Climate change

June 11, 2013July 1, 2013

Eucarpia fishing in Malmo

The meeting of Eucarpia’s Genetic Resources Section is taking place in Malmo, Sweden this week, under the catchy title of “Pre-breeding — fishing in the gene pool.” Lots of old friends there. Maybe someone will tweet: there is a hashtag, but not much action yet.

LATER: No tweets yet, but here’s one presentation at least.

June 5, 2013June 5, 2013

Nibbles: Hot peppers, Job, Hippy scientist, Seed law considered, Old seed, Rice and recovery

Will the world ever tire of hot pepper stories?
Would you like to work at the Millennium Seed Bank?
The Guardian hymns Howard-Yana Shapiro, the “vegan hippy scientist” who wants to open orphan crop genomes.
Patrick links to Arche Noah’s response to the new EU seed laws.
Laws that don’t bother Gene Logsdon, planter of old seed.
IRRI claims that rice seed aids Bangladesh’s cyclone recovery, but frankly, I can barely read it.

May 31, 2013May 31, 2013

Nibbles: New genebank, Modelling change, Non-GMO tomato, Greenhouse gases, Fruit diversity, Chickpea genomes

The Australians have turned the sod on a new genebank. Can’t have too many genebanks.
Climate change model reveals the differences between coffee and mango. Can’t have too many models. Or mangoes.
GMO tomato that is not GMO and is purple could result in healthier, cheaper tomatoes. Can’t have too much confusion.
Fantastically interesting infographic on where greenhouse gases come from. Can’t have too many good infographics.
Among which I include Pop Chart Lab’s new taxonomic poster of The Various Varieties of Fruits. Fruit is good for you. And tomato is not a fruit
A late addition: chickpea genome sequenced — twice. Can’t have too many chickpea genomes, as Nigel Chaffey explains.

May 27, 2013May 29, 2013

Brainfood: Urban German grassland, Urban Flemish gardens, Totally wild beans, Inter-specific Vigna crosses, Vietnamese cattle, Sustainable intensification, Gender, Oak seeds

Urban land use types contribute to grassland conservation: The example of Berlin. And perhaps also to CWR conservation?
Garden management and soil fertility in Flemish domestic gardens. Little about their diversity, though, alas.
Drought Tolerance in Wild Plant Populations: The Case of Common Beans (Phaseolus vulgaris L.). Greater ecological amplitude than the domesticate.
Introgression of productivity and other desirable traits from ricebean (Vigna umbellata) into black gram (Vigna mungo). It ain’t easy, but may be worth the effort.
Assessment of genetic diversity and population structure of Vietnamese indigenous cattle populations by microsatellites. Some traditionally recognized breeds are close enough genetically to be conserved as a group.
Ecogeographic survey and gap analysis of Lathyrus L. species. Only 6 of 36 species are adequately represented in genebanks.
To close the yield-gap while saving biodiversity will require multiple locally relevant strategies. Location, location, location.
Co-evolution of landscape patterns and agricultural intensification: An example of dairy farming in a traditional Dutch landscape. And here’s an example.
Gender and Agricultural Innovation in Peasant Production of Native Potatoes in the Central Andes of Peru. And I suppose this is another, in a way.
Ecological significance of seed desiccation sensitivity in Quercus ilex. Drying causes mortality. Could be used to predict response to climate change. In other news, oak seeds are recalcitrant.

May 26, 2013

Seeds for Needs in India

Seeds for Needs is a series of projects aimed at getting diverse material into farmer’s hands so they can assess it for themselves and decide whether and how they want to make use of it. An interesting twist on the idea is to harvest the results from hundreds of farmers and make greater sense (and use) of all that information. Now here’s a little video from Bioversity International about how things are going in India.

The growth of the farmer network, from 50 to 500 in a year, is fantastic, although I can’t help thinking that Jacob van Etten is still dreaming of hundreds of thousands of participants in his grand experiment in crowdsourcing.