- You know you want to try black sapote.
- Podcast on how to save coffee. And it probably needs it.
- Once we’ve saved the cultivated species, maybe we should save it in the wild as well?
- If not, there are other species, other drugs, I guess. No, really.
- Indigenous fire management in Australia.
- Everything you need on lupins. You’re welcome.
- Is anyone collecting endophytes? Or microalgae for that matter?
- Marvellous interactive atlas of the botanical collecting of Richard Evans Schultes in the Amazon.
- Wine yeasts are way inbred. Which can’t be altogether good.
- Watermelons need flower diversity.
- One does feel for climate-stupid varieties.
Another threatened Russian fruit collection
…a commission ordered that the land of the academy be transitioned for the destruction of educational buildings and living, agricultural fields, in order to establish the new development and construction of multi-level residential buildings.
Sound familiar? No, not Pavlovsk, but another famous Russian agricultural icon, Moscow’s Timiryazev Agricultural Academy.
…part of the land, Michurin’s orchard, was founded in 1939 and includes an extensive collection of fruit and berry biodiversity. The orchard is dedicated to the protection of unique plant varieties, which could not be transplanted without causing a dramatic loss. Nearly 200 apple varieties and 167 varieties of pears still flourish on this parcel. Apart from the historic and educational value of the land, it is also a national heritage, as granted by President Medvedev in 2008.
There’s a petition. Remember: pressure worked with Pavlovsk.
Brainfood: African greens, Latin American pigs, Japanese fruits, Cassava selection, Sunflower breeding, Angolan vegetables, Californian backyard maize, Mesoamerican priorities, Genetic stocks
- Molecular Markers for Genetic Diversity Studies in African Leafy Vegetables. Not surprisingly, only 3% of 33 studies since 1998 are on Cleome, more than half on cowpea. And a quarter used RAPDs. Orphan crops, anyone? These one don’t even get a table summarizing and comparing findings across species.
- Conservation priorities of Iberoamerican pig breeds and their ancestors based on microsatellite information. Depending on how you crunch the genetic numbers, Iberoamerican pig breeds could conceivably best be looked after by conserving their ancestral Iberian pig breeds. But it’s not just about the genetics, is it?
- Native fruit tree genetic resources in Japan. Only a Castanea was domesticated in pre-modern times, and they’re all endangered in post-modern times.
- Perceptual selection and the unconscious selection of ‘volunteer’ seedlings in clonally propagated crops: an example with African cassava (Manihot esculenta Crantz) using ethnobotany and population genetics. It’s seedlings that look most like existing varieties that farmers try to keep.
- Changes in sunflower breeding over the last fifty years. From yield under optimal conditions to disease resistance, from oil quantity to quality. But international collaboration still needed.
- Angolan vegetable crops have unique genotypes of potential value for future breeding programmes. Unique material documented, and hopefully made available for use.
- Maize Germplasm Conservation in Southern California’s Urban Gardens: Introduced Diversity Beyond ex situ and in situ Management. Migrants bring along their crops.
- An assessment of the conservation status of Mesoamerican crop species and their wild relatives in light of climate change. Priority areas for on farm and in situ conservation don’t by and large coincide with protected areas.
- A Proposal Regarding Best Practices for Validating the Identity of Genetic Stocks and the Effects of Genetic Variants. Just do it.
Oil lamp at the end of the tunnel?
Not a short-term solution, clearly, but it might be worthwhile starting to screen the larger collections, surely.
That’s what we said almost a year ago when the bacterium Xylella started wreaking havoc in the olive groves of Puglia, the heel of Italy. Well, it’s not a large collections of olives that’s been screened, but there are glimmers of hope in the recent report of an ongoing study looking at the results of both artificial inoculation and natural infection. Here’s the guy in charge, Giuseppe Stancanelli, as quoted by the BBC:
“…some varieties have shown some tolerance. They grow in infected orchards but do not show strong symptoms, as seen in more susceptible varieties. They are still infected by the inoculation but this infection is much slower so it takes longer for the infection to spread, and the concentration of the bacterium in the plant is much lower. This shows the potential for different responses (to the pathogen) in different varieties.”
It’s early days yet, and only about 10 varieties were looked at, but Leccino, for example, sounds like it might be showing promise. That’s a very common and widespread cultivar, so olive cultivation in a large part of Italy may well survive ok should the disease spread. Well, until the next disease, that is.
Nibbles: Coffee taxonomy, Agarwood trade, Apios promotion, Dog species concept, Seed collecting, Kudzu control, ICARDA chickpeas, Ancient maize beer, Quinoa landscapes, History of domestication, Breeding mistakes, EU breeding value, Priming, Wild flower ecotypes, Vitellaria use
- Coffee botany resources.
- Uncovering the illegal agarwood trade.
- Developing the potato bean. First step: find a new name.
- Dog taxonomy explained.
- Project Baseline sets a, ahem, baseline, for studying plant diversity under climate change.
- Ok, random shout-out for my niece Francesca’s work on kudzu bug natural control. Because I can. And she’s fabulous.
- Blooming chickpeas!
- The inhabitants of Casas Grandes brewed maize beer in the 14th century. Well of course they did.
- Peruvian quinoa landscapes have a name: aynokas.
- Crop domestication 101.
- Where (commercial) breeders go wrong.
- Presumably none of above mistakes are made by EU plant breeding companies.
- Stimulating plant defences for faster response to pest and disease attack.
- Germany told to go for local meadow seeds.
- Use of shea butter trees goes way back.