- Unexpected Diversity during Community Succession in the Apple Flower Microbiome. Could be important in disease management.
- Plant Tissue Culture: A Useful Measure for the Screening of Salt Tolerance in Plants. But lots of different ways to do it.
- Fisheries: Does catch reflect abundance? Some. But probably not enough. Here’s the industry spin. And the NY Times does a number on it.
- Plant-Pollinator Interactions over 120 Years: Loss of Species, Co-Occurrence and Function. Extinctions and phenological shifts have occurred, but the system has shown resilience. It is unlikely, however, to continue to do so.
- Wild Pollinators Enhance Fruit Set of Crops Regardless of Honey Bee Abundance. Don’t you sometimes wish titles left something to the imagination? NPR breaks it down for ya, but doesn’t add much to the title.
- Continental estimates of forest cover and forest cover changes in the dry ecosystems of Africa between 1990 and 2000. About 20 Mha of forest loss, not 34 Mha. Still too much, though. But how did FAO get it so wrong?
- Robustness and Strategies of Adaptation among Farmer Varieties of African Rice (Oryza glaberrima) and Asian Rice (Oryza sativa) across West Africa. Local varieties can scale out. And should be used in breeding.
- Genetic and life-history changes associated with fisheries-induced population collapse. Phenotypic changes during Eurasian perch Baltic Sea fisheries collapse could be evolution, but when you look at the genetics it looks more like immigration of unadapted interlopers. Which might be bad for recovery.
- Variable activation of immune response by quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa Willd.) prolamins in celiac disease. Quinoa may be gluten-free, but it can still give you grief, and some varieties are far worse than others.
- Social exchange and vegetative propagation: An untold story of British potted plants. It’s artificial selection, Jim, but not as we know it.
- Wheat Cultivar Performance and Stability between No-Till and Conventional Tillage Systems in the Pacific Northwest of the United States. Tested 21 cultivars for performance under late-planted no-till system and — guess what? — performance varied.
- Genetic diversity and structure in Asian native goat analyzed by newly developed SNP markers. They originated in W Asia, and then admixtured (admixed?) in the E to different extents. Yeah, I thought we knew that already too, but scientists gotta make a living.
- A Bountiful Harvest: Genomic Insights into Crop Domestication Phenotypes. The mutations that underpinned domestication came in all kinds of shapes and sizes. Like this one in maize, for example.
The unlikely origin of Venere
An Italian walks into a genebank… No, not the beginning of a tasteless joke. But still rather a funny story, so bear with me. The genebank is that of the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), and the Italian visitor naturally starts discussing Italian rice with the (non-Italian) genebank manager. In particular, he tells him about this strange black rice they have in Italy, great tasting and great for the health, an old traditional Italian variety, dating back to time immemorial. Venere, it is called. Does the IRRI genebank, the largest rice genebank in the world after all, perhaps have it?
So the IRRI genebank manager, who likes that sort of challenge, does a bit of googling, and a bit of trawling of the various databases at his command. And what should he discover, but that the old traditional Italian variety actually traces back to a donation made by IRRI 22 years back. Yes, records agree that in 1991 IRRI sent a sample of a black rice from Indonesia (IRGC 17863, local name “Ketan Gubat”), collected in 1972 in a place called Yogyakarta, to W.X. Ren at the Italian seed company Sardo Piemontese Sementi. Venere is a descendant of Ketan Gubat.
Helping develop a new market in speciality rice has not traditionally been counted among IRRI’s impacts. There’s a first time for everything, I suppose. But there’s a bigger point here. How do you monitor this kind of impact pathway in a systematic way? Continuously chase literature on the use of all the hundreds of accessions a genebank sends out? Unlikely. 1 No, what you really need is a curious visitor who knows a particular variety walking into your genebank.
Nibbles: Epigenetics, Cacao strategy, B4FN book, Seed systems book, Nutrition conference, Brit Brassica boffins bonanza
- Geographic patterns in epigenomic variation. Yeah, but in Arabidopsis.
- A global strategy for conservation. Yeah, but for cacao.
- That “Diversifying Food and Diets — Using Agricultural Biodiversity to Improve Nutrition and Health” book? You’ll be able to get chapters and case studies from a dedicated website nine months after publication.
- Not to be outdone, the Ethiopian Institute of Agriculture Research lets you download “Defining Moments in the Ethiopian Seed System.”
- New Agriculturist fillets out some contributions to a recent Economist conference on malnutrition.
- The Brassica research community gets together in the UK. Not many people hurt.
Nibbles: African Ag, Mini mill, Potato breeding,
- World Bank tells African governments to “retool their agriculture policies, particularly to include a far greater focus on agribusiness as a critical driver of future development”. Of course.
- (Undated) news from IDRC about a new mini-mill for minor millets.
- Participatory potato breeding. Story of a Dutch organic farmer’s efforts to produce and market Bionica.
Nibbles: Perennial grains, @gr0b10d1v3r$1ty, Games, Leeks, Millets in Rome, Insectivory, Bangladesh, Locusts, Women, Ricinus, Bamboo sequence, Bio-innovate conference
- That old perennial perennial grains featured in a new online magazine.
- @gr0b10d1v3r$1ty: Password to a More Secure Agriculture. See what Fabrice did there?
- Five games that will revolutionise your understanding of agricultural economics. No, really. We particularly like Bohnanza.
- The botanist in the kitchen looks at leeks; be ready for St David’s Day 2014.
- Most Ancient Romans Ate Like Animals. Prize for most obnoxious headline about NUS?
- Looking forward to BBC R4 on insectivory next week.
- Bangladesh encouraging agricultural diversification.
- A plague of locusts, just in time for Passover.
- Daily Kos does a big number on women in agriculture. Worth a bookmark.
- And Kew does a number on castor oil seeds. Breaking Bad fans will want to read it.
- We haven’t linked to a genome study for ages, so let’s hear it for bamboo.
- One of a whole lot of presentations from the recent Bio-innovate conference in Ethiopia, courtesy of ILRI.