Climate change

Nibbles: Book, Sorghum, Plant breeding, Quinoa, Herbal medicines, Compensation, New varieties, Beers

Here’s a bunch of better-late-than-never links, some of which will be good this time next year.

A new book on Plant Genetic Resources and Climate Change.
I expect it covers sorghum, which NPR calls the “camel of crops”.
Wonder whether they’ll cover sorghum at the Tucson Plant Breeding Institute course in January 2014. h/t Crops for the Future.
Last week’s International Congress on Quinoa. Pretty sure our invitation got lost in the mail.
As was our invitation to Kew’s one-day symposium on herbal medicines and food supplements.
Annals of Botany explains how compensation may underly the benefits of genetic diversity – in Arabidopsis. (And thanks for the shout-out.)
ICRISAT struts its stuff in Nigeria with new varieties of groundnut and millet. As ever, we ask: who’s looking after the old varieties?
Diverse beers for Halloween – one to cut out and keep.

Native tribes in the US want more food sovereignty.
People underreport the calories they consume shock. Research sponsored by Coke not a shock.
For nutritionally fortified food, fortify the fertilizers first.
German scientists working round to clock to decipher barley DNA and save Oktoberfest from climate-induced drought.
Climate change, however, is a double-edged sword for coconuts in Guyana.
2013 Global Hunger Index says world hunger remains “serious”.
Is all that scary enough to put you off your food?
Relax, it’s World Food Day, everything’s gonna be alright.

The Guide for the Perplexed Entering the Maze of Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Folklore. Great title.
IRRI DG blogs about Golden Rice on World Sight Day. In other news, there’s a World Sight Day.
Indian farmers ever more marginal.
If they were in Africa, they’d be producing nutritious school meals.
Book on camel biodiversity.
Turns out Jeremy is part of a movement that he apparently didn’t even know existed.
Are you involved in the UNFCCC agriculture negotiations? You’ll need this handy communications tool-kit. Agricultural biodiversity is in there somewhere.
Not sure that eels are, but maybe they should be.

Paying attention to traditional knowledge to help with climate change … in New England!
Two million New York Botanical Gardens herbarium sheets digitized, possibly including some crop wild relatives.
Map your recipe, an entertaining way to talk about domestication and interdependence in the matter of agricultural biodiversity.
IRRI follows up genebank video with genebank podcast. No idea why.
Speaking of videos, here’s one on lentil breeding in Canada.
Which I don’t think involved drought resistance there, but it probably did elsewhere.
Tribes (not in New England — see above) diversify from trout. Alas freshwater not included in new global fish diversity hotspot map.
Musa taxonomists do their thing.
Millet takes on quinoa. Taxonomists would insist on calling it Panicum miliaceum. I think. Next in the queue is sorghum?
Phenomics in words and images.

“The Access to Seeds Index measures the performance of the leading companies in the seed industry independently, which will result in the publication of a ranking every two years.” Will need to keep an eye on this. As no doubt also will the CGIAR…
…which met in Lisbon to discuss the Generation Challenge Programme and presented on NUS at Tropentag, having moved on from the Science Forum in Bonn, which had a lot on nutrition. No doubt some of them will be in Lillehammer to discuss plant genetic resources and climate change. How do they keep on top of it all?
And when they are not meeting, they are surveying the use of Gnetum, sampling goats, and making videos about their genebanks among many other worthwhile things…
Speaking of the IRRI genebank, Mike Jackson’s obituary of his friend Dr Joe Smartt, “geneticist and renowned grain legume expert,” is online at GRACE, but behind a paywall. Fortunately, you can get a condensed version on Mike’s blog.
Legumes, I hear you say? “Two big mysteries in soybeans have captured my attention.” And I’m sure that sentence captured yours. Corn+Soybean Digest reveals all.
Time for dessert. I see your 300-variety mango of Malihabad and I raise you a 250-variety apple of Chidham.
But lest we forget why we’re doing all this meeting and goat-sampling and fruit-grafting, here comes FAO’s latest report on food insecurity.