DNA – Page 80 – Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

Nibbles: Microbial diversity, Blog, Yams, Benefits of diversity, Ancient ploughing, Oman’s genebank, Lodoicea, Wheat senescence, Maize landrace marketing, Setaria flowering, Prisoner yams, Eating weed

Microbiologist makes Guardians of Microbial Diversity award. Agromicrobes awaited.
Fabulous giant new superinteresting megablog scheduled to launch today. No RSS. ~~Yet?~~
Who likes which yams (by which they mean Dioscorea) in Madagascar? Kew will have answers.
Genetic diversity invades the zeitgeist, or something.
Or would you prefer something a little more down to earth?
Oldest ploughed fields in Czech lands.
Crazy mixed up report on this weeks new genebank, in ~~Oman~~ Qatar. “Up to 10,000 genes”? Be still my beating heart.
Ich bin ein coco-de-mer-nut.
Heat speeds up wheat aging. I know how it feels.
A “Starbucks Of Tortillas”? Sounds worse than it is.
Welcome news of fundamental work on a “minor” millet.
IITA goes to jail.
Genetically modifying cannabis to make it safe to eat. Such a bad idea. On so many levels.

Big new project on farm animal genomics. Gene-jockeys lick lips.
Big new push to raise money for the Moringa Fund. Agroforesters lick lips.
Big new hardiness zone map unleashed by USDA on unsuspecting world. American GIS people and gardeners lick lips.
Bill Gates mentions cassava. CIAT licks lips.

Dogs were first domesticated animal. But the love affair is cooling off, at least for some breeds.
Building capacity for animal genetic resources use, and for conservation and sustainable use under the ITPGRFA. And tree domestication. Is someone keeping track?
BGI continues to take over DNA world.
And the Worst Plant Virus Oscar goes to…
How PNG farmers cope with drought. From what is developing into a really useful blog.
I wish I had time to read 200 pages on ancient Athenian food. But maybe you do?
Learn about the USDA potato collection, including lots of wild relatives.
The tree that thinks it’s a supermarket: Moringa in the limelight again.

Land, Food, and Biodiversity. Agriculture will expand, but that is bad for biodiversity. It probably must expand, actually, but this can be kept to a minimum by addressing land-use planning, governance and law enforcement, productivity, and market drivers. Oil palm as an example.
Time to change how we describe biodiversity. By finally tackling the digitization of phenome annotations, apparently. NiM ((Not in Mendeley.))
Genomic and metabolic prediction of complex heterotic traits in hybrid maize. Amazingly, genotype (SNP) can predict phenotype (biomass traits) pretty well. But in a population where a bunch of dents were crossed with a couple of testers. Will it work with a diverse genebank collection of landraces?
Forest productivity increases with evenness, species richness and trait variation: a global meta-analysis. In over 50 studies, polycultures come out about 24% better than monocultures, with evenness having more of an effect than richness. Much more commentary and context at ConservationBytes.com. Compare with that recent drylands diversity and ecosystem function paper.
All Is Not Loss: Plant Biodiversity in the Anthropocene. A model says there have been “gains in exotics caused by species invasions and the introduction of agricultural domesticates and ornamental exotic plants”. Oooh! Contrarian!

Why do chillies differ in their heat? Ed Yong explains all, and links to the peer-reviewed paper.
Frankincense “doomed”. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Take a number. And a merry Christmas to you too, publicity hounds.
IRRI to sequence 8.3% of its rice diversity. I’ll alert the media. No, wait …
Speaking of which … Diversification of rice and diversification of languages; great long blog post explains how they illuminate one another.
Agro-ecology is the answer, says UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food. What was the question?