Climate change

May 17, 2011May 17, 2011

Nibbles, Menu edition: Garlic, Potatoes, Meat, Tomatoes, Ramps, Bananas, Chocolate, Coffee, Pepper breeding, Local cattle in RSA

Chicago, Chicago, it’s an edible town. Major urban centre named for edible wild species shock.
Drought-resistant potatoes! At least 1000 genes involved.
Test-tube burgers? ¹
Wild tomatoes and climate change. A meeting round-up from our chums at CIAT.
The appeal of fair trade bananas. A good read.
Technical Guidelines on the Safe Movement of Cacao Germplasm updated.
Coffee, please. A cup of your finest specialty variety.
Caribbean pepper breeders getting hot under the collar.
Gotta love the way Farm Radio Weekly not only has great stories about agrobiodiversity, but also handy background notes.

Well, that was fun.

May 16, 2011May 16, 2011

Nibbles: Hunger foods, Pollinators, Sacred Seeds, Neglected species, Grasses, Yields, Hawaiian History

Mining Mungo Park for info about famine foods. Bamboo seeds and, perhaps, baobab pods.
The big prerequisite for EU funding is a good acronym. STEP — status and trends of European pollinators — gets the go ahead.
Sacred Seeds project at Missouri Botanical Garden announces new partners in India.
New Bioversity project to extend importance of work on neglected species in India, Nepal and Bolivia.
How to manage diverse grasses.
More on climate change and maize yields. “[I]f anything heat tolerance is declining.”
Ancient agriculture in Hawaii.

May 16, 2011May 13, 2011

Brainfood: Millet biscuits, Wheat micronutrients, Diversification and C footprint, Agroforestry, Epazote, Grape history, Belgian farmers, Millet phenology, Species migration, Barley domestication, Sheep genetics

Quality characteristics of biscuits prepared from finger millet seed coat based composite flour. They’re nutritious. Crocodile Dundee on the tastiness of the iguana may, however, apply.
Minerals and trace elements in a collection of wheat landraces from the Canary Islands. There are differences, but environment and agronomic practices could affect them.
Lowering carbon footprint of durum wheat by diversifying cropping systems. Yes, by 7-34%, depending on how the diversification was done.
Effect of shading by baobab (Adansonia digitata) and néré (Parkia biglobosa) on yields of millet (Pennisetum glaucum) and taro (Colocasia esculenta) in parkland systems in Burkina Faso, West Africa. Taro is a shade lover; grow it under néré, and vice versa.
Ethnobotanical, morphological, phytochemical and molecular evidence for the incipient domestication of Epazote (Chenopodium ambrosioides L.: Chenopodiaceae) in a semi-arid region of Mexico. Good to know; I love epazote.
Grape varieties (Vitis vinifera L.) from the Balearic Islands: genetic characterization and relationship with Iberian Peninsula and Mediterranean Basin. See the grand sweep of European history unfold.
Microsatellite characterization of grapevine (Vitis vinifera L.) genetic diversity in Asturias (Northern Spain). No evidence of communication with the previous group.
Plant economy of the first farmers of central Belgium (Linearbandkeramik, 5200–5000 b.c.). They were dope fiends.
Selection for earlier flowering crop associated with climatic variations in the Sahel. Compared to 1976 millet samples, samples collected in 2003 had shorter lifecycle (due to an early flowering allele at the PHYC locus increasing in frequency), and a reduction in plant and spike size. So you don’t need new varieties, the old ones will adapt to climate change. Oh, and BTW, there’s been no genetic erosion.
Do species’ traits predict recent shifts at expanding range edges? No.
The domestication syndrome genes responsible for the major changes in plant form in the Triticeae crops. Failure to disarticulate and 6-rows in barley, in detail. Part of a Special Issue on Barley.
The genetics of colour in fat-tailed sheep: a review. I didn’t know karakul had fat tails.

May 14, 2011

Nibbles: Nabhan, Tilapia, Crowdsourcing taxonomy, Drought, Bees

Gary Nabhan on the West Bank wall.
Tilapia not so bad after all?
Yet another example of crowdsourcing in science.
Yet another approach to breeding for (mild) drought tolerance.
Yet another reason why natural history collections are so important.

May 11, 2011May 11, 2011

Nibbles: Beer in Sudan, Tea and pastoralism in Kenya, Iron in beans, Mediterranean diet

Sudanese beer-drinkers in trouble. Let my people go!
The future of tea in Kenya. Mother-in-law alerted.
Meanwhile, Kenyan pastoralists go back to the future.
Slideshow: “Combating hidden hunger through bio-fortification.” Beanz meanz ironz.
May is Mediterranean Diet Month. It is? I mean, who knew?