Domestication

Nibbles: Heirloom store, Leaf miners, Mongolian drought, GPS, Coca, Ag origins, Aquaculture, Lice, Bud break in US, IFAD livestock, biofuels, Pig history

“Housed in the towering old 1926 Sonoma County Bank, it’s hard to miss the Seed Bank.” And who would want to anyway.
Of apples, leaf miners and bacteria. Great story.
Best synthesis and analysis of the Mongolian dzud story so far.
Visualize your GPS data! Not agrobiodiversity, I know, but I don’t have another blog.
Coca myths debunked. Sniff sniff.
“Crop domestication and the first plant breeders” book charpter online.
Rebranding Asian carp. Hard row to hoe. Thanks, Don.
190,000 year old clothes had lice. 190,000 year old humans had clothes?
More citizen science stuff, this one on effect of climate change on plant phenology in the US.
IFAD publishes bunch of livestock-related papers. ILRI, are you listening?
“It’s 36 percent more efficient to grow grain for food than for fuel.” Good to have a number.
Boffins do their aDNA thing on Chinese pigs, find continuity, multiple domestication, sweet and sour sauce recipe.
Soil Association begs to differ on that whole UKworld-needs-to-double-food-production thing.

How teosinte lost its shell. Not another Just-so story
Search more than 450 publications from Bioversity International. Just-so!
Push-pull solution to maize pests in Africa. What again? Yes, again! Just do it.
“One time, harvesters sold her regular beans glued to unidentified dung.” And more weird food naughtiness.
Flowers you can eat.

More either-or stuff from the Guardian on the Indian GM brijal story.
The USDA prickly pear cactus germplasm collection gets some exposure. And how many times can one say that.
Much better title from Discover on that ancient northern Amazonian earthworks story.
Kenyan foresters tell people to eat bamboo. Luigi’s mother-in-law politely demurs. On the other hand, she might like this.
Swiflet farming? Swiflet farming.
Really heated exchange on paper on coconut lethal yellowing in Yucatan develops on Google Groups. I love the internet.
PROTA publishes expensive book on promising African plants. Promises, promises. NASA promised us the personal jetpack. Where are we with that?
Nice summary of that Mesoamerican agricultural origins story we blogged briefly about a few days ago. So what exactly do you call hunter-gatherers who also grow crops?
First International Symposium on Wild Relatives of Subtropical and Temperate Fruit and Nut Crops will be held March 19-23, 2011 in Davis, California on the campus of the University of California, Davis. Book early.

Jeremy probes into wild asses at Vaviblog.
Mapping the evolution of pathogens. And in kinda related news…
The European oyster needs diversity. Well, natch.
The tree forests of Yunnan, and, concidentally, the story of how the secret of their product got out.
The Kaçkar Mountains at Yusufeli, northeast Turkey are in trouble. Any crop wild relatives there, among the bears and other charismatic megafauna?
Speaking of Turkey, here’s how to make one of its delicacies. But hey, if you don’t have vine leaves, you can use this.
Having fun with yams.
Drori does pollen.
FAO’s Mitigation of Climate Change in Agriculture (MICCA) Project. Any agrobiodiversity-related stuff? Need to explore…
“…conserving species may only require specific activities, such as collect and distributing seeds.”
African school feeding programme uses “local” products. What would Paarlberg say? You can find out here, if you have 90 minutes to spare.
British boffins breed self-shearing sheep. No, really.

Lots of Indian rice in the IRRI genebank. Any of it being used to develop drought-tolerant varieties?
Lots of journalists in the Tunisian genebank.
How they make coffee in Ethiopia.
How they make popcorn the world over. You sometimes get popcorn (or popped sorghum) with coffee in Ethiopia, now I think of it. And since we’re on an Ethiopian kick, fancy some enjera? Gary Nabhan did.
“Productivity vs. sustainability is a ‘false choice.’” Well I never. And probably not news to these people either, or these. But to these guys?
A Twitter roundup from Embrapa.
Ugly hybrid of two wild strawberries may cause allergies.
Explanation of evolution of doubled genes in wild and cultivated sunflowers certainly causes pain in brain.
Some good climate change news for the Atlantic croaker. Being a glass-totally-empty kinda guy I predict it tastes like shit.