- If you’re going to grown switchgrass as a biofuel, grow it in variety mixtures.
- The two wild parents of the cultivated peanut get sequenced.
- As also does common bean from its Mesoamerican genepool. Happy International Year of Pulses.
- New wild Aussie tomato gets a cool name. No word on when it will be sequenced. Or how long it will last.
- Speaking of climate change in Australia, wine might be in trouble.
- And more from Down Under: new book on indigenous Australian foods. Some of which may have been cultivated.
- Lots of herbarium specimens have the wrong name. Well I never.
- CIMMYT and ICARDA collaborate on wheat diversity.
- Roman wine rising again from the ashes of Pompeii.
- Exhibition on Colombia’s food plants.
- Portuguese green broth is no doubt very nice, but definitely needs a new name.
- The ancient urban gardens of Istanbul live on.
- Kenya gets on top of using biodiversity for climate change adaptation. Or on top of developing a strategy for doing so, anyway.
- Ola Westengen has a strategy, but you have to speak Norwegian to hear about it.
- Hybrid wheat is 5 years away. How long have they been saying that?
- The latest Rice Today has an article on genebank tourism by Mike Jackson (p. 39), who should know.
- Iowa State University is offering $900 to eat 3 orange bananas.
- Sahaju: saving agricultural biodiversity in India the organic way. Cheaper than $900 too.
- Want to multiply up coconuts really fast? They know how to do it in the Philippines.
Ask Prof. Huw Jones anything about plant breeding
There’s an Ask Me Anything (AMA) event on Reddit later today Thursday, 4 February, at 4pm GMT (11am EDT, 8am PST) with Professor Huw Jones. He’s research leader of the Cereal Transformation Group at Rothamsted Research, UK, so you can ask questions about plant breeding, genetic transformation, crop diversity, all that kind of stuff.
LATER: Here are the results.
Nibbles: History edition
- No, I don’t think the history of potatoes is at an end, but I know what they mean.
- The history of rubber in pics.
- The history of the wheat dwarfing gene.
- Svalbard makes history.
- Sicily goes back into its history for its daily bread.
- Another foothold in history for Gary Nabhan.
- History, shmistory, we need to look forward. Biohacking is the future of food. Say twelve year olds.
Nibbles: Value edition
- Peru to give value to its biodiversity.
- Germany already has, 500 years ago.
- Cavendish bananas have a lot of value, but that won’t save them.
- The UK’s vegetables genebank is very valuable.
- But you can always add more value to genebank collections if you evaluate them, like IRRI’s going to do in an expensive new building.
- I’m not sure what the value of Gold Rush-era heritage trees might be, but I think it’s really cool that someone’s looking for them.
- The value of genetic engineering for drought tolerance is just around the corner.
Brainfood: In situ & CC, Rare livestock phenotypes, SSR & wheat seeds, Kelp genebank, Recognizing pig landraces, Indian pigs, Benin yams, Colombian Manihot, Enset seed, Okra transgenes
- Using in situ management to conserve biodiversity under climate change. It can probably be done, but more empirical evidence of long-term effects is needed.
- Rare phenotypes in domestic animals: unique resources for multiple applications. Difficult to conserve, but worth doing, and biotech will help.
- Patterns of SSR variation in bread wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) seeds under ex situ genebank storage and accelerated ageing. SSRs don’t help figuring out viability loss.
- Germplasm banking of the giant kelp: Our biological insurance in a changing environment. Chileans conserve female and male gametophytes in low light, at 10 °C, in Provasoli media.
- Authentication of “mono-breed” pork products: Identification of a coat colour gene marker in Cinta Senese pigs useful to this purpose. This particular pig breed can be easily and accurately identified.
- Microsatellite and Mitochondrial Diversity Analysis of Native Pigs of Indo-Burma Biodiversity Hotspot. Native Indian pigs closer to Chinese than European.
- Yam (Dioscorea spp.) responses to the environmental variability in the Guinea Sudan zone of Benin. Different varieties respond differently to different conditions, at least as regards yield.
- Diversity and genetic structure of cassava landraces and their wild relatives (Manihot spp.) in Colombia revealed by simple sequence repeats. Lots of geneflow.
- Current availability of seed material of enset (Ensete ventricosum, Musaceae) and its Sub-Saharan wild relatives. Not much.
- Monitoring adventitious presence of transgenes in ex situ okra (Abelmoschus esculentus) collections conserved in genebank: a case study. None found.