- Ann Tutwiler, DG of Bioversity, on why we have to solve a quadratic equation of food security now. But is it 7,000 edible plant species, or 12,000? h/t Nancy Castaldo
- Go to page 9 for a cool infographic on nutrition which kinda illustrates that. But really, what a palaver to find it. Which actually I did via Twitter.
- Quadratic? More like non-linear para-differential equations. Or one of those weird things out of chaos theory.
- You can bet ICRAF think one solution to that equation involves the domestication of fruit trees.
- Is Golden Rice another solution? There’s a debate later tonight that might help you decide.
- And while we’re dealing with gene jockeys, apparently RNAi is the Next Big Thing.
- Community, ecosystems, poverty reduction; urban agriculture can do it all. And Dyno Keating, DG of AVRDC, would probably agree.
- And here’s a big PDF from the Centre for Indian Knowledge Systems to show you exactly how. Who needs equations?
- Fed up with maths? Cacao, bean to bar, in photos.
Nibbles: Water buffalo, Beans, Rhizowen, Fisheries, Frankincence, Gender and gender, US CWR, Cropland, Forests and food security
- Today’s genome of passing interest, the water buffalo, less than two years after it was promised.
- Saluting the true amateurs, on bean and tuberous diversity.
- Unconsidered benefits of capture fisheries — except for the captured fish, I suppose.
- Eleven months early, AoBblog links to a new paper on how to best to tap frankincense.
- Not to be outdone, Modern Farmer relates how maple syrup could be industrialised as a row crop. H/t Metafilter.
- An e-learning course on Gender in Agriculture.
- Which is unlikely to please Ed Carr, author of Gender and adaptation: Time to do it differently.
- US inventories its crop wild relatives.
- Demand for cropland will increase.
- Which is bad for forests, which are good for food security, but not as much as they could be.
Nibbles: Vietnam ag, Sacred places, GWAS sarcasm, Eating insects, IDS course, Jungle fever, Poverty lecture
- Agriculture in Vietnam: rice down, coffee up. I wonder if the two may be related?
- Interactive online atlas of sacred lands.
- The Allium takes a pot shot at the gene jockeys.
- “It’s all about convincing people to take the first bite.” Oh, and the second.
- But will insects feature in this professional short course on nutrition from IDS?
- SE Asian rainforest as managed as the Amazon?
- Prof. Sen’s poverty lecture at LSE.
Brainfood: Domestication syndrome, Açaí cultivation, FIGS galore, Bean FIGS, Polish wheat, Rice groups, Chickpea QTLs, Cuban ag history, Agroforestry domestication, Conservation markets
- Plant domestication versus crop evolution: a conceptual framework for cereals and grain legumes. Only traits showing clear dimorphism between wild and cultivated taxa are really part of Domestication Syndrome. If there’s a continuum, it happened afterwards.
- Reconfiguring Agrobiodiversity in the Amazon Estuary: Market Integration, the Açaí Trade and Smallholders’ Management Practices in Amapá, Brazil. Açaí driving out other crops. Sometimes those underutilized crops should stay that way? Maybe not, as at the same time, homegardens are diversifying.
- Mining germplasm banks for photosynthetic improvement — wheat, rice, potato, legumes and maize. You need maps.
- Do faba bean (Vicia faba L.) accessions from environments with contrasting seasonal moisture availabilities differ in stomatal characteristics and related traits? Yes. Those maps again.
- Can Polish wheat (Triticum polonicum L.) be an interesting gene source for breeding wheat cultivars with increased resistance to Fusarium head blight? What do you think?
- Genetic diversity and classification of Oryza sativa with emphasis on Chinese rice germplasm. Six major groups, not five. We shall see.
- Genetic dissection of drought tolerance in chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.). It could all (or mostly) be down to one genomic region.
- Historical changes in the process of agricultural development in Cuba. I suppose one could say that, in a way, it’s back to the future.
- Developing more productive African agroforestry systems and improving food and nutritional security through tree domestication. Participation, post-production, private-public partnership.
- Market-based mechanisms for biodiversity conservation: a review of existing schemes and an outline for a global mechanism. Need to have a standard unit of measurement, and a mechanism for ensuring a long-term perspective. Can agricultural biodiversity learn from this?
Nibbles: Sowing seeds, Indian livestock, Ancient chocolate, W African cooking, ICRISAT chickpea
- The need for seed.
- If you need to know about the conservation of animal genetic resources in India, this hour-long video may be just what you’re looking for.
- Reconstructing Mesoamerican chocolate.
- Re-imagining West African cooking.
- ICRISAT finds 6 cool chickpea varieties in its genebank. No word on who lost them in the first place.