- Bunch of presentations from ICRAF’s #BeatingFamine shindig in Nairobi online.
- Humungous fungus threat.
- Fertilizers good for yields. Say what?
- A study on land restoration in Burkina Faso. Just in time.
- Speaking of restoration, chocolate can restore tropical forests. Universal panacea, obviously.
- Farming First welcomes the World Bank’s guide to investing in agricultural innovation systems. Buy low, sell high?
- A Cisgenic Approach for Improving the Bioavailability of Phosphate in the Barley Grain. That’ll please the folks who are scared of transgenics.
- I’ve missed out on the whole Hunger Games thing, but I have grown Katniss. I called it wapato.
- Israel’s Ministry of Agriculture creates a Department of Ecoagriculture. Sign of the times?
- New dossier from Spore, on sustainable intensification. No time to digest it yet.
Nibbles: New genebank, Urban ag, Cassava, Justice, School gardens
- Good news from Russia: A genebank in the permafrost. Yup, another one.
- Good news from Guatemala: Urban gardens for health and wealth.
- Good news from West Africa (which we know is not a country): magic cassava.
- Good news from Brazil: the World Congress on Justice, Governance and Law for Environmental Stability will prevent empty promises being made at Rio+20.
- Good news from the US: the Edible Schoolyard Project is online with scads of fun stuff for children and their teachers everywhere.
Brainfood: Cattle, Coffee pest management
- Modern Taurine Cattle descended from small number of Near-Eastern founders. Only 80 founding females, so it was difficult.
- Implementing an Integrated Pest Management Program for Coffee Berry Borer in a Specialty Coffee Plantation in Colombia. It wasn’t easy, and it took time, but it worked; less pesticides, more predators, higher quality beans.
Brainfood: Beans, Potatoes, Lettuce, Agave, Gaming, Mangroves, Ancient millets, Ancient missions
- Mesoamerican origin of the common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) is revealed by sequence data. Revealed is kinda strong isn’t it? This from a bean expert of my acquaintance: “Yes, we knew that, as it seems to be the case of all species of the Phaseoli section. They could have done a bit better in including the 2 populations of Cordoba mountain, in order to see whether these belong to the first migration to the Andes, or the second one. Wild vulgaris from western Panama, or Venezuela, could have helped in this regard too. We have shown years ago that the complex genetic structure in Mexico and in Colombia is the result of these floristic migrations combined with gene flow events because beans cross among themselves.”
- The Enigma of Solanum maglia in the Origin of the Chilean Cultivated Potato, Solanum tuberosum Chilotanum Group. These are long-day adapted and therefore crucial to the history of the potato in Europe. But the various sorts of evidence looked at to investigate their relationship to the rare Chilean wild relative S. maglia just do not agree. Bummer.
- Wild and weedy Lactuca species, their distribution, ecogeography and ecobiology in USA and Canada. So Iowa is a wild lettuce hotspot. If you’re interested in the germplasm, it’ll be in the genebank of Palacký University in the Czech Republic.
- Sustainability of the traditional management of Agave genetic resources in the elaboration of mezcal and tequila spirits in western Mexico. Tequila industrial agriculture should learn from the traditional kind.
- Fate of the World: computer gaming for conservation. Worth a try. No, really.
- The Economic Value of Mangroves: A Meta-Analysis. You might think there would be a value in the abstract; you would be wrong.
- Early millet use in northern China. That would be Setaria italica and Panicum miliaceum, and new evidence from ancient starch grain on pottery and grinding stones found in archaeological sites has pushed back their cultivation in N China by 1000 and 2000 years respectively, to about 9500-7500 BC. The Archaeobotanist has more, as ever.
- Digitization and online availability of original collecting mission data to improve data quality and enhance the conservation and use of plant genetic resources. They’re there (and here; what’s up with that?) to consult and make use of if you want.
And don’t forget, you can join our group on Mendeley, subscribe to the feed, and have all this filtered goodness delivered to the RSS reader of your choice.
Nibbles: Eyzaguirre speaks, Hunger, India in Africa, Aquaculture, Mutation breeding, Climate info, Micronutrients, Peanuts, Crops from space, CIMMYT in Africa, Cassava beer, Heirloom onion, Coffee research, Newton’s apple, Gastronomica
- An anthropologists speaks about landscapes.
- ILRI says: “Landscapes, I’ve got your landscapes right here.”
- India makes its play for African agricultural landscapes. I hope there will be scorecards and women. And access to Indian genebank holdings…
- Will there be fish though?
- And will India be pushing its mutation-bred varieties in Africa? Not that there’s anything wrong with them.
- Or using climate information?
- Or mining technology for that matter.
- Surely there will be dual-purpose groundnuts.
- Doesn’t India have a satellite?
Meanwhile, CIMMYT is making its own African play. Maybe some of the stuff it is doing there could be useful in India too?Two dead linksAfrica could teach India some other stuff too.Dead link.- Pretty sure this nearly-extinct-onion-rescued story is totally irrelevant to both India and Africa.
- Unlike coffee research.
- I don’t suppose I can interest anyone in a not very nice tasting, disease-prone but historical apple?
- And speaking of historical connections… Well that was quite a journey.