DNA – Page 49 – Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

January 9, 2014

Nibbles: Pig evolution, Genomics field guide, Genome editing, Chilean agroecology training, Oxford Farming Conferences, Grape variety database, Food prices database, Amazonian history, Debunking tomatoes, INFOODS NUS list, Coptic gardens, Aid agencies map

The catching up continues:

“Genomics is a powerful tool…”: Pigs speciate, admix, fly.
But in the wrong hands…
I wonder which types of hands these genome editors have.
Ok, enough of that. Women, agroecology, capacity building, a fashionable country: what’s not to like?
I wonder if any of the ladies are at the Oxford Real Farming Conference. Or were. They were probably NOT at the Oxford Farming Conference. Oh the wit of these alternative farming types. You could have followed both on Twitter, were you so minded, and less confused than I.
Chile — for it is she — of course grows a lot of grapes. Want to know which varieties? Course you do.
Damn, grapes not included in this World Bank crowd-sourced food price dataset. Which I think we may have linked to before, but what the hell.
I know we’ve linked to ancient Amazonian civilization stuff before, but this is a predictive model, no less.
Busted: The tomato.
The INFOODS “List of underutilized species contributing to the Nutritional Indicators for Biodiversity” is out. Prices not included.
I somehow thought there would be more underutilized species in this Ethiopian monastery.
Who pays for (some of) this? Check out the Guardian’s interactive map of European development agencies.

January 8, 2014

Nibbles: Information, Domestication, Cats, Conference, Gunpowder gardening, Policy advice, Potatoes, Ancient vineyards, New UG99, Bovine emissions, Cacao ants, Palaeo-diet, Bloody quinoa, Tokyo’s honey, Urban biodiversity, Ilex, Conifers

Wow! Just wow. Big Picture Agriculture has launched an incredibly useful website.
Chromosomes, crops and superdomestication, a slideshare presentation by Pat Heslop-Harrison.
Cats, domesticated? Not as far as I’m concerned. Still, Ancient Chinese cats ate rats, leading to their domestication.
Independent plant breeders, a conference just for you.
Great ammunition for the lazy gardener.
IBPES told to “tap the wisdom of indigenous peoples”.
Kenyan policymakers told to consider the potato.
Basque vineyards of a millennium ago.
A new strain of UG99 wheat rust? But this time, the world is ready.
Variable diets linked to variable emissions shock.
scidev.net reports that ants protect cacao trees from fungal diseases. (Yes, I’m taking short cuts here.)
Palaeolithic people preferred nutrition-rich places.
And quinoa remains as confusing as ever.
Tokyo’s local honey.
Although agriculture barely features in a paean to urban biodiversity. It should.
The holly and the coffee: The Botanist in the Kitchen does Yerba Maté
Ready for the inevitable ennui of next Christmas, a taxonomy of conifers.

November 11, 2013November 11, 2013

Nibbles: UK collections, Rice domestication, Cattle domestication, Truffles, Yam chromosomes, Shiitake, Videos galore, Coffee and climate change

Search the UK’s living plant collections for errant edibles and their wild relatives.
Independent origins for aromatic rice varieties?
I’ll see your rice varieties, and raise you independent cattle domestication in China.
The scent of a truffle, love it or leave it.
Improving the yam, with flow cytometry and satellite markers to discover how many chromosome sets they have.
Going back to nature for the best in cultivated shiitake. With video goodness.
The @gricultural Revolution, from CTA. Too cute, too loud, too long. With even more video goodness.
“Local Farmer Grows Beans from the Basque Region.” I guess he’s not local to the Basque region, then, or it wouldn’t be remarkable. Yet more video goodness. Aside: I’ve grown alubias de Tolosa and they are wonderful, but I never was elected a member of the confraternity.
You want even more video goodness? Here’s some on resilience in coffee farming.

November 11, 2013November 11, 2013

Brainfood: Mixtures and productivity, Pesticides and soil biota, Andean intensification, Turkish barley, Tomato size gene, Quinoa and environment, Banana improvement, Hybrid conservation, Allozymes

Changes in the Abundance of Grassland Species in Monocultures versus Mixtures and Their Relation to Biodiversity Effects. Monocultures are ok for productivity, but only initially.
Agricultural soils, pesticides and microbial diversity. mRNA and high-throughput sequencing show that pesticides affect nitrification rates and soil microbe community structure. Brave new world indeed.
Making Sense of Agrobiodiversity, Diet, and Intensification of Smallholder Family Farming in the Highland Andes of Ecuador. Want sustainable intensification? Look at the smaller enterprises.
Genetic variation of barley germplasm from Turkey assessed by chloroplast microsatellite markers. Little genetic similarity between wild relative and landraces in same geographic area.
A cytochrome P450 regulates a domestication trait in cultivated tomato. Single polymorphism controls fruit size.
Blossoming Treasures of Biodiversiy. 42. Quinoa – is the United Nations’ featured crop of 2013 bad for biodiversity? It can be.
From crossbreeding to biotechnology-facilitated improvement of banana and plantain. Quite some progress, despite few breeding programmes. Will it all go GE? Big temptation. I would have made more of the genebank collections, personally.
Perspectives on the conservation of wild hybrids. There’s more to it than science. Tell that to the banana breeders.
Revisiting protein heterozygosity in plants — nucleotide diversity in allozyme coding genes of conifer Pinus sylvestris. Those pre-DNA days weren’t a complete waste of time. That mean we can measure genetic erosion?

November 8, 2013November 10, 2013

Nibbles: Vilsack on ice, Genebank standards, Indigo, Sardinian food, Seeds of Time, Musa genome, Wild rice collecting, Palm oil, Markets

Secretary of Agriculture tours Ft Collins genebank. With video goodness.
Which genebank I’m sure follows the Genebank Standards for Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. With video goodness.
Prince of Wales sows organic rice. In white suit. With video goodness.
The story of indigo. No video, but lots of photos.
Sardinian blood soup. No video, but one photo. Which is more than enough.
Wanna watch Seeds of Time? Here’s where. Includes much on Svalbard, of course. And a bit on USDA wild potato collecting. I plead the fifth.
So there’s a second banana genome? Thankfully no video.
“We are only using the tip of the iceberg.” Rice genetic resources, that is. Could easily have had a video.
Face palm oil.
Photo essay on the bazaars of Central Asia.