- Biodiversity and yield trade‐offs for organic farming. Switch to organic agriculture if the surrounding land that will need to be converted to farming to make up for production shortfalls is less than 2.4 times more biodiverse than the farmed land. But that’s an average that will depend on the crop.
- Global wheat production could benefit from closing the genetic yield gap. Customize improved wheat varieties to local conditions by using the diversity in genebanks. No word on whether that includes organic conditions.
- The impact of the international rice genebank (IRG) on rice farming in Bangladesh. Someone mention genebanks? 1% increase in genebank contribution to new variety means 1% increase in yield. No word on what happens under organic conditions.
- Constraints on Rice Cultivation in Eastern Madagascar: Which Factors Matter to Smallholders, and Which Influence Food Security? Does swidden cultivation count as organic?
- What are the links between tree-based farming and dietary quality for rural households? A review of emerging evidence in low- and middle-income countries. It’s generally a good idea to keep trees around your farm. But how to make sure that it happens?
- Transforming food systems with trees and forests. Here’s how: scale up tree food production, reorient research towards trees foods, repurposing production incentives towards tree foods, and integrate nutrition with conservation. Got it? No word on whether the whole thing needs to be organic though.
- High exposure of global tree diversity to human pressure. But what about the diversity of trees on farms? Well I guess if we do the above properly it will be ok.
- Carbon removals from nature restoration are no substitute for steep emission reductions. Trees are not enough.
Course: “Genomes, Genebanks, and Growers”
This series of three 1-credit courses provides a solid introduction to the conservation and use of plant genetic resources. The series is targeted to upper-level undergraduates, beginning graduate students, and professionals undertaking continuing education. The learning outcomes, course format, computer requirements, and list of topics for the three courses are listed below.
Interesting, no?
A digital herbarium production line in action
Check out how the U.S. National Herbarium is digitizing its specimens. Wild.
Nibbles: Pacific genebank, IPBES report, New mangoes, British apples, Greek landraces, Fonio, Space seeds, Macadamia cryo
- New Zealand supports SPC regional crops and trees genebank in a big way.
- Some of those trees are wild species that contribute to food security, and more must be done to conserve them.
- Some trees are crops of course, like mangoes, and scientists are doing their bit for them in the Philippines.
- Wait, isn’t it too early for the usual BBC saving-the-apple story? Usually comes in the autumn.
- Who needs genebanks when you can inscribe landraces in a National Inventory of Intangible Cultural Heritage.
- Maybe try it with fonio next?
- Or just send seeds into space?
- Maybe including macadamia, or is space not cold enough for them?
Brainfood: Rice domestication, Roman wine, Dog domestication, Earth ovens, Forest orchards, Saffron origins
- The Fits and Starts of Indian Rice Domestication: How the Movement of Rice Across Northwest India Impacted Domestication Pathways and Agricultural Stories. While cultivation of (indica) rice in South Asia began in the Ganges around 6500 BC, its domestication really speeded up 3000 years later in the Indus.
- Archaeobotanical and chemical investigations on wine amphorae from San Felice Circeo (Italy) shed light on grape beverages at the Roman time. In the second century BC the ancient Romans may have traded a medicinal wine made from wild or semi-domesticated grapevines. I wonder how it would have gone with a nice risotto.
- Grey wolf genomic history reveals a dual ancestry of dogs. Either dogs were domesticated independently in E and W Eurasia and then the two lineages merged, or they were domesticated in the E and then there was geneflow from wild dogs. Sounds a bit like rice actually. 1
- Bulbs and Biographies, Pine Nuts and Palimpsests: Exploring Plant Diversity and Earth Oven Reuse at a Late Period Plateau Site. For 2000 years Native Americans returned to specific food processing sites dug into the soil to cook up a storm. No word on the use of wild grapevines.
- Coupled archaeological and ecological analyses reveal ancient cultivation and land use in Nuchatlaht (Nuu-chah-nulth) territories, Pacific Northwest. Native Americans nurtured forest gardens to enrich them with edible species. Including wild apples though again not wild grapevines apparently.
- Ancient Artworks and Crocus Genetics Both Support Saffron’s Origin in Early Greece. Ok now everything is in place for a nice risotto alla Milanese with a Falanghina at the House of the Tragic Poet.