- A sustainable blue cheese industry needs more microbial diversity.
- The Open Source Seed Initiative gets written up in The Guardian. Looks like we need something similar for cheese microbes.
- The Guardian then follows up with mung bean breeding and fart jokes.
- But then goes all serious with talk of trillions of dollars in benefits from sustainable food systems. Diversity not mentioned, alas, though, so one wonders about the point of the previous pieces.
- Fortunately Indigeneous Colombian farmers have the right idea about sustainability.
- Collard greens breeders do too, for that matter.
- More African native crops hype for Dr Wood to object to. Seriously though, some crops do need more research, if only so they can be grown somewhere else.
- There’s plenty of research — and art for that matter — on the olive, but the international genebanks could do with more recognition.
- The mezcal agave, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to have much diversity in genebanks, and it is threatened in the wild.
- Perry culture in Germany is also threatened. Pretty sure there are genebanks though.
- This piece about tomato diversity in Spain is worth reading for many reasons (heroic seed saving yada yada), but especially for the deadpan take on the Guardia Civil at the end.
- Maybe we could breed some of those tomatoes to fix their own nitrogen. And get the Guardia Civil to pay for it.
Brainfood: Nutrition edition
- Which crop biodiversity is used by the food industry throughout the world? A first evidence for legume species. Mainly soy, alas. Which is bad because…
- Diversified agriculture leads to diversified diets: panel data evidence from Bangladesh. …promoting diversified farming systems and market participation is good for women’s empowerment and better diets. Which is just as well because…
- Historical shifting in grain mineral density of landmark rice and wheat cultivars released over the past 50 years in India. …breeding hasn’t been good for nutritional content in staples.
- Surviving mutations: how an Indonesian Capsicum frutescens L. cultivar maintains capsaicin biosynthesis despite disruptive mutations. But if you can breed for extreme pungency, you can surely breed for better nutrient content.
- Exploiting Indian landraces to develop biofortified grain sorghum with high protein and minerals. Yep, simple selection can make a sorghum landrace more nutritious.
- Genome-edited foods. Or you could resort to gene editing.
- Adoption and impact of improved amaranth cultivars in Tanzania using DNA fingerprinting. Although maybe it might be easier to just eat more amaranth.
- Stakeholders’ perceptions of and preferences for utilizing fonio (Digitaria exilis) to enrich local diets for food and nutritional security in Nigeria. But documenting knowledge will be key in either case.
- Domestication through clandestine cultivation constrained genetic diversity in magic mushrooms relative to naturalized populations. And watch what you’re doing to diversity.
Brainfood: MLS, PPP, GMOs, SINAREFI, FGD, InDel
- What Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture Are Available under the Plant Treaty and Where Is This Information? It’s really difficult to know, and it shouldn’t be.
- Bridging the gap? Public–private partnerships and genetically modified crop development for smallholder farmers in Africa. They really haven’t worked. But should they have?
- Recalcitrant maize: Conserving agrobiodiversity in the era of genetically modified organisms. Trying to keep landraces and GMOs both physically and conceptually apart won’t work, and doesn’t need to.
- Flavour, culture and food security: The spicy entanglements of chile pepper conservation in 21st century Mexico. Efforts to ensure food security needs to take flavour into account if they are to work.
- Gender differential in choices of crop variety traits and climate-smart cropping systems: Insights from sorghum and millet farmers in drought-prone areas of Malawi. Efforts to improve crop adaptation and resilience to climate change need to take gender into account if they are to work.
- A target cultivar-specific identification system based on the chromatographic printed array strip method for eight prominent Japanese citrus cultivars. Specific DNA markers can be used to enforce plant breeders’ rights.
Nibbles: Fonio beer, ICRISAT seed kits, Dark Emu, China potatoes, 3D genebank, Bioculture, Microbiome genebank, Nutrition, Michigan kiwi
- You can make beer from fonio.
- ICRISAT providing Niger and Chad with sorghum and pearl millet seed kits. Fonio next?
- No, Echinochloa turneriana next. In Australia. I love the Dark Emu Hypothesis, and not least for its name.
- CIP is helping China improve its potato crop.
- Won’t be long before China’s genebank has 3D images of all its holdings. I’d love to see the potatoes.
- Want to see the earliest known site of domestication of teosinte?
- UK builds first crop biome cryobank.
- How the private sector can help with a more nutrition-sensitive agriculture. Should it want to.
- You can grow kiwi in Michigan. Should you want to.
From farm to bar to genebank
Meet Tom Barse, a Maryland farmer and brewer:
We used to sell hops to local breweries until we opened Milkhouse Brewery at Stillpoint Farm, in 2013, where we now use all of the hops we grow. A few years back, at an agricultural conference at Linganore Wine Cellars, I met Dr. Ray Ediger, a retired veterinarian living in Utica in Frederick County. He told me about an old hop plant growing on his farm that had been there for years, and wanted to know if I was interested in checking it out.
Tom continues, “I went out to Ray’s farm and was amazed to see this enormous hop plant that had taken over his chicken coop, fence, and other farm buildings. Fellow hop growers Brad Humbert, Del Hayes, and I went out and picked some of the hops in early October – which is extremely late for a harvest in Maryland.
…
We thought we had something pretty cool, so working with Janna Howley and Kevin Atticks at Grow and Fortify we were able to get a USDA/MDA grant to research the hop and make beer. We donated the germplasm to the USDA plant bank and have received a USDA PI number (plant introduction).
That PI number is 700807, and you can see it right there on the beer bottles.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a genebank accession number quoted on a commercial product like that. Thanks to Dr Peter Bretting of USDA for the headsup.
LATER: Oh yes I have :)