- Plantwise says you can manage banana xanthomonas wilt; so no need for GMOs?
- DG of Bioversity says “adopt transgenic crops carefully and on a case to case basis”.
- “You can contribute to the revision of quinoa descriptors”. Is there one for level of threat to indigenous people?
- Poor US farmers. “Despite last year’s drought, net farm income in US … will be highest since 1973.” h/t Tom.
- “WIPO Instrument on genetic resources and traditional knowledge should reflect developments in international law and policy relating to indigenous peoples.” Course it should.
- “[N]otable gains in dietary diversity and increased child health in hundreds of farm communities of Northern Malawi.” Any causal link?
- Roger Leakey talks agroforestry.
- Rwanda saves seeds.
Nibbles: Farm size, Evidence-based policy, Priority sites, Tibetan grasslands, Sustainable intensification, Lipid improvement, Medicinal plants, Local fish, Wheat access, Purple yam,
- Small is beautiful. No, wait… And more from where that came, ahem, from.
- Evidence? We don’t need no stinking evidence.
- CIAT blogs about a workshop about a model about prioritization about populations about breeding about beans. While its peach palm thing gets picked up.
- Tibetan grasslands feel the heat. Not entirely certain why ICRAF should care, but it’s good to know.
- Peaches compatible with maize in Bolivian agrobiodiversity hotspot. Not nearly enough info in this release, will need to chase it up. And here it is.
- Rothamstead engineers lipids. But it’s for better nutrition, so that’s ok.
- Trad med in RSA.
- Fish as an ingredient of complementary foods. Nutritious, I’m sure, but I suspect Crocodile Dundee’s comment on the iguana applies.
- US wheat breeders worried about access. Maybe if the country ratified the ITPGRFA?
- Filipinos really like purple sweets, apparently. Here are some made of purple yam, ube, Dioscorea alata, call it what you will.
Nibbles: Drought, Forestry, Sustainable intensification, Horta, Tomatoes, Indian landraces, Seed Library, Wartime farming, EU legislation
- Is it too early to be talking about drought in the US?
- Or about collaborations between forestry and agriculture?
- How about the sustainable intensification of African agriculture?
- Enough of these rhetorical question, I hear you cry. Give us information! About wild greens on Crete.
- Or one person’s view of two remarkable tomatoes.
- Or how farmers in India seek – and find – seeds of older and traditional varieties.
- In Basalt, Colorado, you just pop into your local library. Rock on.
- In Toronto, Ontario, you watch TV to learn how your ex-overlords in Britain doubled food production in a few short growing seasons.
- And in Europe? You’re grateful to have received the same reply to your concerns about agricultural biodiversity as everyone else who shares those concerns.
Brainfood: Vitamin C, Nutrition and health, European protected areas, Coffea diversity, Climate change modelling, Soil microbes, Niche modelling, Conflict, Human modified landscapes, Horse diversity, Pigeon diversity
- The challenge of increasing vitamin C content in plant foods. Surely not just because it is challenging?
- Health economics and nutrition: a review of published evidence. “[A]pproaches and methodologies are sometimes ad hoc in nature and vary widely in quality.” Ain’t that always the way.
- European protected areas: Past, present and future. The future will need to be different from the past.
- Genetic structure and diversity of coffee (Coffea) across Africa and the Indian Ocean islands revealed using microsatellites. Good correspondence with morphological species. Madagascar a diversity hotspot.
- Special Issue of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology on Agricultural prediction using climate model ensembles. There’s more than one way to identify a potential adaptation hotspot. Well that’s reassuring. Not.
- Changes in soil microbial functional diversity under different vegetation restoration patterns for Hulunbeier Sandy Land. Restoring desertified grassland led to more soil microbial diversity. Which is good because…?
- A review of composition studies of Cameroon traditional dishes: Macronutrients and minerals. 117 of them. Good for Fe, Zn, Mg.
- Essential elements of discourse for advancing the modelling of species’ current and potential distributions. There’s lots of methods, all quite different, embrace the diversity.
- Understanding and managing conservation conflicts. Build up an evidence base, and employ some social scientists to explain it.
- On the hope for biodiversity-friendly tropical landscapes. In the end, it’s about the agriculture. In more ways than one.
- Genetic Diversity in the Modern Horse Illustrated from Genome-Wide SNP Data. High maternal, low paternal during domestication. Low diversity breeds the ones you’d expect. Similar breeds the ones you’d expect.
- Genomic Diversity and Evolution of the Head Crest in the Rock Pigeon. Middle Eastern origins, Darwin vindicated. Again.
Nibbles: GUIDs, Cajanus molecular breeding, Slash-and-burn, Rust return, Genomics talkshop, Mobile, Traditional knowledge
- Should global unique identifiers (GUIDs) refer to digital records or physical objects? Not sure I’ve ever said anything quite so geeky.
- ICRISAT to use molecules to breed pigeonpeas.
- Small Amazon farmers not the enemy after all.
- Coffee rust never sleeps. Hopefully neither do coffee breeders.
- Put 4-24 March in your diary. What do you mean why. FAO Biotechnology Forum e-mail conference on “Current and future impacts of genomics for the crop, forestry, livestock, fishery and agro-industry sectors in developing countries.” That’s why.
- Get your mobile data collection solution here.
- “Traditional farming hold all the aces.” And yet it must be protected with all kinds of international treaties.