- Today’s maybe we’ll get some coverage if we link it to hunger and famine press release. Petunia gene.
- Today’s there’s a database for that announcement. FAO’s Horticulture Cultivars Performance Database.
- Today’s impact of climate change on X report. Forest resources in the Caribbean.
- Today’s debunking a crappy piece of nutrition research killjoys. Experts respond to nutrition claims.
- The Archaeobotanist has been going great guns; new book on domestication and millet domestication. We’ll pass on the museum post till we can firm it up.
- IFPRI says let two flowers bloom. Here’s the super-groovy new policy kid on the block for non-policy wonks.
- I’ll see your evil speculators and raise you a rising secular trend in food prices. (See what I did there?)
- With a heavy clunk, The Economist gave Svalbard’s Doomsday Seed Vault a fine 4th birthday present.
Nibbles: African seeds, African needs, Egyptian seed preservation, Archaeocandy, Conservation, Seed swap site, Water buffalo genome, Anti-striga films, Entomophagy, Black sigatoka, Pavlovsk, Cannabis genome
- Gates just gave AGRA $56 million to make new seed varieties available. PASS still not collecting the diversity it hopes to displace.
- Hang on though. Africa needs a “Green renaissance, not revolution”.
- Saving seeds the ancient Egyptian way.
- Eating sweets the ancient Papuan (and others) way.
- Odd to hear an agrobiodiversity dude talking about silver bullets – even with a question mark.
- SeedZoo site offers a space to give and to receive “traditional and indigenous food plants from around the world”.
- Today’s forthcoming genome of agricultural interest: water buffalo.
- Farmer to farmer films – gender sensitive, natch – “fight against striga”.
- Assessing the Potential of Insects as Food and Feed in assuring Food Security, from the FAO document repository.
- Much sound, less light, on black Sigatoka disease, from the BBC (natch).
- Vaviblog rounds up the latest skinny on Pavlovsk.
- And speaking of Vavilov, the latest genome to be sequenced has a VIR connection.
Brainfood: Water, Policy, Geneflow
- The water footprint of humanity. Someday you’ll need this. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life.
- Evolution in biodiversity policy – current gaps and future needs. EU policies are all but useless; but you knew that.
- Genomic regions in crop–wild hybrids of lettuce are affected differently in different environments: implications for crop breeding. To prevent the spread of GMO genes to wild relatives, it matters where you make the insertion.
Brainfood: Bison on the prairie, Tilapia breeding, AM on banana, Phenomics,Yam collection, Nopales, Arable flora
- Can bison play a role in conserving habitat for endangered sandhills species in Canada? Maybe, hence the recommendation to re-introduce them. Incidentally, there are a few crop wild relatives on the list of threatened plants of Canada.
- Genetic improvement of farmed tilapias: Genetic parameters for body weight at harvest in Nile tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus) during five generations of testing in multiple environments. The 10-year “Genetic Improvement of Farmed Tilapias” (GIFT) project was not a complete waste of time. The GIFT population will respond well to selection for increased body mass, and you dont have to do the evaluation in lots of different environments.
- Mycorrhizal colonization of major banana genotypes in six East African environments. Different banana genotypes had different levels of infection, but environment also plays an important role. Important because arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi may increase production.
- On the use of depth camera for 3D phenotyping of entire plants. An example of this.
- Genetic and phenotypic diversity in a germplasm working collection of cultivated tropical yams (Dioscorea spp.). Should be a good starting point for improvement programmes. Kind of like the GIFT population, then, eh? But starting point? Haven’t people been breeding yams for a while?
- Cytogeography of the Humifusa clade of Opuntia s.s. Mill. 1754 (Cactaceae, Opuntioideae, Opuntieae): correlations with pleistocene refugia and morphological traits in a polyploid complex. The southeastern and southwestern U.S. represent glacial refugia for diploid members of the clade, and a whole bunch of polyploids resulted when the taxa spread out again after glacial episodes. How many of these are eaten is what I’d like to know, and whether ploidy affects that. I suppose climate change will lead to further complications?
- The impact of agricultural intensification and land-use change on the European arable flora. Is significant. Not least because some crop wild relatives are involved, although that’s not really discussed here.
Nibbles: US Farm Bill, Polish chicks, Young Kenyan farmers, Jowar redux, Handwriting, Erna Bennett, Ant mutualism, Horizontal plastid movement, Horizon scanning
- Policy wonks start to worry about the next US Farm Bill and its effects on poor farmers elsewhere.
- Poles start to worry about their endangered chicks.
- The Youth in Agriculture gives agricultural biodiversity some love on St Valentine’s Day.
- “Can jowar ever replace rice?” Question expecting the answer no? (Jowar is sorghum.)
- Can anyone actually decipher what H.G. Wells wrote to FAO Director Lubin?
- A Memorial Service will be held for Erna Bennett, in English, at 12.30 hrs. on Friday, 9th March at Santa Balbina Church, Viale Guido Baccelli, Rome. It’s near FAO. And no, there’s no link.
- Ants help crop wild relative (among other things).
- Plastids move between crop and wild relative.
- Cambridge boffins look into crystal ball and see fully sequenced, N-fixing perennial cereals growing under sterile conditions. In deep ocean vents.