Forests & trees

October 17, 2011October 16, 2011

Brainfood: Ectomycorrhiza, Synthetic peanuts, Ancient Greek amphorae, European bison, Pea breeding, Animal domestication

Ectomycorrhizas and climate change. One more damn thing to worry about.
Meiotic analysis of the hybrids between cultivated and synthetic tetraploid groundnuts. It’s normal. The meiosis I mean. Why isn’t this sort of thing done with more crops?
Aspects of Ancient Greek trade re-evaluated with amphora DNA evidence. More than just wine and olive oil.
Reconstructing range dynamics and range fragmentation of European bison for the last 8000 years. More eastern and northern than thought, and more affected by the spread of farming than climate change in the Holocene.
Resistance to downy mildew (Peronospora viciae) in Australian field pea germplasm (Pisum sativum). It comes from Afghanistan.
Deciphering the genetic basis of animal domestication. Despite all that selection and all those bottlenecks, they really are diverse.

Don’t forget the open Mendeley group for the papers we link to here.

September 30, 2011September 30, 2011

Nibbles: Moringa, Fungi, Blue potatoes, GRAIN, Nutrition, Maize Day, Sorghum research

Mexico embraces moringa against malnutrition.
Get your mushroom spores here. (You’ll need something for the headache the page induces.)
Scientist Gardener discovers blue potato chips at altitude.
GRAIN gets altNobel. It’s not the winning. It’s the being nominated.
Bioversity stuns world with nutrition strategy. While Jess does poo.
Damn, looks like we missed National Maize Day again.
How your United Sorghum Checkoff dollars are being spent.

September 27, 2011September 27, 2011

Nibbles: Maize, David Douglas, Globesity, Iron-rice rice, Miracle berry, Trout vs cows

Farmer Brian Schaumburg has planted corn for five straight years in some of the thousands of acres he tends in central Illinois. Good thinking; it’s non-native, and it’s a monoculture.
Douglas of the Douglas Fir remembered.
Tom tackles “globesity“.
Enriching rice with iron and zinc using rice’s own genes. Because they can.
How Richadella dulcifica works its miracles.
In the contest between fish and bovine, the outcome is not always certain.

September 15, 2011

Nibbles: Primary forests, Lima Declaration

“…old-growth rainforests are the greatest celebration of life on earth.” Well, maybe.
Chefs make a stand. Ooooooh, scary.

September 12, 2011September 13, 2011

Brainfood: Millet diversity, Maize landraces and hybrids, Potato carotenoids, Wheat domestication, Value chains, Population modeling, Rhizobium diversity, Yeast diversity, Core collection, Wild Zea, Cotton geneflow, Forest fires, Forest diseases

Identification of trait-specific germplasm and developing a mini core collection for efficient use of foxtail millet genetic resources in crop improvement. All the goodness of Setaria italica diversity in just 35 accessions.
Farmers’ adoption of maize (Zea mays L.) hybrids and the persistence of landraces in Southwest China: implications for policy and breeding. There are pros and cons to both hybrids and landraces, and participatory plant breeding could bring together the pros and get rid of the cons.
Carotenoid concentrations of native Andean potatoes as affected by cooking. Some carotenoids were decreased by boiling, others not so much.
Domestication evolution, genetics and genomics in wheat. A big summary of what we know so far and what we might learn by sequencing some wild wheat relatives.
Research Principles for Developing Country Food Value Chains. Multidimensional demands by consumers demand multidimensional research by scientists. I think.
Range shift promotes the formation of stable range edges. Species can move for reasons other than climate change.
Genetic diversity of rhizobia associated with indigenous legumes in different regions of Flanders (Belgium). A new genus? In Flanders?
Assessment of yeast diversity in soils under different management regimes. Type of management and vegetation has an effect. Yeah, well, you had to be there.
Efficiency of PowerCore in core set development using amplified fragment length polymorphic markers in mungbean. Software for making core collections seems to work.
Three new teosintes (Zea spp., Poaceae) from México. New entities, apparently. Species? Subspecies? More study needed, natch.
Recent long-distance transgene flow into wild populations conforms to historical patterns of gene flow in cotton (Gossypium hirsutum) at its centre of origin. Four out of eight populations have transgenes.
Effectiveness of strict vs. multiple use protected areas in reducing tropical forest fires: A global analysis using matching methods. Indigenous areas and multiple use are best.
The sudden emergence of pathogenicity in insect–fungus symbioses threatens naive forest ecosystems. It can happen anywhere, any time.