- Picture guide to West African plants. Includes agrobiodiversity!
- Iowa State Agronomy podcasts. Some cool stuff. Check out the one on “Modeling Seed Germination Over Time to Decide When to Regenerate Seed Lots in Long-term Storage.”
- A “formal global program to develop subnational agricultural land-use statistics“? Riiiiight.
- GFAR meeting on sustainable use of agrobiodiversity says “[w]e need to initiate solid and inclusive actions to build concerted and practical actions on sustainable use.” Well they do say actions speak louder than words.
- Researcher “trying to remove the perception that hackneys are ‘half-crazed.'” I’d rather pay to save them if they were crazy, but that’s me.
- Romaine: germplasm to breeding lines. But to cultivars? Private sector to pick up the slack.
- Crops not mentioned among species that save our lives.
- Saving sacred groves in Ethiopia. By building pit latrines. Well why not?
- Brazil nut spread by people.
- A trade-off between species and genetic diversity? Say it
ain’t so! - Today’s iconic species threatened by climate change is the baobab.
- An Egyptian archaeobotanical blog.
- Botanic gardens can threaten biodiversity.
- Nature has (or had, it’s a couple months old) a supplement on nutrigenomics.
Nibbles: Plant Cuttings, Truffles, Diseases, Vegetables, Capsicum, Calestous Juma
- Nigel Chaffey’s roundup of botanical news is out.
- Learn how to grow truffles. For Canadians.
- ILRI policy brief on how agriculture and human health are connected. Bottom line: it’s complicated.
- AVRDC introduces you to Mali’s Magnificent Cube.
- Biofortified on pepper breeding.
- Calestous Juma in the New Agriculturist on why he’s optimistic about African agriculture.
More diverse wheats for the future
The Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Council, one of the UK science-funding agencies, has announced a GBP7 million grant “to increase the diversity of traits available in wheat via a comprehensive pre-breeding programme”. They’re going to be plumbing “ancient sources of wheat germplasm” and creating lines and markers that will allow breeders to breed performance traits into elite lines. All the data and seed lines will be stored centrally and made freely available as part of a coordinated global effort. One of the partners in the project is the University of Nottingham, which issued its own press release, which gives a bit more detail. For example, one of Nottingham’s tasks will be to transfer genetic material from wild relatives of wheat, because “due to modern breeding practises there is not sufficient genetic variation in modern wheat varieties to obtain the increases in yield required”. Another task will be to breed for “Nutrient use efficiency … the amount of grain yield that plants produce for each kilo of nutrient available to the plant”.
Which reminds me, wasn’t it the University of Nottingham’s Professor Donald Grierson who promised, back in the early 1980s, that nitrogen-fixing wheat was just over the horizon? Seems like it still is.
Nibbles: Cassava, Brazil, Taro, Tobacco
- High-protein, vitamin-A enriched cassava. It’s GM, but it doesn’t have to be. Apparently.
- Resilience Science shows us the modernist face of intense and diverse agriculture in Brazil.
- The Scientist Gardener gives taro, and our pal the TaroMeister, some respect.
- A tobacco festival! Celebrating the diversity of cigars! In Cuba! (Where else?)
Nibbles: Lingonberries, Genebank Standards, Genebank, Seed Systems, Chinese drought, Cuba, Mexican bees
- Lingonberries power a trip from moose to mousse, and mush.
- FAO has a draft of updated genebank standards!
- Climate change person visits ICRISAT genebank, is impressed.
- Access to improved seed lauded.
- Yo! Price spike watchers! The Chinese drought thing is complex. Pay yer money. Take yer choice.
- Our friends at DAPA highlight their friends in Cuba: “peasant farmers have been able to boost food production via environmentally friendly methods”.
- Protecting native bee populations in Mexico.