The programme for the ASA-CSSA-SSSA International Annual Meetings in November is up. The genetic resources sessions look very solid, as ever. And the prestigious Calvin Sperling Memorial Lecture is to be given by our friend, colleague and occasional contributor Robert Hijmans on a topic we’ve blogged about often here, climate change and agrobiodiversity.
Rice diversity measured and photographed
I did a quick nibble a few days ago about the OryzaSNP project, in which “[a]n international team of investigators used microarray-based resequencing to look for SNPs in 100 million bases of non-repetitive DNA in the genomes of 20 different rice varieties and landraces.”
They’ve come up with 159,879 single nucleotide polymorphisms, a “gold-standard set of curated polymorphisms” for rice.
As for the 20 varieties used…
“[t]hese varieties, the OryzaSNPset collection, are genetically diverse and actively used in international breeding programs because of their wide range of agronomic attributes,” the authors explained.
But what do they look like? Well, I just found this photograph of their seeds on IRRI’s Flickr page. A nice idea.
Nibbles: Red rice, Drought squared, Slow Food, Coffee, Cassava, Horses, Wheat, Ketchup
- Saving red rice in India. Note comment from Bhuwon.
- India again: “We have not been able to sow rice. Our corn crop has been destroyed by pests. We have nothing to eat. We have nothing to feed our cattle.”
- Morocco: “The farmers started using more subterranean water, but that has almost been used up, putting us on a straight line to desertification.” But, “[r]esearchers have also introduced new varieties of grain that in laboratory tests have proven resistant to water stress or drought.”
- Another Slow Food interview. Zzzzzzzzzz.
- Cuppa weird joe?
- IITA and others save cassava in West Africa.
- Nice photo essay on a thoroughbred stud farm.
- Take the wheat quiz.
- Where is our heirloom ketchup?
Nibbles: Water buffalo, Distillation, Salmon, Banana, Stem rust, Red rice
- Great photo-essay on the water buffalo.
- A renaissance of gin production in London. Cheers!
- Not bad photo essay on the salmon migration.
- Special issue of Ethnobotany Research & Applications on banana domestication.
- Afghanistan readies for Ug99. Because it doesn’t have enough problems already.
- Saving red rice. Note comment from Bhuwon.
Cherries come and go
The FreshPlaza newsletter is a veritable treasure trove of information on fruit & veg around the world. Yesterday’s issue was particularly rich in agrobiodiversity articles. Among other things, it pointed to pieces about how the British are losing their cherry varieties, and about how a Washington State farmer found a new one. There was also an appreciation from Pakistan of the local fruit known as “jamun“, which is probably Syzygium cumini.