- WorldFish director has a brand new blog with a fancy Latin tag. Expiscor: to fish out, to find out, and discover.
- Cuba boasts home-grown Guardians of the Forests.
- Promotion of Andean Crops for Rural Development in Ecuador. No idea what this is or why it popped up now, but worth sharing anyway.
- Bioversity shares slides on The role of agricultural biodiversity in diets in the developing world: Improving diet diversity, quality and ecosystem sustainability.
- IIED comes out for traditional methods to cope with climate change. Could we abandon this sterile dichotomy, please?
Brainfood: Broomcorn millet, Domestication, Stand diversity, South African ornamentals, Rice wild relatives, Agriculture under climate change, Wheat domestication
- Genetic diversity and phylogeography of broomcorn millet (Panicum miliaceum L.) across Eurasia. One origin or two? Moving east or west? We still don’t know, but crop wild relatives may tell us.
- Next-generation sequencing for understanding and accelerating crop domestication. Those who understand history may be able to repeat it.
- Competition among loblolly pine trees: Does genetic variability of the trees in a stand matter? Can’t really say either way.
- The potential of South African indigenous plants for the international cut flower trade. Could do better.
- Genetic variability of banana with ornamental potential. The Embrapa Musa collection has some really cool-looking plants.
- Cytological Behavior of Hybridization Barriers Between Oryza sativa and Oryza officinalis. I guess that’s why they call it the tertiary genepool.
- Ancient lipids reveal continuity in culinary practices across the transition to agriculture in Northern Europe. Crap on 6000-year-old ceramic vessels shows people in the Western Baltic continued to eat fish and clams even after agriculture arrived. Well do you blame them?
- Options for support to agriculture and food security under climate change. Show ’em yer multi-pronged strategies, that’ll get their attention.
- N.I. Vavilov’s Theory of Centres of Diversity in the Light of Current Understanding of Wheat Diversity, Domestication and Evolution. When genes flow from centre of origin, that centre will not coincide with centre of diversity.
Nibbles: Compost, Breeding, Tree grower, Diseases, Seedsperson, Cordyceps, Illicium verum, Maize size, Microfauna, Participatory research, Art
- Compost can boost yields, save water shock.
- Tom Wagner shows off new tomatoes and potatoes.
- Our pal Neil tells one tree man’s story: Maurice Kwadha: farmer, entrepreneur, and climate-smart.
- The UK has a policy on animal and plant diseases in the 21st century. Doesn’t everyone?
- NPR nips at our heels, with stories on heirloom seeds and that Chinese zombie insect fungus Cordyceps.
- What to do with star anise.
- Size matters; corn ear edition.
- Soil microfauna really diverse everywhere shock.
- How scientists should work with indigenous people (in the Arctic).
- “On the matter of seeds.” Art meets PGR. Danny, this one’s for you.
Nibbles: Chickens, Millet adoption, Specialty crops, World Food Day, Migrating forests, Vietnamese pheasants, Yews, High prices, Genebank tour, Climate change conference.
- Why did the Chinese chicken cross the road? To get a new date. For domestication, that is.
- The Indian Farmer is actually three, millet-wise.
- USDA wades into specialty crops. Wonder if one of them is baobab, and a factsheet is involved. Or “small scale grains” for that matter.
- “Life in the countryside is hard.” But fear not, FAO is on it.
- Forests are not migrating. Species are actually undergoing range contraction at both ends. Well that’s weird.
- The first pheasant extinction? Say it ain’t so.
- I like pictures of old trees. So sue me.
- Jess stops traffic.
- Tour a cocoa genebank. Could this catch on?
- International Conference on Climate Change and Food Security (ICCCFS). Not hot air.
Brainfood: Ectomycorrhiza, Synthetic peanuts, Ancient Greek amphorae, European bison, Pea breeding, Animal domestication
- Ectomycorrhizas and climate change. One more damn thing to worry about.
- Meiotic analysis of the hybrids between cultivated and synthetic tetraploid groundnuts. It’s normal. The meiosis I mean. Why isn’t this sort of thing done with more crops?
- Aspects of Ancient Greek trade re-evaluated with amphora DNA evidence. More than just wine and olive oil.
- Reconstructing range dynamics and range fragmentation of European bison for the last 8000 years. More eastern and northern than thought, and more affected by the spread of farming than climate change in the Holocene.
- Resistance to downy mildew (Peronospora viciae) in Australian field pea germplasm (Pisum sativum). It comes from Afghanistan.
- Deciphering the genetic basis of animal domestication. Despite all that selection and all those bottlenecks, they really are diverse.
Don’t forget the open Mendeley group for the papers we link to here.