Forests & trees – Page 69 – Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

March 14, 2015March 15, 2015

Nibbles: Old pretzel, Wine podcast, Nordic podcast, Tea history, Pacific pests app, Eating bugs, Chicken history, African superfoods, Gender, Access to seeds, Sorghum beer, Making mead, Cumin, Bolivian school meals, MLN, Hidden hunger conference, CIP & IK, Potato Park, CIP’s Sawyer, Saving wheat, Resettlement, Sustainable cacao, Deforestation map, Language map

Again, sorry for slow blogging last week. Work, you know. Here we play catch-up.

While we were away, we reached 6000 Twitter followers! Thanks, everyone!
And Germans found a 250-year-old pretzel. Wait, you can get those at Kamps every day though. (Bonn inside joke.)
Oh, and Jeremy talked to a wine expert about how to become a wine expert.
But he has competition from the Nordic Food Lab now. What are you waiting for, subscribe to both!
Since we’re on podcasts, Laszlo Montgomery’s monumental ten-part blockbuster on the history of tea in China recently came to a close.
Talking of iTunes, ver. 2 of the Pacific Pest and Pathogens app is out.
Don’t want to get into the whole eating insects thing? Feed them to your chickens instead.
There’s even an infographic about that now.
But what will it do to the poor old chicken?
Cooking up some African superfoods. No insects (or chickens) were harmed in the making of this article.
Yeah but who will be doing the cooking?
And where to get the seeds? Maybe African Seed Access Index will help, though I somehow doubt it. At least for baobab.
Oh well, there’s always beer I guess. (Though even that you can’t take for granted these days.)
Or mead, at a pinch.
I bet the Sumerians put a pinch of cumin in their beer. And mead.
What about Latin America superfoods, though? Bolivians put them in their school meals, that’s what.
Maize was a Latin American superfood once. Having trouble in Africa now, though.
Wait, what, there was a 2nd International Congress on Hidden Hunger at the University of Hohenheim last week? And all I got was this t-shirt? Any superfoods on the menu there, I wonder?
CIP on how it deals with traditional knowledge.
For example at the Potato Park. Where I’ll be next week, incidentally. Stay tuned… But again, I rather fear that blogging will be on the light side next week.
CIP has come a long way since its first DG, Dr Richard L. Sawyer, who sadly just passed away.
Modelling the effects of climate change on wheat. Again. Can never have enough data. Anyway, wild relatives the answer?
Mongolian nomads settle down. And not in a good way.
There’s more to sustainable cacao than productivity. Fortunately, some people are on that. Meanwhile, at the other end of the poverty spectrum…
Don’t think I’ve ever seen a nerdy interactive map like Global Forest Watch go mainstream. Hope for us all. Mash it up with this next?

March 9, 2015March 14, 2015

Brainfood: Biodiversity and health, Medieval cattle, African livestock sustainability, Filipino rice, Coffee breeding, Land-sparing conundrum, Scrapie resistant goats, Ass-like equid evolution, GS in livestock breeding, Eucalypt diversity & drought, Ecosystem services of organic ag

Relationships between agrobiodiversity, dietary diversity and nutritional status in Tanzania. It’s really complicated.
Microsatellite genotyping of medieval cattle from central Italy suggests an old origin of Chianina and Romagnola cattle. DNA from a couple of cattle breeds from central Italy shows remarkable similarities with that from thousand-old bones from an archaeological site in the same area.
Strategies and approaches to sustainable livestock production in Sub Saharan Africa. It will depend on women.
Strategies and initiatives on rice genetic resources conservation and research for climate change adaptation. Among the 1506 traditional rice varieties in the Philippines genebank are 3 which could be drought tolerant and 9 collected from really saline areas. They’re being sequenced for gene discovery.
Next generation variety development for sustainable production of arabica coffee (Coffea arabica L.): a review. Local breeding, plus international networking.
Why biodiversity declines as protected areas increase: the effect of the power of governance regimes on sustainable landscapes. Modelling shows land-sharing may outperform land-sparing in the long run. Most interesting consequence of the insights derived is that perhaps protected areas should be placed near agricultural frontiers rather than where biodiversity or cost-effectiveness highest.
Biodiversity and selection for scrapie resistance in goats: genetic polymorphism in “Girgentana” breed in Sicily, Italy. Resistance gene more common in this weird breed than in the one that’s usually used in breeding.
Reassessing the evolutionary history of ass-like equids: Insights from patterns of genetic variation in contemporary extant populations. I urge you to read the abstract yourselves and marvel at the author’ success in using the word ass-like the maximum possible number of times.
Opinion paper: emerging markets, emerging strategies under the genomic revolution. Genomic selection is an organizational revolution as much as a technological one. At least in animal breeding.
Genetic diversity of Eucalyptus camaldulensis Dehnh. following population decline in response to drought and altered hydrological regime. It stayed the same, I guess because of gene flow.
Significance and value of non-traded ecosystem services on farmland. Value of biological control of pests and nitrogen mineralisation provided by organic agriculture of peas, beans, barley and wheat (extrapolated from 20 fields in NZ to whole of temperate zone) was greater than global costs of insecticides and fertilizers, even if only 10% of global arable area was converted to organic.

March 8, 2015March 8, 2015

Nibbles: Berlin blueberries, Science hubris, Purple tea, Soil, Bushmeat, Maize breeding, Ukranian salo

Must get myself a blueberry comb come next autumn.
What do scientists do in response to GMO fears? “Trust us.”
Purple tea in Kenya? Must look out for it.
Real farmers do it on the soil.
Bushmeat can be good for you.
Private sector uses public sector genebank. You didn’t build that.
“Salo is when nobody fucks with you and you’ve got a bit of money.”

March 5, 2015March 5, 2015

Nibbles: Citrus disease, Forests & women, Green Revolution trifecta, Lost apples, PNG & ITPGRFA, Leafy greens, Cassava development, Maize evolution vid

Getting to grips with citrus greening.
The fabulous church forests of Ethiopia. But are women involved?
Three articles on why the African Green Revolution won’t be like the Asian one.
Whatever happened to the Esopus Spitzenburg?
Papua New Guinea ratifies the ITPGRFA.
African indigenous vegetables for development. Hey, I’m doing my part.
Cassava is naturally climate-smart, but yields still not rising fast enough.
Great video on the origin of maize.

March 2, 2015March 2, 2015

Brainfood: Identifying accessions, Evaluating yeasts, Using CWR, Wild grapes, Bushmeat and nutrition, Rice evaluation, Tomato characterization, Sugarcane CWR, Nordic livestock, Conservation optimization, Moringa development, Albanian olives

High-throughput genotyping for species identification and diversity assessment in germplasm collections.. 9% of random Brassicaceae samples from Australian Grains Genebank misidentified to species, with some interspecific hybrids.
Methodology for enabling high-throughput simultaneous saccharification and fermentation screening of yeast using solid biomass as a substrate. Everything is now, now, now these days.
Utilization of wild relatives of wheat, barley, maize and oat in developing abiotic and biotic stress tolerant new varieties. Useful summary table at the end.
Patterns of SNP distribution provide a molecular basis for high genetic diversity and genetic differentiation in Vitis species. Different grape species are really different.
Disentangling the relative effects of bushmeat availability on human nutrition in central Africa. Both rational use of some wild mammals for nutrition, and conservation of more vulnerable species, are possible, though in different places.
Blast Resistant Genes Distribution and Resistance Reaction to Blast in Korean Landraces of Rice (Oryza sativa L.). Conventional evaluation of landraces is useless; you really need to look at the genes.
Characterization of a collection of local varieties of tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) using conventional descriptors and the high-throughput phenomics tool Tomato Analyzer. Brave new world.
Phylogenetic analysis of Saccharum s.l. (Poaceae; Andropogoneae), with emphasis on the circumscription of the South American species. Allopolyploid, with 2 species belonging in a different genus.
Utilization of farm animal genetic resources in a changing agro-ecological environment in the Nordic countries. Need to phenotype and genotype everything. Now where have I heard that before?
Multi-objective optimization for plant germplasm collection conservation of genetic resources based on molecular variability. Lots of data plus fancy maths can tell you which individuals you should add to an ex situ collection to maximize conserved diversity.
Actual and Potential Applications of Moringa stenopetala, Underutilized Indigenous Vegetable of Southern Ethiopia: A Review. Potential as a source of drugs, but you need to learn to grow it.
Olive in the story and art in Albania. There are old olive trees around castles.