- The quest for Big Mike. No, not Stormy Daniels’ latest. It’s a banana.
- Ok, I’m going to resist the temptation of making the obvious follow-up joke in connection with this gallery of beautiful chickens.
- Who needs chickens when you have pigeons. Ah, no, these are pigeonpeas.
- Australia’s answer to the potato. Unclear what the question was.
- Australia’s answer to frost-sensitive wheat: look in genebanks for resistant stuff.
- The mother of all avocados. Kind of a Hass-been, though.
- Avocado shmavocado, says India.
- Are you not entertained? Have some popcorn!
- And mustard for that hotdog. You know, like Mesolithic people did.
- History of plant collecting double feature: Bradby Blake & Frank N. Meyer.
- Listen to Jeremy on how grain made its way up the Thames.
- A lot of grain also makes its way to Ft Collins. See what I did there?
- Taro whiskey: I’ll drink to that.
- Kenyan coffee to finish things off? Maybe not for long.
Brainfood: Red List, Dormancy variation, Conservation priorities, Intensification, Buckwheat book, Wild barley, Sugarcane diversity, Pollinator diversity, Red Listing, Oily camellia
- The Value of the IUCN Red List for Business Decision-Making. It’s actually a two-way street.
- Phylogeny and source climate impact seed dormancy and germination of restoration-relevant forb species. Significant variation among population for 7 out of 8 species tested.
- An integrated framework to identify wildlife populations under threat from climate change. Brings together exposure to change, sensitivity to change and range shift potential to prioritize among 10 bat populations. Maybe more widely applicable.
- Winners and losers of national and global efforts to reconcile agricultural intensification and biodiversity conservation. Agricultural intensification leads to significant threats to vertebrate diversity, most of which can however be avoided by international cooperation; that being unlikely, national level optimization in 10 countries is next best.
- Buckwheat Germplasm in the World. Its time will surely come.
- Geographical and environmental determinants of the genetic structure of wild barley in southeastern Anatolia. More diverse, and different from the domesticate, with distinct W and E groups, and 4 loci possibly responsible for abiotic adaptation.
- Pedigree, marker recruitment, and genetic diversity of modern sugarcane cultivars in China and the United States. Not much diversity, especially in China.
- Species turnover promotes the importance of bee diversity for crop pollination at regional scales. Pollinator diversity is even more important than we thought.
- Comparing and contrasting threat assessments of plant species at the global and sub-global level. Most of the almost 90,000 assessments come from regional efforts, not global.
- Determination of Camellia oleifera Abel. Germplasm Resources of Genetic Diversity in China using ISSR Markers. Hunan is the place for diversity of this woody oil crop I never heard of.
European forest conservationists move to Bonn
I’m not sure if it’s been formally announced, but the Secretariat of the European Forest Genetic Resources Programme has moved to Bonn. I know because they’re hosted by the European Forestry Institute just a floor below the offices of the Global Crop Diversity Trust where I work. Among other things, EUFORGEN manages the European Information System on Forest Genetic Resources, which has produced cool distribution maps and other resources, including of some species that are crop wild relatives. Just for a laugh, I’ve downloaded their shapefile for Prunus avium and mashed that up with what little there is in Genesys that’s geo-referenced (click on it to see it better).
That’s interestingly complementary to the map of in situ and ex situ conservation units in EUFGIS.
We should really work to have the two systems talk to each other.
Anyway, welcome to Bonn, Michele and Ewa.
Nibbles: Svalbard, Irish Seed Savers Association podcast, Heirloom tomatoes, Rice genomes, Avocado history, 3D seeds, Agroforestry, Canarium development, IK, Indian nutrition, Biofortification, Salvia, Biorepositories best practices, Neurolathyrism
- The Smallholder on Svalbard. Martha unavailable for comment.
- Jeremy’s latest bit of blarney.
- Tasty toms.
- A bunch more rice genomes. Wait, didn’t we Brainfood this? Of course we did, ages ago.
- Avocado tattoos?
- 3D seeds. So beautiful, so useless.
- Trees as technology.
- Like galip nut, for instance.
- My indigenous knowledge is your climate change adaptation.
- Maharashtra: Malnutrition down, high blood pressure up.
- Could probably still do with some biofortification.
- The botany of chia.
- ISBER Best Practices for biological repositories: The Webinar.
- Meet ODAP.
Nibbles: African pollinators, Wild wheat, Brazilian meet, Bamboo meet, Old seeds, Rice diversity, 5282, Frozen grapes
- Call for proposals on African pollinator informatics.
- The Linnean Society puts “Wheat Taxonomy: the legacy of John Percival” online. Heroes all.
- The Brazilian genetic resources congress gets a Facebook page.
- There’s also a bamboo and rattan congress coming up.
- A time capsule is dug up in Canada, and it’s got seeds!
- Seeking rice SNPs? Use snp-seek.
- What links the Dutch Easy India Company with a measles outbreak in the US? The answer will probably not surprise you.
- We really need some new wine grape cultivars. I mean REALLY new.