- ASTI says agricultural research investment in Africa is bearing fruit and needs to double.
- There’s a cheese revolution going on in America’s heartland.
- Meanwhile, the UK is worried about fake goat cheese.
- “Apparently, Californians like well-tanned sweetpotatoes.” Well of course they do.
- Good coffee AND conservation? I’ll take it.
- Soy AND conservation in Brazil? Well, not quite, but good news nonetheless.
- Cereal cultivation in Sudan pushed back several hundred years.
- What are the conditions for success in large-scale agricultural initiatives? You tell them.
- The history of crop improvement 101.
Brainfood: Pea spectroscopy, Phaseolus diversity, More beans, Brazilian rice, Trees in landscapes, German cherries, Appalachian apples, Sicilian sheep, Diverse livestock systems, Barley seed longevity, African wild veggies
- Using Fourier Transform Near-Infrared Spectroscopy For the Evaluation and Regional Analysis of Pea (Pisum sativum L.). Fancy maths reveals a low-protein content group, a high total polyphenol group and a high protein, starch and oil group in Chinese pea germplasm.
- Total phenolics, flavonoids, tannins and antioxidant activity of lima beans conserved in a Brazilian Genebank. No fancy maths used to figure out that they vary among accessions, but not necessarily only due to genetics. Actually, that goes for the previous one too.
- Potencial de uso de cultivares crioulas de feijoeiro no sistema de cultivo orgânico. Bean landraces do no worse than cultivars under organic conditions in Brazil.
- Evaluation of rice genotypes for sugarcane borer resistance using phenotypic methods and molecular markers. Resistant materials (a couple out of 34 tested) are genetically similar, and will now be used as parents in Brazilian improvement programme. No word on whether the results will be any good under organic conditions.
- Functional and phylogenetic diversity of scattered trees in an agricultural landscape: Implications for conservation. Brazil again. Scattered trees may not look as nice as closed forest, but they represent decent proportions of both its functional and taxonomic diversity.
- Physicochemical characterization of fruit quality traits in a German sour cherry collection. Some accessions are not only better, but more consistent, than commercial varieties. No word on to what extent they can be found scattered across the German countryside.
- Climate Change and Apple Diversity: Local Perceptions from Appalachian North Carolina. Heirloom apple growers are largely climate change deniers. That doesn’t make their orchards (no scattered trees for them) any less cool.
- Genome wide linkage disequilibrium and genetic structure in Sicilian dairy sheep breeds. Valle del Belice, Comisana and Pinzirita dairy sheep breeds are variable, though some more than others, yet they don’t overlap.
- Agricultural diversity to increase adaptive capacity and reduce vulnerability of livestock systems against weather variability – A farm-scale simulation study. Fancy maths show that more diverse livestock systems are better for ya. In France anyway. And that diversity doesn’t seem to include livestock diversity.
- Genome-wide association mapping and biochemical markers reveal that seed ageing and longevity are intricately affected by genetic background, developmental and environmental conditions in barley. Title pretty much says it all.
- Dietary contribution of Wild Edible Plants to women’s diets in the buffer zone around the Lama forest, Benin — an underutilized potential. Important sources of Cu and Fe, but even so not enough.
Nibbles: Chocolate, MAS, Cash crops, Medicinal plants, Rice domestication, Cat genome, Banana research, Artichoke history, Root vegetables, Diabetes data, eMonocot, Paris herbarium, Appleseed, Seed saving, Potato safety duplication, Seed atlas, Botanical Jurassic Park, Mapping urban fruit, Midwest road trip, Iraqi marshes, World Digital Library, World Parks Congress, Plant demography
- Ok here goes, there’s a week’s work of Nibbles we’ve got to catch up on.
- World running out of chocolate! Tell that to Cologne.
- Yeah well I prefer tea to cocoa.
- Greenpeace: “Smart breeding” will save us, not GMOs. Breeders: All breeding is smart.
- Guess the world’s biggest cash crop. Yeah, that one.
- Alas, it’s not included in the recent strategy for conserving medicinal plants. Not that it would need conserving.
- The domestication of the world’s biggest crop, period. Deconstructed. And if you want to drill down.
- And of the world’s biggest fruit.
- And of the world’s biggest pet.
- And of the world’s most difficult to eat vegetable.
- Root “vegetables” made simple. Because winter.
- And why you must eat your veggies, including the difficult ones.
- Videos on Kew’s monocot database and on the renovation of another famous herbarium.
- The real Johnny Appleseed.
- But you too can save seeds, just like Johnny.
- But don’t forget to safety duplicate, like CIP has done, at Embrapa.
- And this shows you what those seeds can look like.
- You don’t necessarily need seeds to save plants, though.
- Mapping fallen fruit. Because we can.
- Road trip!
- Boat trip!
- Selected Techniques in the Art of Agriculture. From French to Turkish to Arabic. One of many nifty agriculture-related resources in the World Digital Library.
- Oh yeah, the IUCN World Parks Congress has been on and its all over the intertubes. Including with neat visualizations, natch.
- How many of the species in the COMPADRE database of plant demography information are in protected areas? How many are crop wild relatives? I need an intern.
Nibbles: Prof Brian Cox is cool, GRAIN vs Gates, Fragaria law suit, Central Asian fruits, Ecoagriculture, Forage breeding risk, WPC 2014, Nutrition trifecta, MSB funding, European seedsters support IT
- Final Human Universe episode features Svalbard Global seed Vault.
- GRAIN objects to where Gates Foundation spends its money. Nobody much cares.
- Latest on that UC Davis strawberry breeding programme debacle.
- Yes, bears do shit (apple seeds) in the woods. And some context.
- A conference for the hippy in all of us.
- The dark side of pasture breeding. Super-weed, I am your father!
- World Parks Congress on soon too.
- No access to healthy food? Use your mobile! Watch a video! Grow traditional crops!
- Toyota funds the Millennium Seed Bank.
- ESA supports the ITPGRFA. Speak Up For Seed!
Nibbles: Biological collections, ICT & food security, Pisco battles, Rabbit stew, Afghan silk, ILRI @40, Silicon Valley & livestock, Trade & deforestation, Nexus shmexus, Landscape analyzed, Native potatoes, Botanical herb garden, Plant crime, Cornbread & other indigenous foods, Climate smart ag, Caterpillar fungus, Reindeer poop virus, Rice breeder vid
- Biological collections under pressure.
- And mobile phones probably wont help. Much.
- Chilean pisco? Really?
- The end of cooking?
- Sericulture on the Silk Road.
- ILRI is 40, did we say? Not sure what they do on sericulture. No doubt somebody there will tell us. They’re social networking machines over there.
- Watch out, ILRI, Silicon Valley is coming for ya.
- One of the reasons why we need livestock research: deforestation.
- I like any article with the word nexus in the title.
- The landscape approach meta-analyzed to within an inch of its life. Bottom line: it’s the women, stupid!
- The power of the people’s potatoes.
- A secret herb garden revealed. I hope they install CCTV.
- Kana’tarokhónwe. Yep, clickbait, but worth it, trust me. And then scale the thing up.
- How to do climate-smart agriculture in Latin America and the Caribbean, country by country.
- Oh no, yet another article on that Himalayan Viagra caterpillar fungus thingy.
- Boffins resurrect 700-year-old fungus from reindeer crap.
- Indian rice breeders talk about their cool new basmati.