- A Wheat Germplasm Database To Rule Them All. No, not from CGIAR.
- New livestock maps of the world. Yes, from CGIAR.
- Kashmir ponders an apple genebank.
- More from Game of Strawberries.
- Wanna study the population genomics of cheese fungi? Course you do.
- Domesticating local fruit trees good for nutrition, but need secure tenure and good planting material.
- Building better broccoli, the genome way.
- Early domesticated dogs helped in mammoth hunts.
- Current extinction rate about 1000 times higher than background. Databases can help with that, believe it or not.
- Building a national PGRFA system in Bolivia. When will they ratify the ITPGRFA, though?
Wellesbourne set for the next 5 years
If there was ever any doubt about the future of the UK’s vegetables genebank at Wellesbourne, this should settle it:
Warwick Crop Centre at the University of Warwick has won a five year contract from Defra to continue to host the UK Vegetable Genebank at the University’s Wellesbourne Campus.
Good news, as far as it goes, but I have my doubts about the idea of such short-term contracts for genebanks. I mean, it’s certainly good practice to keep an institution on its toes with regular reviews of performance and the like, but what exactly is going to happen if Warwick Crop Centre does not win the contract again in 2019? Will the whole thing be moved to another locality, lock, stock and cold room? And on what basis will that future decision be made anyway? Are there some performance targets that the genebank will need to meet?
Nibbles: Linux lettuce, Climate intelligence, European ag & CC, Italian forests, Sweet potato chains, Aroid podcast, Beer trifecta, CWR everywhere
- Totally forgot if we already linked to this latest pean to open source seed.
- Climate-smart agriculture described in three paragraphs.
- Hope someone explains it to European farmers, and soon.
- Italy is increasingly wooded. But only because farms are being abandoned. Maybe not climate-smart enough?
- If only those farms had better links to markets, like in E. Africa…
- Dutch food writer on the Jewish (maybe) origins of the Surinamese national dish. Gotta love edible aroids. Jeremy does his podcast thing.
- Step 1: Breed your hops.
- Step 2: Find a funky yeast.
- Step 3: Crack the Kenyan beer market.
- Back to real life: USAID’s brand new multisectoral nutrition policy. Now, then, what’s the betting that the agricultural interventions supported by USAID avoided the risks that such things often hold for nutrition (incomes, prices, types of products, women social status and workload, sanitary environment and inequalities)?
- SeedMap.org breaks down crop wild relatives.
- Somebody mention crop wild relatives? Yes, Sandy Knapp.
- Somebody mention parientes silvestres de cultivos? Yes, Nora Castañeda.
- How many CWR will go the way of Arabidopsis? Because southern populations of that species in genebanks are already doing better than local populations in northern sites.
- How many crop wild relatives in Kew’s meadows?
An underestimated third line of defence for seeds in genebanks
A note on their recent work on seed storage from Steven P.C. Groot and Robbert van Treuren. Our thanks to both.
Dry and cool storage is recommended to extend the shelf life of seeds during ex situ conservation. But that’s not all! The shelf life of seeds stored in genebanks or the Svalbard Global Seed Vault is expected to be prolonged considerably by storing seeds under oxygen-free conditions soon after drying. To demonstrate the deteriorating effects of oxygen in the atmosphere of seeds, we published earlier in Annals of Botany, showing that high concentrations of oxygen accelerate the ageing of seeds. More recently, we have reproduced earlier findings that seed longevity can be improved considerably by storage under anoxia. This is illustrated by the picture, showing a strong difference in the viability of primed celery seeds, depending on storage within air or under anoxia. Explore our recent publication in Plant Genetic Resources, which outlines why this third row of defence against seed ageing should not be neglected by those involved in preserving biodiversity in the form of seeds.
Featured: Jam for tea
Patrick has “a lot of respect for Mr de Schutter,” but begs to differ on his take on sugar and salt, which we Nibbled:
Not only is there very little reason to classify sugar and salt as ‘bad’, but they are essential ingredients in traditionally processed foods.
Read the whole comment.