- A nice long video on Lupinus mutabilis: TARWI – Semillas del Futuro Vol.1. It has always, in my experience, been “del futuro”.
- BBC asks CABI chief scientist to pick his top 10 plant pests. What, no taro leaf blight?
- Nor planthoppers of Iran?
- Divert just four years’ worth of EU agricultural subsidies to pay off pretty much all of Greece’s public debt, and we could stave off a second global financial crisis while helping some of the world’s poorest people all at the same time. Not gonna happen.
- Videos from 15th EWAC-Eucarpia Cereals Section Conference. Luigi not featured. Yet.
- EU may decide on new seed laws tomorrow. Or not. Patrick unpacks it a bit.
Nibbles: Palestinian genebank, PNG seeds, Local chickens, Landscapes
- New seed bank on West Bank. This one seems to be a genebank. I think.
- Seeds and needs in PNG.
- ILRI PowerPoint on Ethiopian chickens. But 46 slides?
- Everybody’s talking about the new Landscapes for People, Food and Nature thing, so I guess we should too.
Nibbles: Oca, Blog, Phones, UPOV, Finding seeds
- Someone else is interested in breeding oca for outside the Andes.
- Not to be outdone, the World Agroforestry Centre has a blog.
- Which somehow missed this story — Study finds mobile phones empower rural farmers — from World Agroforestry Centre.
- The Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV) has a new portal with added database goodness. Luigi dons his spelunking gear.
- No thanks, no need. From now on, like this guy in Hawaii, I’m googling.
Nibbles: R&D for Botswana, Grasses, Phytoliths
- Botswana wants more home-grown R&D for horticulture.
- The wonder of Aberyswyth’s high-sugar grasses. (Linking to the link farm because Aber has only a PDF.)
- The Archaeobotanist points to an online database of phytoliths … because you never know when you’ll need one.
Brainfood: Broomcorn millet, Domestication, Stand diversity, South African ornamentals, Rice wild relatives, Agriculture under climate change, Wheat domestication
- Genetic diversity and phylogeography of broomcorn millet (Panicum miliaceum L.) across Eurasia. One origin or two? Moving east or west? We still don’t know, but crop wild relatives may tell us.
- Next-generation sequencing for understanding and accelerating crop domestication. Those who understand history may be able to repeat it.
- Competition among loblolly pine trees: Does genetic variability of the trees in a stand matter? Can’t really say either way.
- The potential of South African indigenous plants for the international cut flower trade. Could do better.
- Genetic variability of banana with ornamental potential. The Embrapa Musa collection has some really cool-looking plants.
- Cytological Behavior of Hybridization Barriers Between Oryza sativa and Oryza officinalis. I guess that’s why they call it the tertiary genepool.
- Ancient lipids reveal continuity in culinary practices across the transition to agriculture in Northern Europe. Crap on 6000-year-old ceramic vessels shows people in the Western Baltic continued to eat fish and clams even after agriculture arrived. Well do you blame them?
- Options for support to agriculture and food security under climate change. Show ’em yer multi-pronged strategies, that’ll get their attention.
- N.I. Vavilov’s Theory of Centres of Diversity in the Light of Current Understanding of Wheat Diversity, Domestication and Evolution. When genes flow from centre of origin, that centre will not coincide with centre of diversity.