Archaeology

January 9, 2014

Nibbles: Pig evolution, Genomics field guide, Genome editing, Chilean agroecology training, Oxford Farming Conferences, Grape variety database, Food prices database, Amazonian history, Debunking tomatoes, INFOODS NUS list, Coptic gardens, Aid agencies map

The catching up continues:

“Genomics is a powerful tool…”: Pigs speciate, admix, fly.
But in the wrong hands…
I wonder which types of hands these genome editors have.
Ok, enough of that. Women, agroecology, capacity building, a fashionable country: what’s not to like?
I wonder if any of the ladies are at the Oxford Real Farming Conference. Or were. They were probably NOT at the Oxford Farming Conference. Oh the wit of these alternative farming types. You could have followed both on Twitter, were you so minded, and less confused than I.
Chile — for it is she — of course grows a lot of grapes. Want to know which varieties? Course you do.
Damn, grapes not included in this World Bank crowd-sourced food price dataset. Which I think we may have linked to before, but what the hell.
I know we’ve linked to ancient Amazonian civilization stuff before, but this is a predictive model, no less.
Busted: The tomato.
The INFOODS “List of underutilized species contributing to the Nutritional Indicators for Biodiversity” is out. Prices not included.
I somehow thought there would be more underutilized species in this Ethiopian monastery.
Who pays for (some of) this? Check out the Guardian’s interactive map of European development agencies.

January 8, 2014

Nibbles: Information, Domestication, Cats, Conference, Gunpowder gardening, Policy advice, Potatoes, Ancient vineyards, New UG99, Bovine emissions, Cacao ants, Palaeo-diet, Bloody quinoa, Tokyo’s honey, Urban biodiversity, Ilex, Conifers

Wow! Just wow. Big Picture Agriculture has launched an incredibly useful website.
Chromosomes, crops and superdomestication, a slideshare presentation by Pat Heslop-Harrison.
Cats, domesticated? Not as far as I’m concerned. Still, Ancient Chinese cats ate rats, leading to their domestication.
Independent plant breeders, a conference just for you.
Great ammunition for the lazy gardener.
IBPES told to “tap the wisdom of indigenous peoples”.
Kenyan policymakers told to consider the potato.
Basque vineyards of a millennium ago.
A new strain of UG99 wheat rust? But this time, the world is ready.
Variable diets linked to variable emissions shock.
scidev.net reports that ants protect cacao trees from fungal diseases. (Yes, I’m taking short cuts here.)
Palaeolithic people preferred nutrition-rich places.
And quinoa remains as confusing as ever.
Tokyo’s local honey.
Although agriculture barely features in a paean to urban biodiversity. It should.
The holly and the coffee: The Botanist in the Kitchen does Yerba Maté
Ready for the inevitable ennui of next Christmas, a taxonomy of conifers.

January 6, 2014December 4, 2013

Brainfood: Tea flower transcriptomics, Ag origins, Hunan rice, ITPGRFA & CBD, Mycorrhiza, Sugar beet breeding, Agronomy, Molecular domestication, Cactus domestication, Rice yield gene

Floral Transcriptome Sequencing for SSR Marker Development and Linkage Map Construction in the Tea Plant (Camellia sinensis). Neat, to be sure, but not entirely clear why the transcriptome of a part of a crop that is not economically exploited should be of more than academic use to anyone. But no doubt someone will set us right on this.
Emergence of Agriculture in the Foothills of the Zagros Mountains of Iran. Eastern Fertile Crescent just as important as western.
Analysis of main agronomic characteristics and utilization status of rice resources in Hunan Province. Hunan has a provincial genebank with more than 12,000 accession, “repetition eliminated.”
The comparison of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture and the Nagoya Protocol. Like the above, this is in Chinese, except for the abstract, which recommends ratification of both relevant instruments. I hope someone is listening.
Biodiversity of Arbuscular Mycorrhizal fungi in Agricultural crops of western Himalayas. Everybody’s at it. Well, almost.
Assessment of breeding progress in sugar beet by testing old and new varieties under greenhouse and field conditions. It has been steady and is set to continue. At least in Germany.
Why crop yields in developing countries have not kept pace with advances in agronomy. Let them eat German sugar beets. But seriously: agronomist says it’s about the agronomy.
Molecular mechanisms involved in convergent crop domestication. It’s mutations at orthologous loci, and it can be copied.
Differential survival and growth of wild and cultivated seedlings of columnar cacti: Consequences of domestication. Gotta wonder if mutations at orthologous loci were involved.
NAL1 allele from a rice landrace greatly increases yield in modern indica cultivars. But it came from a tropical japonica landrace from Indonesia, and works its magic via pleiotropic effect on plant architecture.

December 23, 2013December 2, 2013

Brainfood: Yam age, Cacao conservation, Eucarpia consultation report, Wheat sequencing, Pesticides & earthworms, Abandoned farmland & conservation, Agroforestry, New Guinea agriculture, Soybean cores, Bean taste

Clonal diversity and estimation of relative clone age: application to agrobiodiversity of yam (Dioscorea rotundata). Some clones are almost two thousand years old.
Development of a cost-effective diversity-maximising decision-support tool for in situ crop genetic resources conservation. The case of cacao. Sure, you can use molecular markers and fancy maths, but in the end you’ll still need to make some judgement calls.
Fishing in the gene pool — how useful was the catch? We have the technology. Do we have the policies?
The Wheat Black Jack: Advances Towards Sequencing the 21 Chromosomes of Bread Wheat. See what I mean about the technologies?
Reduction of pesticide use can increase earthworm populations in wheat crops in a European temperate region. Prince Charles will be pleased.
Areas of Increasing Agricultural Abandonment Overlap the Distribution of Previously Common, Currently Threatened Plant Species. In Japan, abandoned farmland can be good and bad for threatened species. Damn scientists. Never a straight answer.
Can agroforestry option values improve the functioning of drivers of agricultural intensification in Africa? Yes. But please, sir, what’s option value?
Biodiversity through Domestication. Examples from New Guinea. What 8000 years of horticulture will do to diversity. I wonder if some yam clones go back that long.
Establishment of the integrated applied core collection and its comparison with mini core collection in soybean (Glycine max). You lost me at integrated.
Variability in sensory attributes in common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.): a first survey in the Iberian secondary diversity center. Agronomy does not correlate with taste. So you can breed for both.

December 10, 2013December 10, 2013

Nibbles: IK, Magi, Yield gap maps, ICRISAT DG, Maize and drought, Phenotyping workshop, Clone epigenetics, Root & tubers, Botanical social networking, Mexican archaeobotany, LOTW

Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services documents examples of how indigenous people’s knowledge conserves biodiversity, including of the agricultural kind.
The truth about frankincense and myrrh. Talk about traditional knowledge.
Can global crop production meet future demands? The Story Map.
What ICRISAT is doing about the above, from the horse’s mouth.
Progress in Achieving and Delivering Drought Tolerance in Maize — An Update: “Germplasm collections are assuming greater importance if gains from native genes are to be sustained. Efficient and accurate field phenotyping remains essential for genetic progress.”
Workshop in Field-based High Throughput Phenotyping. Next April, in Arizona, you maize people.
A clone is a clone is… no wait.
Root and tuber people already planning their next big shindig, in October 2015. Meanwhile, they’re getting down to work in the Pacific.
AoB Blog on plant science on Facebook. Also on Facebook.
Solanum expert Dr Sandy Knapp on the of Global Plants Initiative.
Archaeological remains of agriculture found in Nuevo Leon are oldest for that Mexican state.
Legumes (genera) of the world now online, thanks to Kew.