DNA – Page 99 – Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

August 23, 2010August 23, 2010

Fruit diversity in SE Europe

Fuad Gasi tells us about an interesting effort to document the diversity of fruits in the former Yugoslavia.

A new regional collaboration between the Faculty of Agriculture and Food Sciences, University of Sarajevo and the Faculty of Agriculture, University of Zagreb has been established in the field of fruit (including Vitis) genetic resources. This collaboration is being strengthened through the SEEDNet project (South East European Network on Plant Genetic Resources) financed by SIDA (Swedish International Development Agency). So far, we have had a publication on apple genetic resources in Bosnia and Herzegovina as a result of this collaboration. We are currently preparing a similar publication on plum genetic resources that will present results of a study made on autochthonous plums from B&H, Croatia and Serbia, focusing mainly on different synonyms of Pozegaca, but not exclusively (molecular and morphological data, as well as some food processing qualities). Similar work has been done on the chestnut and is currently being done on the pear.

August 11, 2010August 11, 2010

Dog diversity decoded

Look at the extraordinary photos by Tim Flach in the slide gallery here. ((From which I took the Puli photo.)) Then read this account of a new paper that examines relatively simple genetic diversity that underlies the extraordinary morphological diversity of dogs. Or do it the other way. Then marvel.

July 29, 2010July 29, 2010

Nibbles: Vancouver Island, Organic breeding, Evolution, Roots, Coffee, ABS, Donkey domestication, Domestication, Yam

Nancy Turner, great food anthropologist, deconstructs dinner on air.
Breeding for resilience: a strategy for organic and low-input farming systems? Eucarpia conference in Paris in December. Love the ?
Ford Denison on evolution in reverse: crops that become weeds.
Nature on evolution in forward: crop breeders look at roots.
“Shade-coffee farms support native bees that maintain genetic diversity in tropical forests.” Good to know.
Want to know about Access & Benefit Sharing negotiations? We thought so.
Ancient people moved their asses.
Selection during domestication differs from selection during diversification. For the ass too?
Expect to see Dioscorea hispida appear in spam emails very soon.
And today’s answer to malnutrition is a blue-grin alga from Lake Chad. Kidding apart, it’s an interesting story.

July 27, 2010July 27, 2010

Nibbles: Plant breeding book, Ug99, NGS, Monitoring, Genetic diversity and productivity, Adaptive evolution, Amaranthus, Nabhan, Herbarium databases, Pepper, Shade coffee and conservation, Apples, Pathogen diversity, Phytophthora

Book on history of plant breeding reviewed.
Rust never sleeps.
Ask not what next generation sequencing can do for you.
Long-term datasets in biodiversity research. Nothing about genetic diversity though. Bummer.
And genetic diversity is important, is it? Yep, it increases productivity, at least in Arabidopsis.
No evidence of adaptive evolution in plants. What? Surely some mistake? I’m serious. And don’t call me Shirley.
The latest from Worldwatch on African leafy veggies. Again, some links would have been nice.
And Worldwatch also interviews Gary Nabhan on Vavilov.
You can browse Tropicos specimens in Google Earth.
Using pepper to protect stored rice.
More evidence of the goodness of shade coffee.
The diversity of Bosnian apples.
Mammal plus bird species richness explains 72% of country-to-country variation in the number of human pathogens. Diversity begets diversity. But which way does the causality go?
Phytophthora infestans in Estonia: “…higher proportion of metalaxyl resistant isolates from large conventional farms than from small conventional farms or from organic farms.” Metalaxyl is a fungicide.

July 25, 2010July 25, 2010

Nibbles: Protected area management, Yam domestication, Ottoman cooking, Measuring rice drought tolerance, Proteomics, Lupinus, Areca, Jethobudho, Nutrition megaprogramme, Soil bacteria

Concentrating management practices on conserving a particular plant species may have bad consequences for other bits of biodiversity. Lessons for crops wild relatives?
Benin’s farmers ennoble wild yams.
A Lebanese lunch is an educational experience. Right.
Paddyomics video. Nothing to do with the Irish. It’s about how IRRI is automating, er, everything about its phenotyping.
Tamarind’s environmental niche is, in fact, er, niches?
Different wheat genomes generate distinct protein profiles.
Phylogenetic relationships of a new Mediterranean lupin.
Betel nut chewing endangers coral. Kinda. Traditional and all that, but an unpleasant habit nonetheless.
Our friend Bhuwon and others tell the story of the participatory improvement and formal release of Jethobudho rice landrace in Nepal.
CGIAR elicits comment on the Agriculture for Improved Nutrition and Health megaprogramme. Until August 1.
Bacterial diversity boosts maize yields.