Climate change

December 11, 2011December 15, 2011

Nibbles: Brand new tool, Baseline, Orange cassava, Food non-crisis, ILRI on the frontline, WorldFish

In recognition of the fact that I’ve spent the past week at CIMMYT up to my ears in the CGIAR, an all-CGIAR edition!

CCAFS unleashes hell. Well, Climate Analogues anyway. No, wait…
How does CCAFS measure impact anayway? Well, by documenting progress in adaptation relative to a baseline, of course. What I want to know is how the baseline captures within-crop diversity.
Meanwhile, HarvestPlus is having another impact of its own. Well, I guess we’ll really have to wait for the health studies to be sure, but anyway.
And speaking of impact, IFPRI now says that surveys show that the food crisis was not really a crisis for the poor, where simulations say it was. Now what?
ILRI remembers the visit of Angela Merkel, and, probably unrelatedly, discovers the joys of fermentation.
WorldFish got a brand new website. Does Climate Analogues work for fish?

December 6, 2011December 6, 2011

Nibbles: Journalism, Conservation, IPRs in Uganda

The Wall Street Journal tries to get its head around genebanks, climate change and plant breeding, with mixed success.
Farming essential to threatened wildlife. Now there’s a turnup for the books.
A Ugandan wants intellectual property laws for agricultural development. I think share and share alike would be good too.

December 4, 2011December 4, 2011

Nibbles: Evergreen Agriculture, Traditional Knowledge

Blogposts from Durban I: Evergreen Agriculture for all
Blogposts from Durban II: Meteorologists, traditional and modern.
And the quote of the day, yesterday: “There is no word in English for the Irish word that translates, roughly, as ubuntu.”

November 30, 2011November 30, 2011

Nibbles: Pre-Columbian ecology, Huitlacoche, Nutrition, COP17, Walnuts, Custodians, Price Volatility, Kenyan farmers, Education, Peach pests, Unhappy Talk

Special Journal issue on Environmental changes and pre-Columbian human influence in the Amazon region.
Porn on the cob. A smut story with a headline so good, I’m sure to steal it.
A practical field manual cum guide to Improving nutrition with agricultural biodiversity.
Ag researchers “speak with a single voice” to “call on climate negotiators to endorse a work programme for agriculture”. We shall see.
And will it come in time to Save the Walnut?
New book on “Custodians of Biodiversity“.
Brussels Briefing on Food Price Volatility. Today! Soon!
China hears how Kenyan farmers can benefit from traditional vegetables.
“Are plants like us?” It depends …
A minor increase in biodiversity protects peaches from nematode pests.
Climate change in the Pacific: The problem, according to the Aussies. The solution, according to the ADB.

November 28, 2011November 25, 2011

Brainfood: OSP adoption, Milk quality, Passport data quality, Historical collections, Sweet potato domestication, African veggies, Baobab diversity and domestication, Cassava diversity, Strawberry breeding, Barley GWA, Pest symbionts, Maize diversity and climate change

A large-scale intervention to introduce orange sweet potato in rural Mozambique increases vitamin A intakes among children and women. Just 1 year of training worked just as well as a higher intensity intervention (3 years) in increasing OSP and vitamin A intake by younger children, older children and women, and decreasing prevalence of inadequate vitamin A intakes. OSP represented about half of all sweet potatoes consumed so I guess there was not complete replacement of local varieties.
Composition of milk from minor dairy animals and buffalo breeds: a biodiversity perspective. There are significant interbreed and inter-species differences. Dromedary milk is closest to cow milk, mare and donkey milk maybe the healthiest, but moose milk is the one I’d like to try.
Quality indicators for passport data in ex situ genebanks. That would be the genebanks in Eurisco. Verdict: not bad, but could do better. Most variation in quality is among institutes.
Exploring the population genetics of genebank and historical landrace varieties. Old samples of dead seeds of 4 crops in Swedish museum jars more genetically variable than genebank accessions, but it’s not the genebank’s fault. And at least their seeds are still alive. Also no genetic correspondence between geographically matched museum and genebank samples.
Combining chloroplast and nuclear microsatellites to investigate origin and dispersal of New World sweet potato landraces. Two areas of domestication, probably from a single wild progenitor species: lowland NW South America and lowland Central America/Caribbean. Genetic differences between these 2 genepools not accompanied by morphological differences, but then again nobody’s looked properly, and the current descriptors are useless anyway.
The significance of African vegetables in ensuring food security for South Africa’s rural poor. Their huge potential is being thwarted by evil extensionists. Ok, but don’t we need to move beyond that?
Comparative study on baobab fruit morphological variation between western and south-eastern Africa: opportunities for domestication. Hang on a minute, aren’t there a million factsheets about all this?
Marriage exchanges, seed exchanges, and the dynamics of manioc diversity. Kinship structures determine cassava diversity patterns in Gabon. Matrilineal societies have more diversity.
Interspecific hybridization of diploids and octoploids in strawberry. You get pentaploid and tetraploid plants.
Genome wide association analyses for drought tolerance related traits in barley (Hordeum vulgare L.). Ok, deep breath. Over 200 accessions, both wild and cultivated, from 30 countries, so quite variable, but also structured. There were some QTLs that differed between dry and wet sites, but they didn’t explain much phenotypic variation, and they couldn’t be related to previous work. So GWA not much use, probably because of population structure. But couldn’t that have been predicted? And isn’t it possible to do something about structure in the analysis?
Population genetics of beneficial heritable symbionts. Of insects, that is. Mostly proteobacteria. So my question is, could somehow attacking the symbionts form the basis of a pest management strategy?
Projecting the effects of climate change on the distribution of maize races and their wild relatives in Mexico. Many races and wild relatives are predicted to shift in geographic distribution. Unless of course agronomy intervenes. Teocinte taxa should be collected.