- Red meat in global nutrition. Not as bad as people say. But then the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association would say that, wouldn’t they.
- Optimizing chocolate production through traceability: A review of the influence of farming practices on cocoa bean quality. Manufacturers really need data on how the crop was grown.
- Contribution of “Women’s Gold” to West African Livelihoods: The Case of Shea (Vitellaria paradoxa) in Burkina Faso. It is high, especially for the poorest households, for women, and when other sources of income are scarce.
- Herbarium records do not predict rediscovery of presumed nationally extinct species. Fancy probabilistic models based on number of sightings in different time periods are pretty useless predictors of whether news of the demise of a species was exaggerated.
- The importance of living botanical collections for plant biology and the “next generation” of evo-devo research. “Next generation” sequencing pretty useless without the actual plants in “last generation” genebanks and “first generation” botanical gardens/arboreta. Don’t believe me? Here come the vignettes.
- Breeding Strategies for Adaptation of Pearl Millet and Sorghum to Climate Variability and Change in West Africa. Involve farmers, bank on diversity, support seed systems.
- Plant species richness: the world records. They’re only found in oligo- to meso-trophic, managed, semi-natural, temperate grasslands and tropical rain forests.
- Sesame Utilization in China: New Archaeobotanical Evidence from Xinjiang. 5kg of white sesame seeds in a nice jug at the Thousand Buddha Grottoes at Boziklik dating from ca. 700 years BP means the crop was, well, used at that time and place.
- The twenty-first century, the century of plant breeding. Accentuate the positive.
Nibbles: Climate predictions, Melon sequenced, Banana adoption, CRP networking, Supply chains, NUS value chains, Climate change good
- Rave from the grave… If the endless summer don’t get you, the nuclear winter still will.
- To him that hath… Spaniards bag Euro cup and their first DNA sequence: melon.
- Build a better banana… And you still need to persuade farmers to beat a path to your door.
- Well, maybe a Facebook page will help: roots, tubers and bananas go social.
- Oxfam advice on protecting your supply chains from endless summers and nuclear winters.
- Which might be useful for this training course. But are value chains the same as supply chains?
- Or it might not.
Brainfood: Molecular adaptation, Chicken genetic resources databases, Cacao diversity, Pistacia molecular diversity, Glycene diversity, Sheep breeding, Bt cotton, Argan oil
- Broad-scale adaptive genetic variation in alpine plants is driven by temperature and precipitation. AFLP variation linked to precipitation and temperature across 13 Alpine species.
- Current state of knowledge on indigenous chicken genetic resources of the tropics: domestication, distribution and documentation of information on the genetic resources. There are three relevant databases on chickens, and yet…
- Genetic diversity and parentage in farmer varieties of cacao (Theobroma cacao L.) from Honduras and Nicaragua as revealed by single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers. 70 SNPs enough to confirm 5 morphological groups, but also pick up the odd synonym.
- Molecular diversity and phylogenetic relationships of Pistacia vera, Pistacia atlantica subsp. mutica and Pistacia khinjuk using SRAP markers. The species are pretty good.
- Biofortified, selenium enriched, fruit and cladode from three Opuntia Cactus pear cultivars grown on agricultural drainage sediment for use in nutraceutical foods. It pays to grow prickly pear on crappy soil.
- Hotspots of diversity of wild Australian soybean relatives and their conservation in situ. Looks like it’s Kimberley.
- Community-based alternative breeding plans for indigenous sheep breeds in four agro-ecological zones of Ethiopia. They’re ok, but you do have to keep good records.
- Diverse genetic basis of field-evolved resistance to Bt cotton in cotton bollworm from China. Gene jockeys need to go back to drawing board. No, wait.
- Bioactive compounds and nutritional significance of virgin argan oil–an edible oil with potential as a functional food. Jolly high in just about everything that’s good for you, more research needed, yada yada yada.
Nibbles: ITPGRFA, Samoan coconuts, Ancient Amazon, Moringa
- CGIAR pushes ITPGRFA into Rio +20 limelight. ITPGRFA unavailable for comment.
- Recession or no recession, Samoan women’s group in Body Shop coconut oil deal.
- Pre-Columbian Amazon not densely inhabited after all. Just wake me up when they sort this out.
- Ok, where do I get my hands on some Moringa leaves?
Brainfood: Barcoding, DArT for beans, SNOPs for Cacao, Aquaculture impacts, Cassava GS, Cereals in genebanks, Symbiosis
- A critical review on the utility of DNA barcoding in biodiversity conservation. Not bad, but not by itself.
- A whole genome DArT assay to assess germplasm collection diversity in common beans. It works, and can distinguish Andean from Mesoamerican accessions.
- Optimization of a SNP assay for genotyping Theobroma cacao under field conditions. It works, and is being used in Ghana.
- A Global Assessment of Salmon Aquaculture Impacts on Wild Salmonids. Meta-analysis shows farming salmon and trout in an area has in general been bad for their wild relatives there.
- Genome-wide selection in cassava. High correlations between SNPs and several phenotypic traits of interest to breeders mean that selection time could be cut by half. Could.
- Cereal landraces genetic resources in worldwide GeneBanks. A review. We don’t have enough data. On so many different levels.
- Coevolutionary genetic variation in the legume-rhizobium transcriptome. Wait, does this mean we should be conserving Rhizobium too?