- The great Tim Johnson, (soon to be) formerly of the Seed Savers Exchange, on conserving heritage seeds.
- “Peppy professor ponders a peck of pepper possibilities.”
- Kelp will save us.
- David Spooner: “Ever since I could remember all I ever wanted to be was a botanist.” From potatoes to carrots…
- Veterans help save livestock breeds.
- Agroforestry is a big hit in Vietnam.
Nibbles: Celebrity chef, Brazilian meeting & dessert, Citizen experiment, Phenotyping course, Fonio, Milpa, Broccoli nutrients, Biodiversity $$, Soybean history
- Alexis Soyer was apparently the first celebrity chef.
- EMBRAPA gets to grips with crop wild relatives, with a little help from their friends.
- Did they serve brigaidero, though?
- Take part in a crowd-sourced experiment on plant adaptation.
- And then go and find out how the experts do it.
- Will fonio‘s day ever come?
- Celebrating the milpa.
- Gotta eat your broccoli fresh for the full nutrient monty.
- Putting (yet another) value on biodiversity. This one by adding or subtracting a species to a grassland plot and seeing what happens to C sequestration.
- What price soybeans?
Animate the apocalypse
You know that paper entitled Biodiversity redistribution under climate change: Impacts on ecosystems and human well-being, that we included in Brainfood a couple of weeks back?. The money quote was: “The indirect effects of climate change on food webs are also expected to compound the direct effects on crops.” Ok, well, you don’t have to read it. All you have to do is watch a 1.5 minute video.
Nibbles: Viking dope, Garden survey, Ancient olive press, Proposal writing, Nice figures, Old garden books, Chestnuts, Cannibalism, Saving coffee, Vanilla history, Seed book, Spanish brassica
- Vikings got high.
- “How can you and your garden help us find out more about the global biodiversity associated with the plants in gardens?” Here’s how.
- The oldest olive press in Anatolia.
- “The Mistake: Writing a proposal that showcased knowledge rather than addressing the audience’s needs.” Indeed.
- The Solution: cool downloads from Gapminder.
- The only surviving illustrated Old English herbal. And, from several centuries later, a medieval book on how gardens will save you.
- AramcoWorld on my favourite nut.
- Cannibalism is a choice.
- One kick-ass botanist.
- Saving Ethiopia’s coffee forests. Nah, let’s just map the genome.
- Vanilla has dark side.
- The Profit of the Earth: cool new book on seeds, dark side and all.
- Remember my little trip to the Spanish genebank? What they’re doing on brassica.
Brainfood: Banana identification, Donkey domestication, Mouse domestication, African cattle, Pig domestication, Biofuels, Biofortification, Genomics for breeding, Species movement, Crop diversity double, N fixation, Ag commercialization models, Wild beans, Brassica domestication, Teaching biodiversity
- Molecular and cytological characterization of the global Musa germplasm collection provides insights into the treasure of banana diversity. 16% of 1500 accessions need taxonomic verification. Could have been much worse.
- Why the Donkey Did Not Go South: Disease as a Constraint on the Spread of Equus asinus into Southern Africa. Gap in distribution between Kenya and southern Africa until colonial times probably down to trypanosomiasis.
- Origins of house mice in ecological niches created by settled hunter-gatherers in the Levant 15,000 y ago. Hunter gatherers inadvertently domesticated the mouse.
- The genome landscape of indigenous African cattle. Now we know where the genes for heat tolerance and tick resistance can be found, and it’s where you’d think.
- Insights into early pig domestication provided by ancient DNA analysis. In northern Europe, around 4000 BC, people started crossing pigs from the south with local wild boars. What were they thinking?
- Recent grassland losses are concentrated around U.S. ethanol refineries. The revenge of geography.
- Provitamin A biofortification of crop plants: a gold rush with many miners. “One crucial aspect that needs further experimentation is whether β-carotene-fortified crops can improve vitamin A status in the main targets of the biofortification efforts, that is, malnourished adults and children.” Just going to leave that out there.
- Genomic innovation for crop improvement. Longer reads needed. Is there no satisfying these gene-jockeys?
- Biodiversity redistribution under climate change: Impacts on ecosystems and human well-being. Species movements affect ecosystem functioning and service provision: “The indirect effects of climate change on food webs are also expected to compound the direct effects on crops.”
- Feeding the Household, Growing the Business, or Just Showing Off? Farmers’ Motivations for Crop Diversity Choices in Papua New Guinea. Some people grow lots of crops because it’s cool. But why wasn’t this done at the intraspecific level?
- To Specialize or Diversify: Agricultural Diversity and Poverty Dynamics in Ethiopia. Forget coolness, crop diversity makes you less poor.
- Biogeography of nodulated legumes and their nitrogen-fixing symbionts. Australia is weird.
- Plantations, outgrowers and commercial farming in Africa: agricultural commercialisation and implications for agrarian change. They all have their place.
- Genomic history of the origin and domestication of common bean unveils its closest sister species. Wild populations from northern Peru and Ecuador are not derived from wild Phaseolus vulgaris which migrated there from Mesoamerica but are actually a different species which predates the evolution of wild common bean.
- Genomic inferences of domestication events are corroborated by written records in Brassica rapa. Five genetic groups, with rapini at the base.
- Walking and talking the tree of life: Why and how to teach about biodiversity. Forget ranks, try clades.