Luigi Guarino

April 11, 2013April 10, 2013

Yet another new wild banana

Musa velutina subsp. markkuana (photo taken by Markku Häkkinen in Calicut, India)

In the latest installment of our never-ending quest to keep you up to date with banana taxonomy, and bring you photos of beautiful crop wild relatives at the same time, meet Musa velutina subsp. markkuana , a just-published new subspecies from northeastern India. If that subspecific name sounds kinda familiar, it’s because you may have read about former sea captain and current Musa taxonomist extraordinaire Markku Häkkinen here before.

April 11, 2013April 11, 2013

Nibbles: Wine and climate change, Botanic gardens video, Forest restoration video, Deforestation live, European breeders meet, Yams and gender and insurance, N, Fish pots, Ancient ag books, Bioinformatics training, Sustinable ag

Blogging machine Tom Barnett worried about effect of climate change on his favourite tipple.
BGCI shell out for cool animation on social role of botanic gardens, and it’s totally worth it.
As also, but differently, are IUCN’s videos on forest restoration.
All the world’s forests, online, any day now, to monitor the opposite of their restoration.
Europe tries to stimulate innovation in plant breeding. By holding a meeting. Ah, but there’s a hashtag.
Development economists illustrate interesting point about gender and yam cultivation with photo of sweet potatoes.
The organic attitude to inorganic nitrogen.
Late Pleistocene hunter-gatherers ate fish. Well I never.
Reviews of couple books on agricultural origins.
Need bioinformatics training? Who doesn’t.
ICRAF reviews efforts to monitor sustainable intensification. Somewhere. I can’t for the life of me find the actual document.

April 10, 2013April 10, 2013

The grapevines of Pompeii

Sign explaining the story behind a vineyard planted in the ruins of Pompeii — Sign explaining the story behind one of several vineyards planted among the ruins of Pompeii

Although I knew that grapevines were cultivated in Roman times in and around Pompeii, I had no idea, until I visited the place for the first time in decades last week, that they’re there again, and in force. Various varieties apparently dating back to the time of the eruption that destroyed the city in AD 79 were planted in the late 1990s, more or less where they were originally grown.

According to Mastroberardino, wine played a central role in the lives of the Vesuvian people. Archaeological excavations, botanical studies, and the discovery of casts of vine roots and their support stakes have confirmed that vines were grown within ancient Pompeii’s city walls, in the gardens and orchards which beautified villas, and especially in the quarters located on the outskirts of the city, near the amphitheatre.

And they seem to be doing very well, though you perhaps wouldn’t know it from my photos taken in early April. Fortunately, the internet can help with that.

April 9, 2013

Food composition training materials planned

Are you working in a university which includes or is intending to include a course on food composition in its curriculum? well, if so, you might be interested in this recent announcement from INFOODS coordinator Ruth Charrondiere on FAO’s nutrition listserv.

I am pleased to announce that FAO/INFOODS is developing an e-learning course on food composition which is intended mainly for universities to easily incorporate food composition into their curricula. It will also be useful for self-learners and food composition courses. The e-learning course will supplement the FAO/INFOODS Food Composition Study Guide and its accompanying 12 PowerPoint Presentations (see http://www.fao.org/infoods/infoods/training/en/). It will be available in English. You will be able to download it free-of-charge from the INFOODS website and receive it on CD. We intend to launch it at the 10th IFDC in Granada.

So now you have no excuse for not documenting food composition data at the crop variety level.

April 8, 2013April 8, 2013

Brainfood: Moroccan almonds, MAS in potato, Mexican maize market, History of agronomy, Malian querns, Hani terraces, Conservation modelling, Wild Cucumis, Pathogens and CC

Moroccan almond is a distinct gene pool as revealed by SSR. Ok, now what?
Molecular markers for late blight resistance breeding of potato: an update. Ok, now what?
Reconstructing the Maize Market in Rural Mexico. Not so free after all.
Why agronomy in the developing world has become contentious. Neoliberalism, participation and environmentalism. The answer? Political agronomy.
Millet and sauce: The uses and functions of querns among the Minyanka (Mali). Form depends on more than just function.
Landscape pattern and sustainability of a 1300-year-old agricultural landscape in subtropical mountain areas, Southwestern China. If it ain’t broke, why fix it?
Mathematical optimization ideas for biodiversity conservation. Fancy math works sometimes but not always. Wonder if it would work on the Hani terraces above. Or on Mexican maize for that matter.
Mitochondrial genome is paternally inherited in Cucumis allotetraploid (C. × hytivus) derived by interspecific hybridization. Not the chlororoplast genome though. Weird. But now what?
Migrate or evolve: options for plant pathogens under climate change. Or, indeed, both. But we need better models, and a better handle on what human interventions can do. Interestingly, pathogen diversity may well increase in some places.