- ILRI video on helping herders with that climate change thing.
- Nutritional composition of Strawberry tree fruits.
- The genetic history of the yak.
- Chinese food archaeology: noodles and fruits.
- Colonial food in early America.
Nibbles: Forest management, Sahelian trees, Biofortification blogging
- Combining traditional and scientific knowledge on an invasive species to manage forests.
- Variation in dryland trees: Balanites and Adansonia.
- Roundup of biofortification bloggers.
Nibbles: PNG & CC, Pasture, Nagoya, Sesame, CIMMYT, Oryza, Tradition
- A view from Papua New Guinea on a project to prepare PNG agriculture for climate change.
- How to grow a properly biodiverse pasture. Hint: money isn’t enough.
- Another Nagoya round-up. And another.
- Sesamum monographed.
- Award for CIMMYT genebank.
- African rice domestication deconstructed.
- Traditional practices bad for Nigerian children, good for Chinese fish.
Nibbles: African data, Wild beans, Wild chickens, Heirloom tomatoes, Wild wheat
- African data centre planned.
- “…genetic variability and phenotypic plasticity of plant anti-herbivore defences allow plant populations to rapidly respond to changing environmental conditions.” In a crop wild relative, no less.
- The genetics of chicken domestication. I’d like to see the results of those crosses.
- Do you have these heirloom tomatoes?
- Getting increased heat tolerance from a wild relative into wheat.
Zombi bean resurrected?
Vigna vexillata is a close relative of the cowpea (V. unguiculata) that (sometimes) rejoices in the common name Zombi Bean. (It is also called the tuber cowpea.) It’s hard to tell whether this is a “famine food” harvested from the wild, a plant being domesticated and on its way to becoming a crop, or a full-fledged crop species. Either way, scientists in Australia have been doing their darndest to understand how it can best be improved. The result, so far, is three back-to-back papers in Crop & Pasture Science.
- Genotypic variation in domesticated and wild accessions of the tropical tuberous legume Vigna vexillata (L.) A. Rich. doi:10.1071/CP10029
- Genetic compatibility among domesticated and wild accessions of the tropical tuberous legume Vigna vexillata (L.) A. Rich. doi:10.1071/CP10060
- Expression of qualitative and quantitative traits in hybrids between domesticated and wild accessions of the tropical tuberous legume Vigna vexillata (L.) A. Rich. doi:10.1071/CP10084
But not, yet, any improved varieties.