Fruits and nuts

July 8, 2015May 31, 2024

Rational botanical gardens

The 7th European Botanic Gardens Congress is on this week, in Paris. You can follow it in all the usual ways, or most of them anyway. I was struck by this tweet from the opening day, of a slide from the presentation by new BGCI director Paul Smith. Sounds a lot like what we’re trying to do with crop genebanks around the world too.

La importancia de los #jardines #botánicos #EurogardVII by Smith Paul pic.twitter.com/ULQanwdBCM

— Aso.AmigosConcepcion (@AAJBHC) July 6, 2015

There’s a botanical garden that is conserving one crop almost single-handedly, but Diane Ragone, who’s in charge of the the National Tropical Botanical Garden and its breadfruit collection, is at a different, and I suspect more entertaining, conference in Trinidad.

LATER: Paul’s vision is more fully set out here.

July 5, 2015July 8, 2015

The phylogeny of Czech hops

Long breeding work aimed at fine aroma hops results in high quality aroma aspects, which are used to produce the best beer. Czech hops are the security of the highest brewing quality in many breweries all over the world. Saaz hops are considered as the standard of high brewing quality not only in Czech Republic but in other countries as well. Saaz hops are a very important raw material for the best quality beer. All Czech hop varieties, which have been developed recently, have in their origin Saaz and therefore they show excellent brewing characteristics.

You had me at beer.

July 3, 2015July 3, 2015

Nibbles: Monocultures redux, Seedless watermelons, Red kiwifruit, Herbaria problems, Forest foods, Sorghum beer, SIRGEALC, Chinese veggies, Organic tomatoes, Andean women, Rise origins, Fermentation

Deploy your cover crop diversity in time rather than space. But deploy it.
Triploid goodness.
Searching for a red kiwi.
Herbaria on the rack.
Let them eat non-timber forest products.
Sorghum spurts in Kenya. Because beer.
Sign up for SIRGEALC 10.
Knowing your 菠菜 from your 西洋菜.
400 tomato varieties. No pesticides. No water. No problem.
Women are conserving Andean crops. Sure, though with some occasional help from genebanks.
The Rice Origins Wars continue.
Sauerkraut changed the world.

June 29, 2015June 23, 2015

Brainfood: Nigerian fruit & veg, South African veggies, Veggies in home gardens, Standardizing phenotyping, Potato diversity, Triploid chamomile, Chocolate chip, Fungi & oils, Melon diversity, CC and grasslands

Promoting food security and enhancing Nigeria’s small farmers’ income through value-added processing of lesser-known and under-utilized indigenous fruits and vegetables. It’s the infrastructure, stupid.
The role of wild vegetables in household food security in South Africa: A review. No, it’s the information, stupid.
Indigenous wild food plants in home gardens: improving health and income — with the assistance of agricultural extension. Nope, it’s the extension, stupid.
Towards recommendations for metadata and data handling in plant phenotyping. It’s the standardization, stupid.
Cytoplasmic diversity in potato breeding: case study from the International Potato Center. It’s a genetic bottleneck, stupid.
Towards breeding of triploid chamomile (Matricaria recutita L.) — Ploidy variation within German chamomile of various origins. It’s the triploids, stupid.
Making a chocolate chip: development and evaluation of a 6K SNP array for Theobroma cacao. Oh, very clever, now everybody and their uncle will be able to breed cacao, stupid.
Arbuscular mycorrhiza differentially affects synthesis of essential oils in coriander and dill. It’s not just genetics, stupid.
Comparative transcriptional profiling analysis of developing melon (Cucumis melo L.) fruit from climacteric and non-climacteric varieties. It’s the sugar metabolism, stupid.
Climate-driven diversity loss in a grassland community. It’s the increasing aridity, stupid.

June 23, 2015June 23, 2015

Nibbles: Pope, CGIAR, Agroecology, ABS, Food shortage, World flora, Nutella, Bees, GMOs, CC & wheat, CC & legumes, EU satellite, Seed saving, Wheat breeding, Strawberry breeding, Adopt-a-crop, Organic tea, Malagasy yams, Seed app, Ebola seeds, Sorghum spoons

And we’re back! While we were away…

…the Pope pontificated on climate change and GMOs, among other things.
And so did the CGIAR.
Boffins in the UK suggested that agroecology might be important to sustainable intensification. No word on whether the CGIAR is listening.
Bioversity asked for contributions on whether ABS can support farmers. No word on whether anyone is listening.
And The Economist asked: who cares, anyway?
Google said it would help botanists catalogue all plants.
Nutella was bad, and then ok again.
Bees were again found to be important to agriculture, but not all bees.
The pros and cons of GMOs were trotted out again. And again.
Climate change was blamed for smaller loaves of bread. Which as far as I can tell might not be a totally bad thing.
And for the need to grow drought-resistant legumes.
The EU launched a satellite to monitor crops.
Meanwhile, people just got on with it, in their own, sometimes weird, way…
…breeding wheat. Even organic wheat. Even perennial. Even in Scotland.
…breeding strawberries. Even with wild relatives.
…or just adopting the raw materials of breeding.
Growing organic tea in China.
Conserving yams in Madagascar.
Trying to find the appropriate seeds to grow in Kenya.
And giving probably inappropriate seeds to Ebola-hit farmers.
Which they can now eat using sorghum spoons.