- Harvesting wild flax in the Galilee, Israel and extracting fibers — bearing on Near Eastern plant domestication. The wild stuff was harvested before the Neolithic Revolution.
- Building resilience to water scarcity in southern Spain: a case study of rice farming in Doñana protected wetlands. Better to restore part of the rice fields to natural wetlands.
- Evaluation of rice dominance and its impact on crop diversity in north of Iran. Rice can’t catch a break in Iran either.
- Evaluation of four Mozambican cowpea landraces for drought tolerance. One of them is promising.
- Agro-Biodiversity Spatial Assessment and Genetic Reserve Delineation for the Pollino National Park (Italy). Somewhat gratuitous use of GIS, as far as I can see, but pretty maps.
- A comparative analysis of genetic variation in rootstocks and scions of old olive trees — a window into the history of olive cultivation practices and past genetic variation. Much more variation among rootstocks than scions.
- The diversity of local Georgian agricultural animals. I’d like to see a Megrelian horse one day, they sound cool.
- Crowdsourcing to create national repositories of microbial genetic resources: fungi as a model. Why just fungi, though?
Nibbles: GM bananas, Passenger pigeons, Conference, Diet, Perennial grains, Ugandan mushrooms, Adopting diversity, Indian history
- “Genetically modified bananas grown in far north Queensland and bound for Africa are about to undergo human trials in the United States.” Because … GM!
- More on those passenger pigeons.
- A big old conference on Agriculture and climate change, February 2015.
- Then again, we could all change what we eat to combat climate change.
- Or change what we grow. Report on some perennial grain experiments.
- Mushrooms for Uganda, a new project sees the light of day.
- “The determinants and extent of crop diversification among smallholder farmers” in Zambia. It’s IFPRI, Jake.
- I really just wanted a reason to link to this site, so I searched for millet. I’ll bet there’s more there of more direct interest.
Nibbles: Symbionts, Grafting, Naked oats, Pamela Anderson, PGRSecure
- Breeding better microbes for bigger cassava roots.
- Breeding new plants without sex.
- Breeding better naked oats so that chickens can eat them.
- Breeding better crops to cope with climate change.
- Breeding better crops with landraces and crop wild relatives.
Nibbles: Climate change & yields, Eucalyptus genome, Pacific breeders, Iranian barley breeders, Food Policy Report 2013, Titan, Gluten allergy, FGR podcast, Rice culture, NERICA and gender, WCC2014, CWR article, Malnutrition myths, Halophytes
- Yeah, on this climate change thing? We’re doomed.
- Oh crap, there’s another genome: eucalyptus this time. Here’s the paper, you geeks. Great news for koalas, whose genome we still await, incidentally. Yeah, where are we with that?
- SPC trains some breeders with Treaty money.
- I wonder if they were told about Evolutionary Plant Breeding.
- IFPRI has its new food policy report out. More on this later from us, I suspect.
- The Bonn Titan Arum blooms! Well, I’m calling it a crop wild relative.
- That gluten allergy? Don’t blame modern wheat varieties.
- Podcast on the importance of genetic resources to sustainable forests.
- Why rice? The Filipino view.
- And the African view. NERICA’s good for women. And bad.
- Bioversity blogs about World Cocoa Conference 2014, gets dates wrong. It’s on now.
- Crop wild relatives in The Scientist. But I’m biased…
- Busting malnutrition myths. Because they’re there.
- There’s probably a few myths out there about halophytes too.
Nibbles: Genomes galore: beans, sheep, citrus, Breeding from “weeds”, Talks, Old wheat, Adaptation, Popped sorghum, Managing BXW
Can’t move for genomes today.
- First off, Phaseolus vulgaris.
- Next up, sheep: one genome, three stories:
- And citrus diversity: “Citrus has incestuous genes. Nothing is pure.”
But there is other stuff too.
- How weeds could feed billions. Not by eating them but by breeding from them. Are crop wild relatives really all weeds?
- TED talks on biodiversity. I suppose we should be grateful for 1.5 out of 30.
- A New York baker has been exploring tumminia wheat. Without telling us.
- Adaptation to climate change hardly worth it, according to econ 101.
- So you want to make your own popped sorghum? All you need is a microwave and a paper bag.
- ProMusa reports on an easier and better way for banana farmers to manage Xanthomonas wilt.