- Youth compiles list of rare and extinct rice varieties of Assam. Maybe he should look at weedy rice too?
- Meanwhile, American farmers are learning to grow quinoa, probably including some rare varieties.
- The smelliest fish in the world. No traceability needed for that one, I guess.
- Cropland getting mapped. Presumably including the Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems (GIAHS). Help needed by both, by the way.
- Follow the forest discussions at COP18. High on the agenda: what is a landscape? It’s what you study when you’re being holistic, no? Anyway, there’s got to be a connection to the previous links.
- Boffins find a genetic marker for old seed. Will need to Brainfood this one.
- Pat Heslop-Harrison breaks down superdomestication for you.
- SRI gets a scaling up. What could possibly go wrong?
Nibbles: Fungi, Fireblight, Flood Relief, Irrational Ghanaian men, Symposium, Dust Bowl Blues, SRI, Brazil’s agro-policy
- Where do new mushrooms come from? Hint: domestication of wild species has not stopped.
- And resistance to fireblight in apples? Hint: a single specimen of an old variety.
- How about help for flood-stricken Nigerian farmers? Hint: a gene bank!
- Where do people get gender in agriculture all wrong? Hint: women may bring home the bacon, but if that threatens their husband’s status, rationality flies out the door.
- Where, from 10-13 December, can you learn about “Crops from the past and new crops in adressing (sic) the challenges of the XXI century”? Hint: Córdoba, Spain.
- Where did the Dust Bowl go? Hint: it never went away.
- Where to get the straight dope on System of Rice Intensification? Hint: an SRI researcher may not be unbiased.
- Where are government and civil society elaborating a National Plan for Agroecology and Organic Production? Hint: a river runs through it.
Bread wheat genome rises
It’s a good day for cereal genomes. Nature offers both bread wheat and barley, and they’re both open access. That’s great; you can read them yourself and draw your own conclusions. Nature’s commentary on the matter, however, will set you back $18, which seems fair enough. The crucial points are:
- The wheat genome is huge — three sets of chromosomes derived from three different ancestors — and complex. So this isn’t actually a complete sequence.
- It is, however, a great scaffold on which to build a more detailed sequence, using additional techniques.
- The sequence has already revealed that members of some gene families have been lost since the ancestral hybridisation, while others, notably those involved in specific areas of plant metabolism and growth, have expanded.
- The best wheat yields can exceed 12 tonnes per hectare; the global average is more like 2 t/ha, and that is likely to be undermined by climate change. Will the genome help breeding efforts? Some people clearly hope so.
Barley was a relatively simple challenge, just one set of chromosomes, and smallish ones at that. And barley is already much more tolerant of physical stresses than many other cereals. So rather than looking to the genome for help in breeding better barley (though that is surely on the cards) researchers ask how barley’s genes help it to be so tolerant, and then use the answers to improve other cereals.
Nibbles: Agriculture and climate change and GM and nutrition
- Farmers are “the canaries in the mine when it comes to climate change,” says The Financial Times. Get the whole report as a PDF.
- Bioversity says it has climate change covered with a new Seeds for Needs project. Is there an echo in here?
- Farming First covers climate change in an infographic.
- Avenue of the Baobabs in Madagascar burnt down. Better edit those factsheets.
- Heirloom maize farmers talk sense on GM corn shock …
- … but Punjab doesn’t care. Invites Monsanto “To put agriculture diversification on the fast track”.
- Jessica Fanzo wins the Carasso Prize for her great research on nutrition. Proud to call her a friend.
- There was a roundtable associated with the Carasso Prize. Lawrence Haddad blogs about it.
- Pity that roundtable clashed with Workshop: ‘Adding Value to Local Foods for Food and Nutrition Security: Myth or Strategic Option’ in the Caribbean.
- Will the Caribbean warm to finger millet? Zester Daily just wants to share the gluten-free goodness.
- Bere whisky. No, you read that right. Bere as in barley, not as in beer. But then, barley is in beer. Where’s an etymologist when you need one?
And we’ve got nutrition in spades:
Brainfood: Pig genome, Turkey genome, Big genomes, Maize genome, Potato improvement, Mango diversity, Coconut germination
- Analyses of pig genomes provide insight into porcine demography and evolution. More wild diversity in Asia, suggesting origin there, followed by migration to Europe. Separate domestication in SE Asia and Europe, followed by geneflow.
- Whole genome SNP discovery and analysis of genetic diversity in Turkey (Meleagris gallopavo). Lot less diverse than chicken. Or pig. Commercial breed even less diverse.
- Why size really matters when sequencing plant genomes. We must not shy away from the big genomes.
- QTL mapping in three tropical maize populations reveals a set of constitutive and adaptive genomic regions for drought tolerance. Eureka!
- Crops that feed the world 8: Potato: are the trends of increased global production sustainable? Maybe. But can you guess what will be needed? Nice review of genebank holdings and improvement strategies and aims.
- Physico-chemical Characterization of Unexploited Mango Diversity in Sub-mountane Zone of Northern India. 28 varieties in the Punjab, with all kinds of different uses.
- Germination Rate is the Significant Characteristic Determining Coconut Palm Diversity. Natural and artificial selection associated with different rates of germination (as well as other phenotypic traits of course).