thread that ran though most of these presentations is that a lot of work still needs to be done to understand the genetic diversity that we have and the best way to conserve it (in situ & ex situ), such that it leads to optimal use of these important genetic resources.
There’s one more of these updates from IHC2014 in the pipeline, which we’ll probably put up tomorrow.
Baobab, frankincense and croton: private sector brings gifts
Found these in an up-market curio shop in Nairobi’s Yaya Centre shopping centre. I’ve never come across Wild Living before, but they sound like an interesting outfit, doing some serious value addition to local products by the look of it:
From Baobab and Shea to Leleshwa and Acacia frankinsense forest oils, East Africa, the cradle of mankind, hosts a remarkable diversity of unique natural resources that have provided succour and health during the majority of our evolution.
Whilst traditionally used, the natural benefits of these products, have until now, been unavailable to the global market. Furthermore, Africa’s potential to produce conservation and livelihoods products for its own development has remained unclaimed.
Wild Living realizes this potential by providing a market for over twenty community based projects located throughout East Africa who are being assisted by partner organizations such as WWF and OXFAM to sustainably and ethically produce natural products.
Wild Living publicises the conservation and livelihoods benefits of each of these producers products and through increased sales revenue assists them to continue conserving their unique natural resources whilst building their own lives in a dignified and self-sufficient manner.
Revenues realized by Wild Living through the sale of its brand are used to assist partners in the ethical and sustainable production of goods whilst providing access into an increasingly conscientious consumer market.
Anyone know anything more about them? Are they on the level? In any case, something else to add to those baobab fact sheets.
Global diets visualized
National Geographic’s eight-month series on food has caught up with Colin Khoury’s blockbuster paper on how many crops feed the world. The infographic on diet similarity looks ok on the printed page, I guess:
But it’s way cooler online.
Big rice data portal
You remember the 3000 rice genomes project? You know, the one that represents the future of genebanks? Well, if you were wondering which 3000 accessions were actually chosen for sequencing, you can get that information, and much, much more, on the new website of the International Rice Informatics Consortium. Happy browsing. Well, maybe not on this page, which seems to need some work.