- CIFOR scientist talks about the much-vaunted landscape approach.
- The repeated evolution of lemony flavour.
- Nice infographic of breadfruit diversity in the Pacific.
- Better infographic of chili pepper diversity in Mexico. Both are on Facebook. Hope you guys can see them.
- FAO’s Eve Crowley is didactic and inspirational by turns about women, co-operatives and rural development.
- Hardin vs Ostrom. Walk-over.
- How much does production have to increase, really? Lobell deals the cards.
- What are the effects of input subsidies on maize prices in Malawi and Zambia? Small to none.
- Plant database to charge for access? Never a good idea.
- Ok, here’s a first, a beer I don’t altogether feel like tasting.
- Last days of the soybean homecoming show in Hong Kong. Anybody out there seen it?
- Video on the intricacies of Kew. Not as long as you’d think.
- Weevils in sweet pea jar pinpoint season of Santorini eruption. Has anyone tried to recover DNA from the seeds?
- Experts for ensuring quality fish seeds to enhance production. Say what?
- How should we mark the extinction of the passenger pigeon next year?
Nibbles: Golden Rice vs kitchen gardens, China vs world, Cool fungi, Measuring nutrition outcomes, Ancient pig keeping, Mapping potatoes, Plant evolution, Supporting genebanks
- Golden Rice better than kitchen gardens? We just don’t have the data. But why is that?
- Brazil and China compete for African agriculture. Are either of them at this African food security conference? Meanwhile, Australia vs China in the Pacific. Are either of them contributing to this ecosystem management survey? Oh, what could possibly go wrong?
- The “beauty” of mycorrhiza. And more cool fungi.
- World Bank says it is possible to measure nutritional outcomes in children without breaking the bank.
- It wasn’t just ancient farmers who kept pigs.
- CIP uses GIS shock.
- Darwin’s abominable mystery sorted out. Oh, and cereal vernalization to boot.
- Nabhan: The U.S. government should direct more money to the country’s “underfinanced seed collection and distribution programs.”
Brainfood: Touristic islands, Pearl millet diversity, Barley diversity, Maize diversity, Weird chickpea, Sweet potato diversity, Pawpaw diversity, Grewia domestication, Agrobiodiversity is the key, Sunflower relative dynamics
Sorry about the Brainfood hiatus lately. Back now, and with a vengeance.
- Plant genetic resources in a touristic island: the case of Lefkada (Ionian Islands, Greece). Landraces and tourism can coexist.
- Assessment of genetic diversity among pearl millet [Pennisetum glaucum (L.) R Br.] cultivars using SSR markers. The cultivars coming out of a given breeding programme cluster together. No!
- Population genetic structure in a social landscape: barley in a traditional Ethiopian agricultural system. Farmer management trumps even altitude.
- Environmental and social factors account for Mexican maize richness and distribution: A data mining approach. Oh no it doesn’t.
- Identification of an upright peduncle and podding genotype in chickpea germplasm conserved in the National Genebank. That’s one out of 18,873.
- Molecular, morphological and agronomic characterization of the sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas L.) germplasm collection from Mozambique: Genotype selection for drought prone regions. 6 out of 28 local genotypes are drought tolerant. No word on whether they’re yellow fleshed too.
- Genotyping a large collection of pepper (Capsicum spp.) with SSR loci brings new evidence for the wild origin of cultivated C. annuum and the structuring of genetic diversity by human selection of cultivar types. The taxonomy is ok. Human selection is reflected by genetic diversity. A quarter of the accessions can be chosen which contain 97% of the genetic diversity. In other news, France has a collection of 1,300 peppers.
- Phenotypic and Genetic Diversity of Papaya. Wild papayas from South America are closer to an allied genus than to the cultigen.
- Grewia flavescens: a potential horticultural crop? Well, maybe.
- Agricultural biodiversity as a link between traditional food systems and contemporary development, social integrity and ecological health. You need sustainable small farms tied into global markets for high value food crops and ecosystem services. Marx rolls over in his grave.
- Proximity to agriculture alters abundance and community composition of wild sunflower mutualists and antagonists. Wild relative populations nearer to cultigen have more pollinators but fewer seed and leaf munchers than those further away. Not entirely sure what that means for in situ conservation, but I’m sure it’s something.
Nibbles: Salty aroids, Bring back bele, Polyploidy, Land Institute, SEB2013, Wheat blog, Agrikalsa Niu
- Palau finds salt-tolerant taros.
- Elsewhere in the Pacific, researchers try to revive bele. That would be aibika. Or slippery kabis. Or Abelmoschus manihot.
- Which is a polyploid, isn’t it? Not to mention perennial.
- Bound to be lots of Pacific stuff at the Society for Economic Botany’s meeting, going on NOW. No, wait, it’s ending today. Bummer.
- Did you know that the first formal plant disease record in the Pacific region was from wheat, grown in Sydney by the first colonists? Well, I’m not entirely sure if that’s true, but it’s a way of introducing this blog on wheat in this Pacifically-themed Nibbles.
- Agrikalsa Nius is the monthly electronic newsletter of the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock of the Solomon Islands.
Brainfood: Phenology & CC, Potato nutrition, Buckwheat honey, Visitors in parks, Urban gardeners, Introgression from wild sheep, Catholic conservation, Tomato domestication
- Herbarium specimens reveal the footprint of climate change on flowering trends across north-central North America. 2.4 days per °C.
- Carotenoid profiling in tubers of different potato (Solanum sp) cultivars: Accumulation of carotenoids mediated by xanthophyll esterification. 60 cultivars, including landraces, fall into 3 main groups. Need to keep an eye out for those xanthophyll esters.
- Buckwheat honeys: Screening of composition and properties. In other news, there is monofloral buckwheat honey in Italy and E. Europe. But not as much as the producers say.
- Using geotagged photographs and GIS analysis to estimate visitor flows in natural areas. Very cool, but try as I might I cannot think of an application in agricultural biodiversity conservation. Maybe you can.
- Quiet sustainability: Fertile lessons from Europe’s productive gardeners. Food gardening in Europe’s cities is not about an “urban peasantry” putting essential food on the table. And it’s not about expousing a yuppie alternative lifestyle. It’s just about the sheer fun of it.
- Introgression and the fate of domesticated genes in a wild mammal population. Coat colour polymorphisms in wild Soay sheep was caused by admixture with more modern breed 150 years ago.
- Catholicism and Conservation: The Potential of Sacred Natural Sites for Biodiversity Management in Central Italy. So apparently there’s a “common view that Christianity is anti-naturalistic.” Well, it’s wrong. What’s Christianity’s view of agrobiodiversity, I wonder?
- Comparative transcriptomics reveals patterns of selection in domesticated and wild tomato. DNA differences due to selection at 50 genes, transcription differences at thousands.