Breeding

Nibbles: Pavlovsk, Maize, Papaver somniferum, Organics, Zulu gardens, Feasts, Female farmers, Transhumance, Dogs

Bioversity International and UNEP jointly pile on the pressure to preserve Pavlovsk …
… as do plant professors from University of Wisonsin.
Mexican maize farmers using CIMMYT genebank materials to adapt their varieties. Why not in Africa, then?
High praise for a novel on opium.
Mat Kinase takes Time to task over lacklustre organics article.
King Goodwill Zwelithini calls for One Home One Garden campaign to support food-growing and nutrition.
Feasts predate agriculture. Well, yeah.
Female farmers … a bloke writes.
Great pic on the joys of modern transhumance.
Resurrecting the Maize King. And why not?
More than anyone has a right to know about dogs in the ancient world.

Genejockeys say they have sorted that global food supply problem everybody’s been so antsy about lately. No, wait, maybe it’s this.
China has 23 indigenous horse breeds. At least.
Latest crop to get the orange treatment is soybean.
Diverse ways of doing agriculture: Could CropMobs go global?
Choose foods, not nutrients. Heck, yes.
Globally warmed beetles threatening your coffee crops? Bring on biodiversity!
Brit breeds bees for better grooming.
How to get the most out of your wild blueberries. Maybe we should tell Medvedev?
Emerging Crops is a new NUS project, and it has a website.

CIFOR has a blog!
Nice series of videos on eating weeds.
Video on Peru’s “Andean rodeo.” You heard me.
Africa needs drought-tolerant maize. Ok, fair enough, but here’s my question. Shouldn’t they have done this study before doing all that breeding? Oh, who knows, maybe they did.
“Biofortification will thus remain relevant to poor rural populations in the years to come, as their incomes will still be far too low to afford a more diversified diet.” What? Who says a diversified diet need be expensive?
Russia faces looming buckwheat crisis. At least the genetic resources are safe in the Vavilov Institute. Unless of course somebody decides to, I don’t know, build luxury villas there, or something.

How can you do Eggplant’s Rich History and not wonder why this generally huge, generally purple thing is called an eggplant?
Domestication of the Gray Ghost Organ Pipe cactus; exceedingly complex. Oh and there’s a cool photo here.
How berries protect the brain from age-related malfunction. Are you listening, Dmitry?
Protect medicinal plants, says letter-writer.
The world doesn’t understand drought tolerance, says another letter-writer.
Agrobiodiversity in Mesoamerica conference.
Chaffey’s Plant Cuttings from Annals of Botany. Must-read stuff.
A wild relative contributes trait for early morning flowering to rice, allowing it to escape sterility induced by high temperatures.
The Cornelian Cherry and the Baobab explained.
Voice of America devotes Special English report to Pavlovsk. If that ain’t viral, what is?
Genebanks on a roll in China. In Australia, not so much.
Dam dataset online. Let the mashups proliferate.

There’s a Facebook group for that: unusual root crops, sponsored by the inimitable Rhizowen.
ILRI says herders are important to identify disease outbreaks in livestock. Makes sense to me.
ILRI also says local breeds should be included in Indian pig-breeding programmes. Again, no argument.
More on livestock: what Mongolia’s harsh winter has wrought. BTW, there’s also a discussion at DAD-Net of the effect of Pakistan’s floods on livestock.
Aspen trees need occasional sex. Don’t we all.
Climate change not good for rice. I knew that, I think.