- Prof. Brian Cox presents “Feeding the Future,” and it’s not entirely about GMOs. Worth sitting through the whole thing.
- Did we say that Cary Fowler recently received the Frank N. Meyer Medal for Plant Genetic Resources? This is what he had to say on a different recent occasion.
- Want to adopt a coffee seed? Kew will let you give a really cool Christmas gift.
- Or you could buy some Ethiopian coffee.
- Speaking of Christmas gifts…
- CIAT’s bean diversity collection gets its 15 minutes of fame. And ICARDA’s chickpea collection is not far behind.
- More on “open source seeds.”
- Mobilizing the green gold of plant genetic resources: maybe if they were open source…
- Not just green, though, right? Veggies come in all sorts of colours.
- Brexit may do for Wensleydale. I knew there must be a silver lining.
Nibbles: Cryoconservation, Barley history, Beer in UNESCO, Future crops, Pacific crops, Ag & biodiversity, Sequencing NUS, Market education, Mauritanian camels
- Cryo congress coming.
- Ancient farmers enjoyed a beer…
- …and now we all can.
- Yeah but what’s next in the improvement pipeline?
- CePaCT: The Video.
- Why can’t we all just get along?
- Genetic maps are from Mars, nutrition is from Venus…
- Using markets to teach biodiversity.
- The end of camel herding?
Coconuts in the news
Hot on the heels of my own short recent piece on the subject of the threats faced by coconuts, which took its inspiration from a Bloomberg article, comes a little note in The Atlantic, and a much fuller and better illustrated take on the story by someone who really knows the crop, Roland Bourdeix of CIRAD. And now even an interview on the BBC World Service. Something in the water, no doubt.
Brainfood: Mate diversity, Species recovery, CC & food, Microbial collections, Chickpea roots, African flora, Bitter gourd diversity, Wild yeast, Cryo double
- Genetic and phytochemical analysis to evaluate the diversity and relationships of mate (Ilex paraguariensis A. St.-Hil.) elite genetic resources in a germplasm collection. Some have low caffeine, which makes them especially useless.
- Genetic factors in threatened species recovery plans on three continents. Are ignored more often than you’d think.
- Climate Change and Food Systems Research: Current Trends and Future Directions. Current research on the effects of climate change on food systems doesn’t pay enough attention to the fact that food production is indeed a system, varies regionally and depends on political structures.
- World data centre for microorganisms: an information infrastructure to explore and utilize preserved microbial strains worldwide. All you need to know about 708 culture collections from 72 countries and >368,000 strains on one website.
- Characterising root trait variability in chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) germplasm. Core collection of 270 reveals 3 main groups based on root architecture in hydroponics.
- RAINBIO: a mega-database of tropical African vascular plants distributions. Who will fillet out the CWR species?
- Genetic Variability for Yield and Nutritional Quality in Yam Bean (Pachyrhizus sp.). Can’t access the high dry matter material? No problem.
- Diversity Among a Wide Asian Collection of Bitter Gourd Landraces and their Genetic Relationships with Commercial Hybrid Cultivars. 114 accessions fall into 5 geographic groups based on SSRs. Commercial cultivars are all very similar.
- Yeast biodiversity from Vitis vinifera L., subsp. sylvestris (Gmelin) Hegi to face up the oenological consequences of climate change. Yeasts from wild grapes will save our wine. Look, I’ll take anything.
- The Potato Cryobank at the International Potato Center (CIP): A Model for Long Term Conservation of Clonal Plant Genetic Resources Collections of the Future. 70% of over 1000 accessions are considered successfully cryoconserved.
- Probabilistic viability calculations for cryopreserving vegetatively propagated collections in genebanks. Were these used in the above?
Nibbles: Turkish seeds, KBA, Wild ginger, ICARDA, AGRA, Weird agrobiodiversity, Coffee journey
- Ancient seeds put on life support. Not holding my breath.
- Key Biodiversity Areas to be mapped. Agrobiodiversity also? Not holding my breath.
- Botany on reality TV? Not holding my breath. No, wait…
- More on the ICARDA story. Holding my breath.
- Kofi Annan on that “uniquely African Green Revolution.” Not holding my breath, but here’s the latest report on how AGRA is doing. Oh, and there’s more on Africa, from IFPRI this time.
- A caterpillar on the Silk Road. Now, that I’d like to see.
- But not before coffee.