Domestication

January 9, 2014

Nibbles: Pig evolution, Genomics field guide, Genome editing, Chilean agroecology training, Oxford Farming Conferences, Grape variety database, Food prices database, Amazonian history, Debunking tomatoes, INFOODS NUS list, Coptic gardens, Aid agencies map

The catching up continues:

“Genomics is a powerful tool…”: Pigs speciate, admix, fly.
But in the wrong hands…
I wonder which types of hands these genome editors have.
Ok, enough of that. Women, agroecology, capacity building, a fashionable country: what’s not to like?
I wonder if any of the ladies are at the Oxford Real Farming Conference. Or were. They were probably NOT at the Oxford Farming Conference. Oh the wit of these alternative farming types. You could have followed both on Twitter, were you so minded, and less confused than I.
Chile — for it is she — of course grows a lot of grapes. Want to know which varieties? Course you do.
Damn, grapes not included in this World Bank crowd-sourced food price dataset. Which I think we may have linked to before, but what the hell.
I know we’ve linked to ancient Amazonian civilization stuff before, but this is a predictive model, no less.
Busted: The tomato.
The INFOODS “List of underutilized species contributing to the Nutritional Indicators for Biodiversity” is out. Prices not included.
I somehow thought there would be more underutilized species in this Ethiopian monastery.
Who pays for (some of) this? Check out the Guardian’s interactive map of European development agencies.

January 8, 2014

Nibbles: Information, Domestication, Cats, Conference, Gunpowder gardening, Policy advice, Potatoes, Ancient vineyards, New UG99, Bovine emissions, Cacao ants, Palaeo-diet, Bloody quinoa, Tokyo’s honey, Urban biodiversity, Ilex, Conifers

Wow! Just wow. Big Picture Agriculture has launched an incredibly useful website.
Chromosomes, crops and superdomestication, a slideshare presentation by Pat Heslop-Harrison.
Cats, domesticated? Not as far as I’m concerned. Still, Ancient Chinese cats ate rats, leading to their domestication.
Independent plant breeders, a conference just for you.
Great ammunition for the lazy gardener.
IBPES told to “tap the wisdom of indigenous peoples”.
Kenyan policymakers told to consider the potato.
Basque vineyards of a millennium ago.
A new strain of UG99 wheat rust? But this time, the world is ready.
Variable diets linked to variable emissions shock.
scidev.net reports that ants protect cacao trees from fungal diseases. (Yes, I’m taking short cuts here.)
Palaeolithic people preferred nutrition-rich places.
And quinoa remains as confusing as ever.
Tokyo’s local honey.
Although agriculture barely features in a paean to urban biodiversity. It should.
The holly and the coffee: The Botanist in the Kitchen does Yerba Maté
Ready for the inevitable ennui of next Christmas, a taxonomy of conifers.

January 7, 2014

Nibbles: Cranberry, Apple, Quail

Obviously it is going to take a while to get back up to cruisin’ speed, so we’ll start slow before we accelerate back to the future and attempt to catch up.

Ready to amuse at the next Thanksgiving, a history of the cranberry.
Ready for the next apple you eat (or, in my case, run from), a history of Granny Smith.
Ready for bankruptcy? A recent history of quail farming in Kenya.

January 6, 2014December 4, 2013

Brainfood: Tea flower transcriptomics, Ag origins, Hunan rice, ITPGRFA & CBD, Mycorrhiza, Sugar beet breeding, Agronomy, Molecular domestication, Cactus domestication, Rice yield gene

Floral Transcriptome Sequencing for SSR Marker Development and Linkage Map Construction in the Tea Plant (Camellia sinensis). Neat, to be sure, but not entirely clear why the transcriptome of a part of a crop that is not economically exploited should be of more than academic use to anyone. But no doubt someone will set us right on this.
Emergence of Agriculture in the Foothills of the Zagros Mountains of Iran. Eastern Fertile Crescent just as important as western.
Analysis of main agronomic characteristics and utilization status of rice resources in Hunan Province. Hunan has a provincial genebank with more than 12,000 accession, “repetition eliminated.”
The comparison of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture and the Nagoya Protocol. Like the above, this is in Chinese, except for the abstract, which recommends ratification of both relevant instruments. I hope someone is listening.
Biodiversity of Arbuscular Mycorrhizal fungi in Agricultural crops of western Himalayas. Everybody’s at it. Well, almost.
Assessment of breeding progress in sugar beet by testing old and new varieties under greenhouse and field conditions. It has been steady and is set to continue. At least in Germany.
Why crop yields in developing countries have not kept pace with advances in agronomy. Let them eat German sugar beets. But seriously: agronomist says it’s about the agronomy.
Molecular mechanisms involved in convergent crop domestication. It’s mutations at orthologous loci, and it can be copied.
Differential survival and growth of wild and cultivated seedlings of columnar cacti: Consequences of domestication. Gotta wonder if mutations at orthologous loci were involved.
NAL1 allele from a rice landrace greatly increases yield in modern indica cultivars. But it came from a tropical japonica landrace from Indonesia, and works its magic via pleiotropic effect on plant architecture.

December 9, 2013December 9, 2013

Brainfood: Gaming landuse decisions, Natura 2000, Expressing pears, Medicinal rice, Agroforestry and conservation, Grasslands, Cotton diversity, Ancient cattle, Neolithic Balkans, Indian guar

Gaming for smallholder participation in the design of more sustainable agricultural landscapes. Board game can be used to facilitate communal decision-making in landuse planning in the buffer zone of a Man and Biosphere Reserve. What’s not to like?
Mixed effects of long-term conservation investment in Natura 2000 farmland. It has been good for some things, not so good for others. No word on how CWRs have fared.
Microarray analysis of gene expression patterns during fruit development in European pear (Pyrus communis). They’re different to those of Japanese pear (Pyrus pyrifolia).
Quantitative and molecular analyses reveal a deep genetic divergence between the ancient medicinal rice (Oryza sativa) Njavara and syntopic traditional cultivars. Njavara is a cryptic variant of traditional Kerala varieties.
Relationships between Biodiversity and Biological Control in Agroecosystems: Current Status and Future Challenges. Management should aim to suppress pests while maintaining diversity of natural enemy guilds. Easier said than done, I suspect.
Agroforestry and Biodiversity Conservation in Tropical Landscapes. Between agroforestry cause and conservation effect are a bunch of pesky assumptions. I wonder if gaming would help.
Livestock grazing and biodiversity in semi-natural grasslands. It can be good. Just one paper in the proceedings of a recent major conference on grasslands.
Genetic diversity and population structure in the US Upland cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.). Who needs wild relatives when you have diverse obsolete varieties?
Morphological and genetic evidence for early Holocene cattle management in northeastern China. Archaeology and DNA suggest parallel domestication of cattle in China.
Domesticated Animals and Biodiversity: Early Agriculture at the Gates of Europe and Long-term Ecological Consequences. For thousands of years the impact of agriculture in the Balkans was limited.
Characterization of released and elite genotypes of guar [Cyamopsis tetragonoloba (L.) Taub.] from India proves unrelated to geographical origin. And?