- “I think you’re going to need different sheep.” In Wales, that is. (And different grasslands?)
- And new cattle in India, apparently.
- Another bunch of international agricultural research centres get together. Yeah, because the other lot are doing so well.
- I wonder if any of either lot will be going to this FAO symposium on NUS in Asia in a couple of weeks’ time. And no, I don’t know why we didn’t know about this earlier.
- On the whole, though, I think I’d rather be at the Purdue llama workshop.
- Or, at a pinch, this thing on the edible Alliaceae.
- Wait, there’s also a New Alliance to Increase Food Security and Nutrition. Not sure who’s invited to this party, but the “Rome-based agencies” seem to be the ones throwing it. (I guess this comes on the heels of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs’ annual symposium? Where’s a good summary of what happened there? Anyone? Ah, yes, Ian Scoones explains all.)
- One of those agencies wants to hear from you if you have experience of community “gene/seed banks.”
- Unclear if Seed Savers Exchange would qualify, but they have a bunch of peas out for the “community” to have a look at.
- These Indian award-winners would definitely qualify. Which is just as well as it seems the national genebank is up for sale.
- Meanwhile, botanic gardens get together to restore degraded ecosystems.
- The Bard’s plants. Well, some of them.
BGI picking off CG Centres one by one
ICRISAT is the latest CGIAR Centre to get into bed with the Beijing Genomics Institute (BGI), following IRRI and CIAT. One does wonder whether if the Centres had approached BGI as a group rather than singly, in the context of the much-vaunted restructuring of the CG system, they might not have extracted a better deal from the shrewd gene-jockeys of Beijing.
LATER: Or is the real news, as a message we have received hints, that some CG Centres have NOT succumbed to the blandishments of BGI, because of worries over intellectual property issues? But again, if that is indeed a problem, would not a joint approach have been able to drive a harder bargain on IPR as well as cost? I don’t know. I’m just asking.
Brainfood: Lupin restoration, Balkan wheat drought tolerance, Metabarcoding, Wild sheep genetics, Organic vegetables, Diversity protects, Sorghum geneflow, Wild sunflower genetics
- A Molecular and Fitness Evaluation of Commercially Available versus Locally Collected Blue Lupine Lupinus perennis L. Seeds for Use in Ecosystem Restoration Efforts. Commercial seed sources can be dodgy, and that’s a problem.
- Comparison of responses to drought stress of 100 wheat accessions and landraces to identify opportunities for improving wheat drought resistance. 20 Balkan landraces seemed to be more drought tolerant than 80 accessions sourced globally.
- Towards next-generation biodiversity assessment using DNA metabarcoding. You gotta be kidding me, metabarcoding? Will they be applying it to soils? Yep.
- Selection and microevolution of coat pattern are cryptic in a wild population of sheep. You need to look at the genes.
- Will they buy it? The potential for marketing organic vegetables in the food vending sector to strengthen vegetable safety: A choice experiment study in three West African cities. Not enough.
- Plant diversity improves protection against soil-borne pathogens by fostering antagonistic bacterial communities. Chalk another one up to diversity. Did they say soil?
- Local scale patterns of gene flow and genetic diversity in a crop–wild–weedy complex of sorghum (Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench) under traditional agricultural field conditions in Kenya. Mostly crop-to-wild, which could be a problem if transgenics are ever grown. If.
- Adaptation with gene flow across the landscape in a dune sunflower… is leading to “ecological” speciation.
Nibbles: All singing and dancing, FAO meets Big Data, Clone this, Patent nonsense, Frozen fish
- Fisherfolk of the Amazon landed on film. But do they sing about it? (And it’s not just an Amazon thing, this dancing and singing about agrobiodiversity. Not by any means.) And should they be doing more slashing-and-burning?
- FAO to put all its data in one basket. But including AnGR? WIEWS? One asks more in hope than expectation.
- One of the many challenges of vegetatively propagated crops (like potatoes): rapid multiplication. (Well, they could always do an SNP-based tetraploid map of the damn things, couldn’t they.) No such problems with seeds, of course.
- There’s been a rapid increase in the patenting of adaptation-related traits, and the private sector in industrialized countries is mainly responsible. Well there’s a surprise. But was that discussed at the CCAFS meeting on breeding objectives for Africa? And it’s just as well to remember that it’s not just breeding that’s needed. Oh, but by the way, you better grab those adaptations while you can…
- Regional SE Asian fish genebank proposed. That I’d love to see. Maybe they could share germplasm with, I dunno, Chicago? And not just.
Nibbles: Anna Laurent, Sequencing, Gossypium, Capsicum, Native Americans, Journal, Genebank, Hairy fruit, JIC, Tasty tulips
- Design guru talks botany. Latest plant getting the treatment is the Hawaiian Cotton Tree. Which, despite its name, really is a (remote) cotton wild relative.
- What has Next Generation Sequencing ever done for me? And what you should know about how it works.
- And here’s an example of it at work: different cultivated cotton species have behaved differently, genetically speaking.
- That used ancient DNA, this one didn’t, but I guess a future one on chiles might. LATER: Ooops, just realized this is old. So what was it doing in my RSS feed?
- Speaking of chiles, here’s a couple of more things on Native American agriculture.
- Free access to the first issue of volume 20 of Journal for Nature Conservation for the next 12 months.
- Rebuilding the genebank in Ivory Coast.
- Discovering the wonders of the coconut. Their headline, not mine.
- The latest news from the John Innes Centre’s genebank.
- Fancy a tulip? To eat, that is.