- Another view of that organic tomatoes, stress and nutrients study that was all over the place yesterday.
- IRRI provides a reality check on Golden Rice. Maybe they should just have stressed it.
- Speaking of which, have we already linked to this piece on how beet has got poorer in nutrients?
- Thinking of setting up a map portal? Say about the geographic distribution of nutritional problems? Read this first.
- From SRI to SFMI. Yeah, but what is happening to nutrient levels?
- Did we also link to these pretty photos of apples before? Well, I don’t care, it’s worth seeing them again. And just imagine how much the different varieties differ in nutrients.
- How nutritious is sourdough anyway? Anyone?
- Yeah, yeah, but is rotation good for nutrient content?
- Which will all be very interesting to the new Bioversity DG, no doubt.
- Not to mention to some of the potential candidates for the World Food Prize.
Nibbles: Svalbard, Wayne Smith, Salinity, Tasty sorghum, NUS conference, Med collecting, Income and diversity, Agricultural packages
- Canadian genebank sends seeds to Svalbard.
- And Plant Breeder of the Year goes to… Bet you he used the genebank a lot.
- Dubai told to grow local plants to save water. There’s a genebank for that.
- More digestible sorghum down to one gene. Probably came from a genebank.
- A conference on neglected and underutilized species. And the genebanks that conserve them?
- Collecting on Mediterranean islands for Kew’s genebank. Nice gig if you can get it.
- Richer farmers more likely to adopt improved varieties. To him that has… So I guess genebanks should go to the poorer farmers to collect landraces? Always wondered about that.
- Can I help it if everything came up genebanks today?
- Well, almost everything. Agricultural packages unwrapped by the Archaeobotanist.
Nibbles: Rwandan genebank, Quinoa consumption, Pre-Columbian garden, Tomatoes, Aerobic rice, World record potatoes
- Today’s new national genebank for food security? Step proudly forward, Rwanda!
- Bolivians are eating three times more quinoa. Or maybe three times more Bolivians are eating quinoa.
- Growing history in a pre-Columbian English cottage garden.
- Bland tomatoes all down to the lack of volatiles.
- Daily Kos spreads the Guardian’s gospel of SRI rice; so is aerobic rice a step down that path?
- Speaking of which, those Bihari farmers have snagged a world record potato harvest, using organic methods, and a relatively new variety from Indian breeders.
Nibbles: Maize genes, Livestock domestication, Guinea fowl, Plant identification, Juniper conservation, Cacao conservation, Seed talk, IPBES report, Global consultation
- Today’s genomic breakthrough involves kernel number in maize.
- Neolithic people overhunted, then thought better of it.
- Was guinea fowl ever domesticated, I wonder?
- How to figure out if you’ve looked hard enough. For plants, that is. And some discussion.
- Gin is in trouble. But help is at hand.
- A workshop on chocolate and vanilla. My kinda event. And chocolate does need help. Gin, chocolate. Pretty soon life wont be worth living.
- Simran Sethi’s Twitter chat after TEDxManhattan was storified, but it’s gone now of course. Try this instead.
- Final say on that IPBES-1 gabfest.
- And the first say on that “Global Consultation on agricultural biodiversity for sustainable food security” thing.
Brainfood: Cotton hybrids, Lentil drought phenotyping, Wild Prunus, Italian food discourse, Disturbance and diversity, Olive domestication, Rhizobium diversity, Intensification, Niche model uncertainty
- Interspecific hybridization in Gossypium L.: characterization of progenies with different ploidy-confirmed multigenomic backgrounds. They can be made, with some difficulty, and could be useful.
- A new phenotyping technique for screening for drought tolerance in lentil (Lens culinaris Medik.). In hydroponics. Seems to work.
- Polyploidy and microsatellite variation in the relict tree Prunus lusitanica L.: how effective are refugia in preserving genotypic diversity of clonal taxa? The island populations are particularly important.
- Trade-off or convergence? The role of food security in the evolution of food discourse in Italy. The food crisis had quite an impact.
- Diversity loss with persistent human disturbance increases vulnerability to ecosystem collapse. Suppression of fire in a species-rich grassland has resulted in a very low diversity but highly productive vegetation. Unfortunately, when you re-introduce fire, the whole thing collapses.
- The complex history of the olive tree: from Late Quaternary diversification of Mediterranean lineages to primary domestication in the northern Levant. Don’t forget the 3 refugia in Middle East, Aegean and Gibraltar. And, coincidentally, more.
- Isolation and characterization of salt-tolerant rhizobia native to the desert soils of United Arab Emirates. I hope someone conserves them.
- The compatibility of agricultural intensification in a global hotspot of smallholder agrobiodiversity (Bolivia). Peaches for cash didn’t do anything nasty to the diverse maize landraces. Which are in any case conserved ex situ, just to be on the safe side? Right?
- Detrital diversity influences estuarine ecosystem performance. Diverse mud makes for healthier seagrasses and mangroves.
- Conservation Planning with Uncertain Climate Change Projections. Gotta look at those sensitivities.