- Science for the People blog carnival is up, answering questions.
- How fashion turns the local glamorous, exotic and desirable — foods edition.
- Sub-1 rice gene takes over local varieties, changes nothing except flood tolerance.
- Rhizowen may be suffering from inadvertent introgression, in his yacon.
- New variety — just the one — resistant to coffee berry rust and leaf rust released in Kenya.
Nibbles: Genebank, Guanaco, Maize, Wild food
- Maintaining a citrus gene bank. Just the book you need if you have to, er, maintain a citrus genebank.
- Guanacos need quiet.
- Don’t understand this piece on maize germplasm conservation and use.
- Indigenous food plants in trouble in the Philippines.
Brassica bounty
Couldn’t resist today’s trifecta of Brassica papers. At the meta level, there’s “Origin and Domestication of Cole Crops (Brassica oleracea L.): Linguistic and Literary Considerations” in Economic Botany. Then some of the same authors follow up in GRACE with “AFLP analysis of genetic diversity in leafy kale (Brassica oleracea L. convar. acephala (DC.) Alef.) landraces, cultivars and wild populations in Europe.” And finally, in Plant Breeding, enjoy “The cytoplasm effect comparison between Brassica napus and Brassica carinata on floral characteristics of Brassica oleracea.” Enough to keep brassica boffins busy for weeks.
Nibbles: Heat, Pastoralism, Yams, Caimito, Pavlovsk, Beans, Tomatoes, Trees, Grasslands, Rice in LAC, Fossil sunflower, Apples, Fish in Africa
- Unpacking the heat of chillies.
- Debating pastoralism, a new journal.
- Celebrating (instead of growing?) yams.
- Economic Botany releases free download of paper on caimito domestication.
- More than 50,000 people care about Pavlovsk Experiment Station. Unstoppable?
- A bean diversity fair was held in Uganda on the 21st of June 2010. Did we miss it then?
- Searching for the Blue Zebra … tomato. Wonder if AVRDC know about it.
- Those blogging diplomats — How to make a scarf from a tree.
- Tibet’s disappearing grasslands. Pastoralists see item 2 above.
- IRRI DG says, in Latin America, that Latin America could be next global rice bowl. Well, he would, wouldn’t he. Very data-heavy presentation.
- One VERY remote sunflower wild relative. Very cool.
- Chaffey’s regular words of wisdom on anything botanical. Well, mostly wise. But more on that later…
- The history of the apple in the early US.
- IUCN does for African freshwater fish what it does best. Ring the alarm bell.
Nibbles: Permaculture, Bird flu, Malnutrition, Roots & tubers in E Africa, Sweet potato
- Perennial fodder crops to the rescue.
- Cool bird flu maps. GIS to the rescue.
- Persistent malnutrition? We know how to fix it. That’s the tragedy. Meanwhile, let’s consult the e-atlas.
- Cassava and potato to the rescue.
- Orange+purple sweet potatoes to the rescue.