- What is the best beef in Europe?
- When was the first yoghurt of the Neolithic?
- How do you measure smallholder resilience? Or vulnerability, for that matter…
- How does this Kenyan seed story differ from this Malian one?
- How do you address iron deficiency in Rwanda?
- What’s the value of a genebank?
- There’s a downside to plant-derived smoke?
- So what’s the latest paradigm shift on that ancient-people-in-the-Amazon thing?
- How are the Spanish people coping with the crisis?
- How come those transcribed podcasting, medal winning conservationists still don’t get it?
- What are Ethiopians doing in Amazonia?
Nibbles: MCPD, Coffee pollination, WACCI & IITA get into bed, Quinoa value addition, Plant chemicals
- Rejoice, the new edition of the FAO/Bioversity Multi-Crop Passport Descriptors (MCPD) are now available on-line!
- Pollinators good for pollination shock. No, kidding apart, this is Pollinator Week and we should take note.
- Another step in building plant breeding capacity in West Africa.
- How to get quinoa cake on the menu of posh Bolivian coffee shops.
- Virtual tour of my old stomping ground at the Cambridge University Botanical Garden includes a chemical trail. Which alas does not in turn include the main chemical we used to consume there.
An opportunity to see plant breeding history
Even more interesting, frankly, is a living exhibition …
… made up of some of the 130 varieties that, over the last century have driven UK agriculture. ‘Yeoman’ wheat, introduced in 1916, was a landmark variety, showing that high-yielding, good baking-quality wheat could be bred and successfully grown in Britain. ‘Proctor’ barley led to a tripling of UK barley production. ‘Maris Piper’ potatoes were introduced in 1963 to be resistant to nematodes and are still a leading potato variety today. By the time of its privatization almost 9 in 10 of the varieties of cereal crops being grown in the UK had been developed by PBI.
That will surely be a sight to see. I wonder, though, whether the John Innes Centre could be persuaded to have some of the resultant crops analyzed for their nutrient content. Varieties bred at different times, and grown side by side under experimental conditions, are sorely needed to investigate declines in nutrition.
Brainfood: Molecular adaptation, Chicken genetic resources databases, Cacao diversity, Pistacia molecular diversity, Glycene diversity, Sheep breeding, Bt cotton, Argan oil
- Broad-scale adaptive genetic variation in alpine plants is driven by temperature and precipitation. AFLP variation linked to precipitation and temperature across 13 Alpine species.
- Current state of knowledge on indigenous chicken genetic resources of the tropics: domestication, distribution and documentation of information on the genetic resources. There are three relevant databases on chickens, and yet…
- Genetic diversity and parentage in farmer varieties of cacao (Theobroma cacao L.) from Honduras and Nicaragua as revealed by single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers. 70 SNPs enough to confirm 5 morphological groups, but also pick up the odd synonym.
- Molecular diversity and phylogenetic relationships of Pistacia vera, Pistacia atlantica subsp. mutica and Pistacia khinjuk using SRAP markers. The species are pretty good.
- Biofortified, selenium enriched, fruit and cladode from three Opuntia Cactus pear cultivars grown on agricultural drainage sediment for use in nutraceutical foods. It pays to grow prickly pear on crappy soil.
- Hotspots of diversity of wild Australian soybean relatives and their conservation in situ. Looks like it’s Kimberley.
- Community-based alternative breeding plans for indigenous sheep breeds in four agro-ecological zones of Ethiopia. They’re ok, but you do have to keep good records.
- Diverse genetic basis of field-evolved resistance to Bt cotton in cotton bollworm from China. Gene jockeys need to go back to drawing board. No, wait.
- Bioactive compounds and nutritional significance of virgin argan oil–an edible oil with potential as a functional food. Jolly high in just about everything that’s good for you, more research needed, yada yada yada.
Nibbles: CWR video, Super barley, Banana fermentation, Cerrado, Indian genebank sell-off farrago, Pistacia, Potato disease
- Al Jazeera discovers wild relatives.
- The Scotsman discovers the laws of heredity.
- Diana uncovers banana beer.
- Rio +20 hacks discover the cerrado.
- Indian genebank discovers the market?
- JSTOR uncovers the pistachio.
- Scottish potato farmers discover new nemesis.