- Panama comes to SE Asia. Banana people will understand. And will know what to do?
- Shucks, just missed the N2Africa project first phase results presentation shindig in Nairobi. All about the power and beauty of nitrogen-fixing legumes (geddit?). Jeremy wont let me link to the piece about the project that recently appeared on a well-known site, and he’s right, it’s largely content free. And you can find it if you really want to anyway.
- Climate change? Not a problem, for some plants (including wild relatives?), if there’s trees around. Well, kinda sorta. But it made you look, didn’t it? Are any of them on CITES? Consult the new handy dandy online thingy.
- Ah, but tell that to Abu Waleed and other Jordanian farmers.
- Who are the answer to etc Group’s question: Who will feed us?
- A botanical use for online gaming. Whatever next.
- Celebrating Alfred Wallace via animated video. And why not.
- You want more videos? Here’s a nice explanation of the difference between winter and spring wheat.
- Huge rice genetics meet is apparently a “hot bed of discussion”. For another couple of days. Let us know if you are party to any of that.
- No doubt the same could have been said about the recent 12th International Symposium of the International Society for Tropical Root Crops in Accra.
- Zambian families are better off nutritionally if they grow hybrid maize.
- A handy English translation of an all-consuming post about quinoa in Spanish. And check the photo of quinoa diversity!
- Gary Nabhan explains why “more biodiversity means more food security“.
- Israel’s wild boars are European. I’m biting right through my tongue here.
Nibbles: Russian ‘rooms, CWFS, Small farmers and their systems, CABI pest maps, Aussie aid, Seed saving pod, Fiji video, CWR conference, Baobab & peanut festivals, Caribbean meets, Irish food security meet, Potty for pots, Salty microbes, Domesticated stomata, Bayer in Hyderabad
- Normal Russians hunt mushrooms.
- Committee on World Food Security meets. Not many people hurt.
- Normal Indian farmers go back to the future. So, in a different way, do Egyptian farmers. Rikin Gandhi probably knows all about it, and has made videos of it.
- I wonder if they’ve told the folks at the new, very agroecological Berkeley sustainable food institute. Though some would suggest they’re on a hiding to nothing there.
- You want past and future? Historical records used to predict spread of pests.
- When is development aid not development aid?
- Cherfas on Cavagnaro on seed saving. Trifecta.
- Cool ACIAR videos take me back to my stint in Fiji.
- International Conference on Utilization and Conservation of Crop Wild Relative (CWR) and Landrace (LR) Diversity for Crop Improvement. First order of business: think of a new name.
- Eden has a Baobab Festival. No word on the factsheet situation. But maybe you’d rather play it safe and try a peanut festival instead? OK, how about Coconuts of the Caribbean? No? Agrotourists of the Caribbean, then?
- Our Food. Our Future. Sustainability: The Bottom Line. Their presentations. Tell me if you find any agrobiodiversity in there. Well I dunno, maybe there will be some in the upcoming 2020 Policy Consultation on Building Resilience for Food and Nutrition Security, in 2014.
- Can you grow baobabs in a pot, I wonder? Or hydroponics for that matter.
- Salt-tolerant bacteria assist rooting in degraded soils. Easier than breeding, I guess.
- No consistent effect of domestication on stomata. Worth a try.
- Bayer goes to Hyderabad. To be near ICRISAT?
Brainfood: Wild maize diversity, Bacterial test, Rice diversity, Marginal biofuels, Rice roots, Farm diversification and returns, Sorghum shattering, Thinking conservation, Ethiopian peas
- Complex Patterns of Local Adaptation in Teosinte. It’s down to the inversions and the intergenic polymorphisms.
- A Stringent and Broad Screen of Solanum spp. tolerance Against Erwinia Bacteria Using a Petiole Test. The best genotypes are all in one, easily-crossed series.
- Genetic diversity, population structure and differentiation of rice species from Niger and their potential for rice genetic resources conservation and enhancement. Both cultivated species, plus hybrids. More diversity within ecogeographic areas than among them.
- Use of DArT markers as a means of better management of the diversity of olive cultivars. Some potential duplicates found. But will anything be done about it?
- “Marginal land” for energy crops: Exploring definitions and embedded assumptions. Whether it’s a good idea to relegate biofuels to marginal land to protect food crops depends on what you mean by marginal.
- Coconuts in the Americas. They came from the Philippines. Well, the ones on the Pacific coast did anyway.
- Control of root system architecture by DEEPER ROOTING 1 increases rice yield under drought conditions. And it came from a genebank accession, no less.
- Landscape diversity and the resilience of agricultural returns: a portfolio analysis of land-use patterns and economic returns from lowland agriculture. You want resilient returns? You need large(ish), diversified farms.
- Seed shattering in a wild sorghum is conferred by a locus unrelated to domestication. But close to it.
- When the future of biodiversity depends on researchers’ and stakeholders’ thought-styles. You have to agree on more than just how you do it when you’re collaborating on a multidisciplinary conservation project. You also have to agree on why you’re doing it.
- Characterization of dekoko (Pisum sativum var. abyssinicum) accessions by qualitative traits in the highlands of Southern Tigray, Ethiopia. Endemic pea diversity arranged by altitude.
Nibbles: Traditional knowledge, Digital herbarium, Digital Vavilov Centres, Rice genebank, Lentil breeding, Breeding for drought, Native American trout, Musa revision, Millet and sorghum promoted, Phenomics revolution
- Paying attention to traditional knowledge to help with climate change … in New England!
- Two million New York Botanical Gardens herbarium sheets digitized, possibly including some crop wild relatives.
- Map your recipe, an entertaining way to talk about domestication and interdependence in the matter of agricultural biodiversity.
- IRRI follows up genebank video with genebank podcast. No idea why.
- Speaking of videos, here’s one on lentil breeding in Canada.
- Which I don’t think involved drought resistance there, but it probably did elsewhere.
- Tribes (not in New England — see above) diversify from trout. Alas freshwater not included in new global fish diversity hotspot map.
- Musa taxonomists do their thing.
- Millet takes on quinoa. Taxonomists would insist on calling it Panicum miliaceum. I think. Next in the queue is sorghum?
- Phenomics in words and images.
Brainfood: Extinct breeds, Olive breeding, Wild peanuts, Conserving dates, Hazelnut diversity, Religion, & biodiversity, Parqe de la Papa, Maize flowering, Mozambique watermelon, Nigerian cocoyam processing
- Cattle Breeds: Extinction or Quasi-Extant? Many supposedly extinct breeds live on in the genome of others.
- Evaluation of the need and present potential of olive breeding indicating the nature of the available genetic resources involved. If you want to intensify olive production, and apparently you do, you need to breed for it.
- Characterization of Brazilian accessions of wild Arachis species of section Arachis (Fabaceae) using heterochromatin detection and fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH). Cytogenetics still has something to contribute.
- Complementary Strategy for Conservation of Date Palm Germplasm. Sets out the options well enough, their pros and cons, but doesn’t give you what you really need, a clear idea of which germplasm to conserve how, where. Which I submit was not too much to ask for.
- Molecular and morphological diversity of on-farm hazelnut (Corylus avellana L.) landraces from southern Europe and their role in the origin and diffusion of cultivated germplasm. 3 primary centres of diversity, plus a couple of secondary ones. Spain and Italy have one of each.
- Biodiversity priority areas and religions—a global analysis of spatial overlap. It’s all up to the Vatican. What could possibly go wrong?
- Situating In Situ: A Critical Geography of Agricultural Biodiversity Conservation in the Peruvian Andes and Beyond. In other news, the Parque de la Papa has epistemological implications.
- Adaptation of Maize to Temperate Climates: Mid-Density Genome-Wide Association Genetics and Diversity Patterns Reveal Key Genomic Regions, with a Major Contribution of the Vgt2 (ZCN8) Locus. It takes a lot of genes.
- Genetic differentiation of watermelon landraces in Mozambique using microsatellite markers. Type of use is more important than geography in explaining genetic diversity.
- Extending the use of an underutilised tuber I: Physicochemical and pasting properties of cocoyam (Xanthosoma sagittifolium) flour and its suitability for making biscuits. Let them eat cocoyam biscuits.