- Grape-ocalypse now.
- Take the Healthy Roots Indigenous Wellness Challenge.
- A Kickstarter to map Crete’s ancient olive trees. And why not? Maybe Palestine next?
- Different sort of crowdfunding for Italian cheese.
- Please, sir, what’s a ujleer.
- Gates Foundation throws Big Fast Food under the bus.
- African smallholders told to diversify. Like they don’t know already.
- African smallholders told to link up with markets. African smallholders tired of getting advice.
Brainfood: Identifying accessions, Evaluating yeasts, Using CWR, Wild grapes, Bushmeat and nutrition, Rice evaluation, Tomato characterization, Sugarcane CWR, Nordic livestock, Conservation optimization, Moringa development, Albanian olives
- High-throughput genotyping for species identification and diversity assessment in germplasm collections.. 9% of random Brassicaceae samples from Australian Grains Genebank misidentified to species, with some interspecific hybrids.
- Methodology for enabling high-throughput simultaneous saccharification and fermentation screening of yeast using solid biomass as a substrate. Everything is now, now, now these days.
- Utilization of wild relatives of wheat, barley, maize and oat in developing abiotic and biotic stress tolerant new varieties. Useful summary table at the end.
- Patterns of SNP distribution provide a molecular basis for high genetic diversity and genetic differentiation in Vitis species. Different grape species are really different.
- Disentangling the relative effects of bushmeat availability on human nutrition in central Africa. Both rational use of some wild mammals for nutrition, and conservation of more vulnerable species, are possible, though in different places.
- Blast Resistant Genes Distribution and Resistance Reaction to Blast in Korean Landraces of Rice (Oryza sativa L.). Conventional evaluation of landraces is useless; you really need to look at the genes.
- Characterization of a collection of local varieties of tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) using conventional descriptors and the high-throughput phenomics tool Tomato Analyzer. Brave new world.
- Phylogenetic analysis of Saccharum s.l. (Poaceae; Andropogoneae), with emphasis on the circumscription of the South American species. Allopolyploid, with 2 species belonging in a different genus.
- Utilization of farm animal genetic resources in a changing agro-ecological environment in the Nordic countries. Need to phenotype and genotype everything. Now where have I heard that before?
- Multi-objective optimization for plant germplasm collection conservation of genetic resources based on molecular variability. Lots of data plus fancy maths can tell you which individuals you should add to an ex situ collection to maximize conserved diversity.
- Actual and Potential Applications of Moringa stenopetala, Underutilized Indigenous Vegetable of Southern Ethiopia: A Review. Potential as a source of drugs, but you need to learn to grow it.
- Olive in the story and art in Albania. There are old olive trees around castles.
Nibbles: Year of the Goat, Nutritional guidelines, Healthy diets, IK & conservation, Healthy orchards, Indian endemics trouble, CWR garden, NGS & food security, 3000 rice genomes at work, C4 rice, It’s economics stupid, US animal products map, Milk production history, Old Chinese cheese, Old Arabian seashells by the seashore, Gordon Bleu insects, African agriculture visions, Agroecology conference report, Smallholder diversity, Seed systems project, Supermarket farms, Toronto beer, Herbs factsheets, Ecosystems map, Contested Agronomy
Sorry about no blogging last week. Was watching sausages being made. Here’s a quick roundup of most of the stuff I would have Nibbled.
- But first of all, Happy Year of the Ram, everyone. No, wait…
- Brazil has the best nutritional guidelines.
- But Chad the best diet. Both are kinda ironic.
- Well, what can governments do about supporting healthy food preferences anyway?
- Folk knowledge vital to conservation.
- Well I never, say the East Timorese.
- Farming in a national park can be a win-win.
- Maybe even a win-win-win, if cider apples are involved.
- India’s endemic plants could be in trouble. Many crop wild relatives among them?
- Maybe they should do what the Royal Horticultural Society will be doing at the Malvern Spring Festival and make a garden with crop wild relatives. But then it won’t be the world’s first.
- Next generation genomics is this generation’s jetpack.
- No, wait, here’s that jetpack you’ve been expecting for so long… Well, more the first concept of the assembly instructions, really.
- We’ll get that jetpack before C4 rice, I expect. But we will get both.
- But of course it’s not all about production anyway.
- Squid is Rhode Island’s most lucrative animal product. Otherwise it’s mainly milk, in that part of the US.
- Maybe cheese was the Taklamakan’s. Three thousand years ago. And sea molluscs Saudi Arabia‘s. Five thousand years ago.
- When and where will insects be.
- “Large-scale investment in African agriculture and agribusiness, whether foreign, domestic, private, government-backed, or a combination of these, could pay a vital role in providing urgently needed financing, technology and markets, thereby assisting to ensure food security, contributing to poverty reduction and propelling agriculture-driven growth, with significant implications for achieving more inclusive growth.” Is that really all one sentence?
- Or maybe small-scale investment?
- How much investment in agroecology will there be, I wonder. Even after this report from last year’s FAO conference.
- Oh good, 75% of crop diversity still on small farms. Would that be 75% of the 25% remaining from the last century?
- What effect will the Integrated Seed Sector Development Project Africa have on that 75%, I wonder.
- The farm as a supermarket. Almost makes you believe in that 75%.
- The beery history of Toronto. Yes, Toronto.
- The National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) has nutritional fact sheets on herbs.
- A great new global ecosystem map has the GIS nerds all excited.
- “Contested Agronomy 2016 is a conference about the battlefields in agricultural research, past and present.” Oh to have the live-tweeting gig. Hell, I’d do it for free. Wait, don’t I already do it for free? Hasn’t this whole Nibbles been about contestation in agricultural development?
And on that note, that’s all folks. Because this was such a pain to put together after a week’s hiatus, I’m going to leave it on the front page for a day or two before sending it to the Siberia of the sidebar. Oh and BTW, people. We want to reach 6,000 followers on Twitter, preferably before that jetpack arrives, so follow us already, and tell your hipster friends.
Wait, too needy?
Brainfood: Domesticating seaweed, Upland sheep, Using CWR, Breadfruit amino acids, Species modelling, Echinochloa review, Fermented foods, Buckwheat breeding, Biofortified millet, Weird Japanese chicken, Barley yield stability
- Seaweed cultivation: potential and challenges of crop domestication at an unprecedented pace. I for one welcome our new algal overlords.
- Recent advances in understanding the genetic resources of sheep breeds locally-adapted to the UK uplands: opportunities they offer for sustainable productivity. Lower susceptibility to Maedi-Visna virus, for example.
- Back to the wilds: Tapping evolutionary adaptations for resilient crops through systematic hybridization with crop wild relatives. The promiscuity of plants will save us.
- Breadfruit (Artocarpus altilis): a source of high-quality protein for food security and novel food products. All 49 varieties tested have full spectrum of essential amino acids.
- Predicting changes in the distribution and abundance of species under environmental change. Distributions are not enough, can adapt some methods to look at abundance too. Oh, and intraspecific diversity.
- Barnyard millet — a potential food and feed crop of future. Decline in cultivation could be reversed due to nutritional quality and adaptability, but it won’t be easy.
- Inclusion of Fermented Foods in Food Guides around the World. The benefits should be better known.
- Discovery and genetic analysis of non-bitter Tartary buckwheat (Fagopyrum tataricum Gaertn.) with trace-rutinosidase activity. Wow, a non-bitter buckwheat found in Nepal! Should now be possible to produce some better-tasting improved varieties. Yeah but you know how long that usually takes…
- Breeding of ‘Manten-Kirari’, a non-bitter and trace-rutinosidase variety of Tartary buckwheat (Fagopyrum tataricum Gaertn.). Well I feel foolish…
- Higher iron pearl millet (Pennisetum glaucum L.) provides more absorbable iron that is limited by increased polyphenolic content. High Fe is not enough.
- Characteristics of Egg-related Traits in the Onagadori (Japanese Extremely Long Tail) Breed of Chickens. It’s a “Special National Natural Treasure” of Japan and no wonder.
- Exploitation of yield stability in barley. It’s not really feasible to measure it accurately, and therefore select for it, but when you do, it seems hybrids are better at it.
Nibbles: Old breweries, Old grape seeds, New beer, Sheep breeds, Indian rice landraces, GM rice in China, Barley breeding, Botanical tipple, Mata Atlantica conservation, Quinoa
- There are some really old breweries out there.
- And some really old grape seeds in Sardinia.
- The beauty of hops. New and old.
- Some very photogenic old sheep breeds in the Lake District.
- Someone has discovered some old salt-tolerant rice landraces. Also medicinal and aromatic rices. Well I never.
- Meanwhile, at the other end of the rainbow, the Chinese dip a toe into gourmet GM rice.
- Brit boffins breed flood-proof barley.
- Botanical gin. Two of my favourite things, combined.
- Saving the Pau Brasil is, well, complicated. But what else was it going to be?
- Yet another roundup of the pros and cons of quinoa.