Forests & trees

Nibbles: Brazil flora & urban ag, Telling species apart, Canary seed for humans, Training breeders, Solitary bees, Tajik protected area, Rennell Island, Nordic grubs, Belize TV

Brazil’s flora moves online. And its agriculture into its favelas.
Taxonomy 101.
Wish the people who wrote this press release on “canary seed” had taken a taxonomy course. It’s Phalaris canariensis, it turns out.
African breeders to be trained at UCDavis. Ok, but what about WACCI? What’s going on? Cornell-Davis smackdown?
Further proof, if any were needed, of the importance of wild bees.
Tajikistan gets its first World Heritage Site. Includes most of the Pamirs, so surely a whole lot of agricultural biodiversity, both wild and cultivated, plant and animal. Not that that was the prime mover for protection, probably.
Incidentally, there’s a list of World Heritage Sites in danger, and it includes Rennell Island in the Solomons. The reason I bring it up is that it is famous for a local coconut variety. Hope that’s not endangered!
Nordic Food Lab gets money to experiment with cooking insects.
Belize TV looks to agrobiodiversity to cope with climate change.

If you can map neglected diseases by phone, can you map neglected crops? I bet you can.
It’s the turn of Samoans to be chided for not eating enough leafy greens.
I had no idea AfricaRice had a podcast.
Now we gotta worry about G&T too? Enough, already.
Video on the wild yams of Sri Lanka. Not just yams, though, by the look of it.
100 recipes to understand the history of food? Count me in.
More on the Polymotu Concept from our friends at SPC. Great gig if you can get it.

A toolkit to help indigenous communities do conservation. Should they need one.
On the other hand… Half of Japan’s endangered species hotspots are found in satoyama, which are under pressure. Compare and contrast with rice farming in Thailand.
Learn all about some medicinal plants of the Amazon, minus their scientific names. Not including runa tea. Lots of other opportunities out there, though.
Maybe even including oysters.
Jeremy no doubt to feast on the mollusc after spilling the beans on the EU seed regulations at the Seed Savers jamboree.
Wonder what Calestous Juma thinks of those regulations.
But I bet he (and his father, who introduced the crop to his region of Kenya) would like this cassava website to rule them all.
The Volcani Institute‘s gifts to the world…
…probably include new strawberries, but not this one.
Scientists straining, failing to find plant to meaningfully compare to the giant panda.
Bioversity does up its iButtons.
And gets a namecheck in a paean to the FAO Commission on GRFA on its 30th birthday. All this FAO stuff is because its Conference is on this week. I don’t suppose any of it will be more important than Amartya Sen’s speech.

Diversity and heritability of the maize rhizosphere microbiome under field conditions. There’s a lot of it, but only measured in inbreds so far. One wonders about landraces.
The Vulnerability of Biodiversity to Rapid Climate Change. We should focus on increasing the adaptive capacity of species and ecosystems, but predictions are difficult, especially about the future.
The Capsella rubella genome and the genomic consequences of rapid mating system evolution. Sex is better with two.
Progress Toward Understanding Heterosis in Crop Plants & Genomic and epigenetic insights into the molecular bases of heterosis. It’s the allelic interactions, stupid. Now to make use of this.
Deforestation in an African biodiversity hotspot: Extent, variation and the effectiveness of protected areas. Protected areas have worked for the evergreen forest, but don’t forget the miombo! Would be intersting to know what this all means for crop wild relatives.
Comprehensive genotyping of the USA national maize inbred seed bank. Ladies and gentlemen, I have seen the future of genebanks.

Bhogpur farmer Subash Chander Misra gets Plant Genome Savior Farmer award 2012 for pear conservation.
While a whole farming system gets protected in Kerala.
Hope it doesn’t go the way of protected areas in Guatemala. Maybe they need old mobile phones. Or a better roads or urban expansion dataset. Or maybe just their own maps.
UK government puts money where mouth is with grant to HarvestPlus. For things like this from ICRISAT. And have you seen the BBC slideshow?
Funnily enough, nobody talking about guinea pigs as a solution for malnutrition.
How Australian agriculture improved its water use efficiency. Clue: it’s not one thing. Good to be reminded, yet again, that’s it’s not necessarily always and only about the diversity. Keeps us centred.
Bees get a bank?
The de-extinction debate rumbles on. Centred, did someone say?