- Beer with shrooms. Well, not quite, but one can hope.
- No more corn detasseling? Say it ain’t so.
- “Oman to Plant 100,000 Coconut Trees in Dhofar.” That’s in the south of the country, a fascinating area. And one asks, as ever: What varieties, and what’s going to happen to the local material?
- Be like the bamboo, man.
- From DAD-Net, news of a mini-conference on the camel. And an article on same.
- The struggle for forest grazing rights in India.
- Dump blueberries, eat local berries, Brits told. Pavlovsk still in trouble.
Plant Genetic Resources Newsletter: dead but maybe not yet buried
We are happy to publicize this request by Robert Koebner and Theo van Hintum, and wish them luck with their important initiative.
There has not been an issue of the Plant Genetic Resources Newsletter (PGRN) for a year. 1 Its loss means that there is no longer a sensible outlet for “grey” literature on PRG -– such as reports of collecting expeditions, genebank updates, preliminary testing of new characterization protocols etc. A new intiative is currently being launched by Robert Koebner and Theo van Hintum (WUR) to bring PGRN back from the dead. The idea is to resume publication as a web-only English language journal housed at WUR, and to provide authors with linguistic support if needed. We are currently looking for the necessary financial sponsorship, and to achieve this we need to demonstrate that there is appreciable community support for the revival of PGRN.
So if you think that this is a worthwhile goal and that you would like to see PGRN back as a freely available, web-based journal, please email a message of support to Robert Koebner at mockbeggars(at)gmail.com, and leave a comment here.
We hope to hear from as many of you as possible!
Visualizating the spread of agriculture
A lengthy post over at The Archaeobotanist on the mapping of human-affected vegetation — anthromes — has reminded me that I never did link to a great visualization of the last 300 years’ worth of agricultural intensification and spread. The common link between the two seems to be Prof. Navin Ramankutty of McGill University, who had a hand in the building of both datasets.
Feedback on the CGIAR’s megaprogrammes
Speaking of the CGIAR’s change process and its mageprogrammes, they’re now soliciting comments on the one on Agriculture for Improved Nutrition and Health, having previously done so for the one focused on “improving the productivity of livestock and farmed fish by and for the poor.” Not a bad idea, of course. Are we going to get an opportunity to do so for the “nixed” megaprogramme on agricultural biodiversity too? And why are we hearing about these consultations via FARA rather than more directly from the CGIAR? What CGIAR RSS feed am I missing?
Nibbles: Protected area management, Yam domestication, Ottoman cooking, Measuring rice drought tolerance, Proteomics, Lupinus, Areca, Jethobudho, Nutrition megaprogramme, Soil bacteria
- Concentrating management practices on conserving a particular plant species may have bad consequences for other bits of biodiversity. Lessons for crops wild relatives?
- Benin’s farmers ennoble wild yams.
- A Lebanese lunch is an educational experience. Right.
- Paddyomics video. Nothing to do with the Irish. It’s about how IRRI is automating, er, everything about its phenotyping.
- Tamarind’s environmental niche is, in fact, er, niches?
- Different wheat genomes generate distinct protein profiles.
- Phylogenetic relationships of a new Mediterranean lupin.
- Betel nut chewing endangers coral. Kinda. Traditional and all that, but an unpleasant habit nonetheless.
- Our friend Bhuwon and others tell the story of the participatory improvement and formal release of Jethobudho rice landrace in Nepal.
- CGIAR elicits comment on the Agriculture for Improved Nutrition and Health megaprogramme. Until August 1.
- Bacterial diversity boosts maize yields.