- The quest for red rice beer: transregional interactions and development of competitive feasting in Neolithic China. In the 4th millennium BCE, in China, people brewed a sacred red beer in vats called dakougang using rice, millet, Job’s tears, wheat and snake gourd root.
- The biocultural origins and dispersal of domestic chickens. The earliest domesticated chickens are found 1650-1250 BCE in central Thailand and were attracted by stored rice and millet. No word on the role of beer.
- Performance, Economics and Potential Impact of Perennial Rice PR23 Relative to Annual Rice Cultivars at Multiple Locations in Yunnan Province of China. But does it make decent beer and attract chickens?
- Genomic prediction of zinc-biofortification potential in rice gene bank accessions. Check out in particular the aus subspecies. No word on whether the resulting beer and chickens are also high in zinc.
- Do ancient wheats contain less gluten than modern bread wheat, in favour of better health? More to the point, do they make better beer?
- Evidence for two domestication lineages supporting a middle-eastern origin for Brassica oleracea crops from diversified kale populations. Chickens not involved at all.
- Genome evolution and diversity of wild and cultivated potatoes. Propagation by tubers had a big effect on the cultivated potato genome compared to propagation by seed. And no, I’m not going to get into the whole chickens-in-South-America controversy right now, but you can google it.
- The genomics of linkage drag in sunflower. Introgression from wild relatives has been good for some things, bad for others, but in general pre-breeders should stick to the primary genepool. And watch out for chickens.
- From horticulture to agriculture: New data on farming practices in Late Chalcolithic western Anatolia. While domestic units were small and agriculture extensive, cooperation was widespread and inequality low. Then those Bronze Age elites got chickens…
Nibbles: Seed quality, New rice, Australian seeds, New wheat, Ceramics genebank
- Video on a participative system for seed quality control in Colombia.
- Pushing out high quality new rice varieties in India.
- Collecting high quality seeds after fires in Australia.
- The road to high quality wheat starts in Obregón.
- China’s latest genebank conserves ancient ceramics. No word on quality.
Nibbles: Gulf garden, Lettuce evaluation, Jordanian olive, Kenyan seeds, Hybrid animals, FAOSTAT news
- Qatari botanic garden is providing training in food security, and more. Good for them.
- The European Evaluation Network’s lettuce boffins have themselves a meeting. Pretty amazing this made it to FreshPlaza, and with that headline.
- The Jordan Times pretty much mangles what is a perfectly nice, though inevitably nuanced, story about the genetic depth of Jordan’s olives.
- In Kenya’s seed system, whatever is not forbidden in proposed new legislation…may not be enough.
- Conservation through hybridization.
- FAOSTAT now has a bit that gives you access to national agricultural census data. Which sounds quite important but give us a few days to check it.
Nibbles: Access to seeds indeces, Rare plants genebank, Maize and climate change, Bogota market
- So there’s an African Seed Access Index whose relationship with the Access to Seeds Index is unclear.
- The Pacific Northwest has a genebank called the Miller Seed Vault whose relationship with the National Laboratory for Genetic Resources Preservation in Fort Collins, Colorado is quite clear.
- The relationship between climate change and changes in crop distributions is becoming clearer, and more worrying.
- What is the relationship between huge markets such as Samper Mendoza in Bogota and plant conservation?
Brainfood: Trade double, Organic farming, Food vs non-food, Wild plants, Wheat yields, CWR in S Africa, Gene editing, European seed law, Farm diversity
- Agricultural trade and its impacts on cropland use and the global loss of species habitat. Rich countries have a large biodiversity footprint outside their borders because they import a lot of agricultural products from areas where biodiversity is disappearing fast.
- International food trade benefits biodiversity and food security in low-income countries. Ah, but low-income, high biodiversity countries import a lot too. I really don’t know what to think about trade now. Nicely parsed by Emma Bryce.
- Biodiversity and yield trade-offs for organic farming. Biodiversity gain and yield loss balance each other out. Oh, come on scientists, would it kill you to give a definite answer?
- Crop harvests for direct food use insufficient to meet the UN’s food security goal. We should definitely use more cropland for actual human food. But that would probably not be good for exports, no? Uff.
- The hidden safety net: wild and semi-wild plant consumption and dietary diversity among women farmers in Southwestern Burkina Faso. Yeah, but who needs crops and imports anyway.
- Six decades of warming and drought in the world’s top wheat-producing countries offset the benefits of rising CO2 to yield. In any case, crops are in trouble.
- Planning complementary conservation of crop wild relative diversity in southern Africa. But CWR will save crops if only we can conserve them.
- Genome Editing for Sustainable Agriculture in Africa. Especially if we use the latest toys.
- Impact of the European Union’s Seed Legislation and Intellectual Property Rights on Crop Diversity. And have all the right policies in place.
- Farm-level production diversity and child and adolescent nutrition in rural sub-Saharan Africa: a multicountry, longitudinal study. But actually, it’s livestock we really need.