- Wow, that’s one huge pumpkin!
- Genomic whiz-bangery, which was apparently not involved in producing the above pumpkin, continues to hold much promise for wheat yields. And your jetpack is in the mail. I would ban the use of the word promise in this type of article. But since I can’t do that, I promise not to link to them ever again.
- Jess gets to grips with Timorese nutrition. Get those local landraces back from any genebank that has them, Jess. And don’t forget to collect any remaining ones.
- Then you could do some cool Seeds-for-Needs-type stuff.
- And maybe some local breeding too?
- And don’t forget local fruit trees!
- Because you know investing in nutrition is really cost-effective.
- Though of course it’s not just about the money.
- Especially when it comes to coffee.
- Or cacao for that matter.
- They shoot hogs, don’t they? Maybe even in East Timor. Goats, alas, have problems of their own.
- And as for dogs, we forced them to digest starch. What even the dingo? I bet there are dingo-like dogs in East Timor.
It’s official: genebanks valuable
You may remember that back in the summer we blogged about a project to assign a monetary value to the Greek genebank. Well, although the project’s website says nothing about any results yet, a video has surfaced which does give some numbers. Here’s the money shot:
And that’s just insurance value. Add to that productivity benefits (which unfortunately are not given in the film), and divide by what it costs to run the place (idem), and you find that “the comparison is favourable — the benefits far far exceed the costs, which means that having the genebank, investing in the genebank, maintaining and developing the genebank, is a desirable policy.” Well, that’s kinda expected, but it’s good to hear it from a Professor of Economic Theory and Policy. We all, I’m sure, look forward to seeing the spreadsheet. Because yeah, sure, money isn’t everything, but it does talk. Especially, these days, in Greece.
Nibbles: Turkish wheat, OFSP in India, Food crisis, Avocado seeds
- CIMMYT finds some Turkish wheat landraces. In Turkish fields that is, not its genebank.
- CIP puts orange sweet potatoes onto Indian fields.
- Food price crisis did not affect overall food security. Overall.
- Something else to do with avocado seeds apart from sticking toothpicks in them and dunking them in water.
Nibbles: Quinoa to and fro, Pasta past, Madagascar prospecting, Hunger games, Livestock genetics, Smallholder technologies, Wheat LOLA, ESA and the ITPGRFA, Development and the CAP, Conservation agriculture, Development in hard places, Food & culture exhibition
- Quinoa is bad. Well, good for some. No, good for everyone. No, really. Damn, this story is complicated!
- The story of pasta is pretty convoluted too.
- Collecting in Madagascar can be tricky.
- Lots of ways to combat hunger, no easy way to figure out which is best.
- On the other hand, it’s very easy to see how livestock genetics will feed the world. No, wait…
- FAO has a nifty website on “Technologies and practices for small agricultural producers” but even the “advanced interface” (sic) lacks an RSS feed. I ask you, how difficult is it to bung in an RSS feed? Anyway, there is some stuff on participatory breeding and diversification, though if you use the search term “landraces”, it helpfully suggests you may have meant “landslides.”
- I don’t suppose FAO is in any case interested in the Landrace Pillar of the Wheat Pre-Breeding Lola. Nope, didn’t think so.
- The European Seed Association doesn’t like the latest EU report on IP rights and genetic resources. They think the ITPGRFA not sufficiently recognized. Not as complicated as the quinoa controversy, but I storified it anyway. And then had to export it to a really ugly PDF in 2018 when that all came to an end.
- Still at the EU, Olivier De Schutter thinks they need to “development-proof” the CAP. Too difficult to think through the connection to the above, but I’m sure it exists.
- The 3rd International Conference on Conservation Agriculture in Southeast Asia has its proceedings online. Not just conservation agriculture, though. If you look hard enough there’s some conservation of agriculture. If you see what I mean. You get both in Miguel Altieri’s vision, of course.
- Development is a hard row to hoe. Especially if you’re into fish.
- Nothing hard, at least on the eyes, about the AMNH’s Our Global Kitchen: Food, Nature, Culture exhibition.
Brainfood: Introductions, Diversified farming systems, Breadfruit, Rice, Aquaculture threats, Arthropods in rice, Diverse landscapes, Diverse pollinators, Species re-introduction, Ecosystem function, Grapes, Prunus africana
- Increases in crop pests caused by Wasmannia auropunctata in Solomon Islands subsistence gardens. Law of Unintended Consequences takes its toll. Or does it? Discussion at Pestnet suggests the Little Fire Ant may not have been introduced as a biological control agent as suggested by the paper.
- A Social-Ecological Analysis of Diversified Farming Systems: Benefits, Costs, Obstacles, and Enabling Policy Frameworks. Special issue of Ecology and Society on DFS. That would be Diversified Farming Systems. Bottom line is that you need to understand both their ecology and their politics to make sense of them, and make them work for you.
- Morphological diversity in breadfruit (Artocarpus, Moraceae): insights into domestication, conservation, and cultivar identification. 221 accessions provide exactly those insights.
- The original features of rice (Oryza sativa L.) genetic diversity and the importance of within-variety diversity in the highlands of Madagascar build a strong case for in situ conservation. Farms are more diverse than villages, which are more diverse than regions, so it may not take that much to conserve a lot of diversity in situ.
- More rapid and severe disease outbreaks for aquaculture at the tropics: implications for food security. Driven by environmental factors, and will get worse with climate change. Strangely, breeding for resistance, and genetic diversity in general, not mentioned.
- Cultivation of Domesticated Rice Alters Arthropod Biodiversity and Community Composition. Wild rice fields have different, less diverse arthropod communities.
- Quantifying habitat-specific contributions to insect diversity in agricultural mosaic landscapes. Some of the different bits of diverse landscapes in Switzerland have unique insects, which is apparently not the case in other places.
- Synergistic effects of non-Apis bees and honey bees for pollination services. And you do need lots of different insects, at least for pollination.
- Earth observation: overlooked potential to support species reintroduction programmes. Translocation and introductions are fraught, but if you still want to do them…
- An improved model to predict the effects of changing biodiversity levels on ecosystem function. Basically, the contribution of species 1 with relative abundance A and species 2 with relative abundance B to ecosystem function is AxB to the power of θ. Can it be extended to ecosystem services, I wonder?
- Pinot blanc and Pinot gris arose as independent somatic mutations of Pinot noir. So that’s where they came from. Insights into “[o]enological aptitude”.
- Divergent pattern of nuclear genetic diversity across the range of the Afromontane Prunus africana mirrors variable climate of African highlands. Sheds light on the history of Afromontane regions.