- Legendary rice breeder sets example for Punjab students.
- Sami worried about what climate change will mean for their reindeer, try to do something about it.
- Rice tillering gene deconstructed.
- Truffle pirated.
- Ağzınız şirin olsun!
Cooking the books
The news that the DNA in medieval parchments is to be fingerprinted has been making quite a splash. Parchments are made of animal skins, of course, and it seems that it is possible to recover DNA in decent shape — the latest example of archeogenetics. The idea is to produce “a taxonomy of manuscript manufacture,” which must be of tremendous excitement to medievalists. But John Hawks describes another possible application in his anthropological blog that’s more in line with our agrobiodiversity interests here:
…the results may be equally useful for understanding the processes of animal breeding in medieval Europe. Today’s domesticated breeds are a remnant of a much larger diversity of local breeds that once existed. People bred animals both locally by selection and across large regions by introducing favored animals from long distances. Sometimes they favored diversity — and considering the revival of interest in legacy breeds like Highland cattle.
Wish I’d thought of that…
Nibbles: Frogs, Noni, Cassava etc, Commons, Starch, Aurochs, Oats
- Frog porridge.
- Noni in excruciating depth.
- Caribbean seeks food security, turns to “cassava, sweet potato, bananas, yams and many others”.
- Uncommonly interesting article on commons.
- Nice summary of the amylase-gene-copy-number-and-starch-in-the-diet story.
- Dutch aurochs survived longer than thought.
- Yes, we have no oats.
Nibbles: mtDNA, Bison, Crises
- mtDNA inheritance not so straightforward after all. Everybody panic.
- Some bison herds more diverse than others. Care needed in genetic management of species. Well I never.
- It’s not a food crisis, it’s a crop diversity crisis.
The elephant in the room
I’m just putting it out there: do we in agrobiodiversity conservation/use need to worry about this more?