- Boffins trying to domesticate Allanblackia for its oil.
- Phyteuma spicatum must be saved, British folklore depends on it. How about domesticating it?
- Farmers replanting forest in inland Niger delta. Sort of domesticating the forest, you mean?
- And here’s another domesticated forest, this time in Kerala.
- Are oysters domesticated? And seaweeds? Lots of uses for seaweeds, after all.
- Why plant breeding is incompatible with organic agriculture. Eh? First of a trilogy.
- Management of plant genetic resources in Brazil deconstructed.
- Oh dear, now boffins say avoiding bycatch may not be good after all.
- CTA calls for research notes in preparation for proposal writing workshop on neglected and underutilized plants.
- New Sight and Life magazine is out, with interesting discussions of Vitamin A supplementation in newborns and HIV patients.
- While at Scidev.net HarvestPlus defends biofortified crops against charge of medicalizing micronutrient deficiency.
Nibbles: Conservation, Women, Subsidies, Bees, Microbes, Rhizobia, Genebanks, Chicken history, Nordic genebank
- Academics say conservation of biodiversity does not benefit the poor. Maybe they’re talking about the wrong kind of biodiversity?
- Innovation of the Week: Feeding Communities by Focusing on Women. I think my irony detector may be on the fritz.
- All you ever wanted to know about farm subsidies in the US. h/t Food Politics.
- The Bittersweet Dreams of Uruguay’s Beekeepers. Sad.
- State microbes! Really fun, and informative. Any better ideas?
- More microbes: The evolution of nitrogen fixation. Absolutely fascinating.
- Slideshow on genebanks in southern Africa.
- Pre-Columbian, Polynesian chickens in Chile not Polynesian and probably not pre-Columbian. Blast! Why must fun theories always run up against the brick wall of facts?
- NordGen’s annual report: crops, forests, livestock.
Nibbles: Figs, strawberries, seed bombs, micronutrients^2, conservation, saffron
- Lloyd Kreizter gives a fig. And then some.
- Strawberries for spacepeople?
- Calling all garden guerillas. You can now buy seed bombs.
- Nicola at Edible Geography takes orange-fleshed people to a whole new level.
- BMGF takes photo story of orange-fleshed sweet potatoes to a whole new level.
- How to preserve biodiversity: take a cutting of it.
- Kashmiri saffron is beset on all sides … but help is at hand.
Nibbles: Law, Cuba, Trout
- Two radio programmes to read and/or listen to:
- GE alfalfa in the dock — literally.
- And an interview with Humberto Rios, Goldman Prize winner (and musician who sings the praises of mango diversity!)
- Nicola at Edible Geography does an amazing number on rainbow trout, and much else besides.
Carnival of Evolution
There’s a new edition of the Carnival of Evolution up at Evolution: Education and Outreach, the “official blog” of the journal of that name, and it contains three items of direct interest to agrobiodiversity fans (four if you count our submission, but you’ve already read that, right?).
- Christie Wilcox reminds us that domesticated animals have smaller brains, relative to their body size, than their wild counterparts. Are they actually not as intelligent though?
- Sticking with domestication, Jason Goldman reckons dogs have evolved to take advantage of the existing mechanisms that bond parents to their children. I can vouch for that.
- And the author of Byte Size Biology takes on the gene transfer that sees pea-aphids making for themselves the carotenoids that colour some morphs orange. That’s a first for animal synthesis of carotenoids, essential compounds for healthy human life. Where did the pea aphids get their genes? From a fungus, by means of horizontal gene transfer. which is interesting in itself and also suggests a much simpler and perhaps more acceptable alternative to making transgenic staple crops rich in carotenoids: let’s just stick the gene into people!