- Gaming for smallholder participation in the design of more sustainable agricultural landscapes. Board game can be used to facilitate communal decision-making in landuse planning in the buffer zone of a Man and Biosphere Reserve. What’s not to like?
- Mixed effects of long-term conservation investment in Natura 2000 farmland. It has been good for some things, not so good for others. No word on how CWRs have fared.
- Microarray analysis of gene expression patterns during fruit development in European pear (Pyrus communis). They’re different to those of Japanese pear (Pyrus pyrifolia).
- Quantitative and molecular analyses reveal a deep genetic divergence between the ancient medicinal rice (Oryza sativa) Njavara and syntopic traditional cultivars. Njavara is a cryptic variant of traditional Kerala varieties.
- Relationships between Biodiversity and Biological Control in Agroecosystems: Current Status and Future Challenges. Management should aim to suppress pests while maintaining diversity of natural enemy guilds. Easier said than done, I suspect.
- Agroforestry and Biodiversity Conservation in Tropical Landscapes. Between agroforestry cause and conservation effect are a bunch of pesky assumptions. I wonder if gaming would help.
- Livestock grazing and biodiversity in semi-natural grasslands. It can be good. Just one paper in the proceedings of a recent major conference on grasslands.
- Genetic diversity and population structure in the US Upland cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.). Who needs wild relatives when you have diverse obsolete varieties?
- Morphological and genetic evidence for early Holocene cattle management in northeastern China. Archaeology and DNA suggest parallel domestication of cattle in China.
- Domesticated Animals and Biodiversity: Early Agriculture at the Gates of Europe and Long-term Ecological Consequences. For thousands of years the impact of agriculture in the Balkans was limited.
- Characterization of released and elite genotypes of guar [Cyamopsis tetragonoloba (L.) Taub.] from India proves unrelated to geographical origin. And?
Nibbles: EU rules, Squash, Potato, Agroforestry textbook, Wine for health, Ag history, Breeding stories, Food security reports, Talking to policymakers
- Plants for Europe is (are?) incensed about new EU regulations. Should it/they be?
- Squash is a Native American word, natch. I bet they’re incensed.
- Speaking of Native American crops, here’s a big writeup on the potato, including great pix, and nice shoutout for the CIP genebank.
- If you live in the tropics and want to learn about agroforestry, you could just go out and talk to the first smallholder you meet. Or you could read a textbook.
- A roundtable on whether genetics can help us figure out whether wine is good for you. When they do the large scale clinical trial, as they surely must, I’ll be first in line.
- The breakthroughs of agriculture. Sadly, working out the seed viability equation does not feature. Nor does vegetarianism.
- Breeding does, though. And here’s an example why, featuring soybeans.
- And another from rice: IRRI bags another silver bullet gene.
- And we’ll soon have those in cotton too.
- Which is all fully recognized in the latest WRI report on how to feed the world.
- Though not in this other mega-report on Brazil, at least not quite so explicitly.
- “We need more research” is the wrong answer. Even when it’s breeding?
Scaling up everything except communications
Scale is very much on the agenda today in Africa, though a little bit under the radar, for some reason. We’ve seen no advance publicity, for example, for the launching of the the African Plant Breeding Academy by the African Orphan Crops Consortium (AOCC). We were insufficiently attentive, no doubt. Here’s the press release. And you can follow the proceedings live from the World Agroforestry Centre in Nairobi. There is also tweeting:
Cabinet Secretary Kosgei: Scientists should take advantage of the academy for improved food security #orphancrops http://t.co/ORHbRpu4wX
— CIFOR-ICRAF (@CIFOR_ICRAF) December 3, 2013
You’ll remember that the African Orphan Crops Consortium plans to use next-generation technologies to sequence dozens of heretofore neglected crops and use the resulting megadata to improve them. Good luck to them.
Meanwhile, a little further north, another CGIAR Centre is hosting a meeting of Feed the Future’s Agriculture & Nutrition Global Learning and Evidence Exchange, a meeting which is apparently focusing on scaling up technology adoption. I found out about it via the redoubtable comms people at ILRI:
@ILRI Addis today hosts @FeedtheFuture GLEE on scaling up adoption and use of agricultural technologies. http://t.co/5kuVH3UXZd@agrilinks
— peterballantyne (@peterballantyne) December 3, 2013
But further information is very scarce. Maybe a participant will fill us in. In particular, of course, we’d be very interested in what is being said about the use of agricultural biodiversity in scaling up nutrition interventions.
Nibbles: Dog fight, Deforestation maps, CWR maps, Food fight, Limpopo, Maize uses, CC adaptation breeding, Global Tree Campaign, Intensification & deforestation, American ginseng, Fish & crop yields, Fish oils, Perennially watching annual grains
- A third take on dog origins. Lock them all up in a small room and don’t let them out until they figure out a way to solve this. And more.
- Great new maps of deforestation. Same as the old maps? I’m confused.
- Ah, to be able to mash them up with crop wild relatives gap-maps! Or others, for that matter…
- Clear, balanced take on how to fix the food system. (And a great potted summary of why it is necessary to do so by the sainted Lawrence Haddad. The interviewer is not bad either.) Except maybe for the bit which sort of implies that the only way to improve crops is via GM. And for the other side…
- Bioversity comes up with a strategy for community seed banks in Limpopo and other areas of South Africa. Coincidentally, another CGIAR report on the same region, looking at wider food security issues. I wonder if the two could/should be mashed up? But really my main reason for linking to the second thing is to see how many people read the title as a plea for a return to old-fashioned cartography, as I did.
- Dual-purpose maize, shmaize. I just love that building.
- Latin American consortium looking for potatoes and wheat varieties adapted to new climatic conditions. Amazing that it is news, in a way.
- Global Tree Campaign launches new website. Sill no RSS feed though, that I can see. LATER: Here’s the feed, sorry to the GTC!
- Speaking of trees… Will agricultural intensification save tropical forests? Well, maybe. Demand elasticity comes into it, apparently. Dismal science indeed. I suppose those maps above come in useful for this kind of thing?
- In other news, the Middle Tennessee State University has a ginseng initiative.
- Teach a woman to aquaculture, improve her crop yields. No wait: Fish? We don’t need no stinking fish.
- 10 Ancient Grains to Watch. The usual suspects. This was pretty boring even when it was news.
Nibbles: Soil testing kit, Sustainable farming, Coffee and climate change, BGI genebank, Bamboo genebank, Genebank management, India’s malnutrition, Phenotyping conference, CIP genebank video, CG impact, Feed the World
Luigi went on a three-week trip, and all he came back with was this:
- A new soil testing kit? Really?
- Ok, how about a SciDev Spotlight featurette on sustainable farming? No? Well, can I tempt you with the British Ecological Society on agroecology then?
- Oh, I bet this thing on coffee and climate change will hit home.
- I’m pretty sure news of yet another Chinese genebank (of sorts) won’t.
- Pssst. Got room for a new bamboo genebank too?
- They’ll need a genebank management system, won’t they? GRIN and bear it.
- News too of hunger and malnutrition in India, by Indians, for … er …
- Phenotyping conference, anyone? Anyone at all? Some EU breeders will no doubt be there. And some of them at least will find a new map of water risk useful in their work.
- And to end with, Al Jazeera on the CIP potato genebank. You heard me.
- As you were, there’s the CGIAR Knowledge Day too, all about delivery and impact. I wonder if the genebanks will feature…
- Not so fast, there’s also a live webcast of the conference Feeding the World without Consuming the Planet that awaits you.