- Yams heading for trouble. What to do?
- Learn something from wild relatives, like they’re doing with tomatoes?
- Go for a totally new plant breeding paradigm?
- I know, let’s all go out and celebrate World Bamboo Day!
Brainfood: South American threat map, Bee domestication, Rice origins, Legume diversity, Lima bean domestication
- Analysis of threats to South American flora and its implications for conservation. Bottom line: Ecuadorian and Colombian Andes, southern Paraguay, the Guyana shield, southern Brazil, and Bolivia. But don’t let that divert your attention from the cool maps.
- Management increases genetic diversity of honey bees via admixture. No genetic bottleneck there. And the same in more words, but not as many as the original paper.
- Phylogeography of Asian wild rice, Oryza rufipogon: a genome-wide view. When in doubt, throw more markers at it. Two groups in O. rufipogon, only the Chinese/Indochinese one related to cultivated rice (indica). Japonica out on a limb. And the longer version.
- Legume Diversity Patterns in West Central Africa: Influence of Species Biology on Distribution Models. Temperature variables are most important.
- Multiple domestications of the Mesoamerican gene pool of lima bean (Phaseolus lunatus L.): evidence from chloroplast DNA sequences. Andean and Mesoamerican cultivated genepools confirmed, and two sub-genepools within the latter, one originating in western central Mexico and the other between Guatemala and Costa Rica. Will they mash up with the study in the first link? Some of the people involved are neighbours and friends.
Nibbles: Fertilizer tree, Indo-European, Human diversity, European pollinators, DNA data quality, Biodiversity maps, Organizzzzzz, Plantain
- Faidherbia albida gets another push. To quote from the recent Crops for the Future dissection of neglected/underutilized species: if it’s so good, how come it’s not used more?
- The Indo-European roots of names for pulse crops. Not nearly as boring as it sounds. Oh, and since we’re on the subject…
- Human biodiversity files: athleticism, foodism.
- Huge EU project monitors pollinators. What could possibly go wrong?
- Cleaning up DNA Sequence Database Hell.
- Nice biodiversity hotspot maps. No plants. Definitely no agrobiodiversity.
- A philosopher’s take on that organic agriculture meta-analysis.
- Not Musa, but still edible.
Nibbles: Bees, Gait genes, Eradicate hunger, Conference
- Honeybees create a buzz in Nepal.
- Gene for silly equine walks.
- Men and Women Farming Together Can Eradicate Hunger. Headline says it all, really.
- We’re not the only ones wondering what’s going on at the 2nd global conference on agriculture, food security and climate change, which started yesterday.
Nibbles: Kerala, Marker-assisted selection, Plant breeding for fun, Plant breeding for money, Benefit-sharing, Drought resistance
- If you’re interested in the history, traditions and cuisine of Kerala, this is the website for you.
- How about some whizz-bang technology to improve neglected and orphan crops?
- A blogger Tedtalks about participatory plant breeding in Wageningen.
- And get this: There’s big money in quasi-public sector plant breeding.
- “In the Coella and Combeima watersheds (Tolima, Colombia) the narrative of managing the commons is taking … a participatory shape.”
- The Scientist Gardener explores engineered drought-resistant maize and meets with Darwinian approval.