- Agriculture and the SDGs in one nice infographic thingy.
- Seeds: The Book.
- Seeds like millets?
- Those medievals really knew how to eat.
- An obsessive botanist? Whatever next.
- Deconstructing chocolate, one gene at a time.
- Sake 101. And for a more in-depth look…
- Joseph Simcox, self-described “Internationally Renowned World Food Plant Resource Authority” takes you “on a World Adventure to learn about little known edible plants!” On Facebook.
- A journey into the heart of CIMMYT. They’ll even screen your maize for you.
- The people’s breeder.
- Tracing wine to its source: Georgia.
- Harvesting cinnamon. With video goodness.
- FAO unleashes its mighty comms machine on another poor neglected crop: yam bean. Not many people hurt.
- Watch out jackfruit, you’re probably next.
- Or maybe saskatoon berries (Amelanchier alnifolia).
Nibbles: Svalbard double, AgAtlas upgrade, Ornamental database, Wild apples, Genetic garden, Sandalwood trade, Amazon dams, Body bacteria, ICRISAT blog, African greens, Aquatic camel, Mujer empowerment
More of a proper catch-up Nibbles later, but these should hold you for a while.
- Le Figaro goes to Svalbard.
- But Wired goes into much more depth on the tragic situation in Syria.
- Many AgAtlas pages now include interactive mapping and data download, eg AEZ. About time :)
- Looking for information on varieties of ornamental plants? Look no further.
- Diversity in wild European apples: past, present and future.
- Genetic garden opens in Bangalore.
- The perils of sandalwood smuggling.
- Dam the Amazon, full speed ahead! What will happen to all that human body bacteria diversity?
- ICRISAT’s new DG has a blog. Looking forward to his first foray into the genebank.
- Lots of stuff on African traditional veggies in AVRDS’s latest newsletter.
- The swimming camels of Gujarat get protection. I’d pay money to see them, I really would.
- Patagonian women farmers are doing it for themselves, at last.
Brainfood: Resilience and diversity, Cold tolerant rice, Old baobabs, VIR, Local adaptation, Prunus phylogeny, Bactris mating, Land use change, Wheat landraces, Amazonian agrobiodiversity
- Does Plant Species Richness Guarantee the Resilience of Local Medical Systems? A Perspective from Utilitarian Redundancy. It depends on how knowledge is distributed.
- COLD1 Confers Chilling Tolerance in Rice. From a wild relative.
- Searching for the Oldest Baobab of Madagascar: Radiocarbon Investigation of Large Adansonia rubrostipa Trees. 1,600 years seems to be the record.
- Genetic resources of cultivated plants as the basis for Russia’s food and environmental security. VIR needs Roubles 425 million a year ($14.3 million).
- Using archaeogenomic and computational approaches to unravel the history of local adaptation in crops. Models say that adaptation to higher latitudes was rapid, simple (few genes) and unstable.
- Combining conservative and variable markers to infer the evolutionary history of Prunus subgen. Amygdalus s.l. under domestication. Almonds and peaches were domesticated on either side of the Central Asian Massif from different sections of the genus that had been there for 5 million years.
- Conservation implications of the mating system of the Pampa Hermosa landrace of peach palm analyzed with microsatellite markers. Bactris effective population size in genebanks is too small.
- Global effects of land use on local terrestrial biodiversity. Within-sample total terrestrial species diversity down by 13.6% globally. About the same for crop wild relatives?
- Exploiting genetic diversity from landraces in wheat breeding for adaptation to climate change. It would be a good idea.
- Household Agrobiodiversity Management on Amazonian Dark Earths, Oxisols, and Floodplain Soils on the Lower Madeira River, Brazil. Age of household head, size of household and area of land under cultivation predict amount of agricultural biodiversity managed.
Nibbles: Rabbit origins, New beans and rice, New maize, Fermentation, Grape bugs, Kenya supergoats, Peruvian edible insects, Betelmania, Sustainable cacao, Making cider, Land rights, Kew funding, Avocado origins, German genebank, Oman roadshow, Chinese agriculture then and now, Underground farm, Irish potatoes, Lactase history, Nutrition report, Breeding wheat, Pulse year, Perennial cereals, Shaker agriculture, Food conference, Lupin breeding, Tanzanian ag landscapes, Coffee film, American food, Breakfast around the world, Indian wild figs, Baobab, Fragmentation, History of breeding, MARDI fruits, IARI head, Wild pig genome, Breed typology
Yeah, I know, been slacking with the blogging again of late. Lots of travel. Will try to post about it a bit now I’m back. Here’s the usual back-in-the-office game of catch-up.
- We start with something topical for Easter. The origin of the bunny: it’s not the genes, it’s the gene control control.
- CIAT’s heat-resistant beans are all over the internet. IRRI’s new rices, not so much.
- I hope they get names like Bill Tracy’s new open-pollinated maize variety.
- Bugs come in communities, and they do best when they stay that way.
- Even on grapes.
- Gotta get me one of these Kenyan supergoats.
- Are bugs next on Peru’s gastronomia menu? Probably not.
- Ban the betel!
- More on that we-need-GMO-to-save-chocolate thing. Because this?
- Some like it hard.
- Three steps to secure land rights.
- “If the seeds are never grown, they will fizzle out. Who is going to sow them and harvest them to keep them fresh?”
- The avocado shouldn’t be here. So sue me.
- The Ghana News Agency (and nobody else) says there’s a new genebank in Berlin.
- Oman’s biodiversity (including agricultural) goes on the road.
- Chinese agriculture goes sustainable. Well, in theory. Including for buckwheat, presumably.
- Maybe you can work out what this early Chinese flour was actually of: millet, barley and/or wheat?
- Meanwhile, in Japan, the opposite of sustainable farming beneath a Tokyo street.
- The Irish and the potato: in need of a reset?
- Want to develop? Learn to metabolize lactose.
- Ten research questions on nutrition.
- Well at least this gluten nonsense 1 is helping bring back some funky grains. And is spurring breeders. Who should perhaps be focusing on more important problems?
- Pulses will get their 15 minutes in 2016.
- The Land Institute is still at it, and still getting press.
- The United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing established one of the earliest seed companies in the US.
- No, getting to the bottom of food ain’t easy.
- Lupins better than soya in the UK, because breeding.
- A Tanzanian mash-up: Farmers need the landscape. I’m not kidding. And yet…
- There’s a film about coffee called “A film about coffee.”
- “In the future, the American dream of big cars and burgers will need to be adjusted to more active transport and sustainable, healthy eating. Better is the new bigger. The world needs a new diet. And it is waiting for the US to take the lead.” Good luck with that.
- Maybe start with breakfast?
- Indians need their wild figs.
- As much a African need baobabs, probably.
- A fragmented forest is no forest at all. Well, almost.
- BHL does domestication. As ever, great pix too.
- Malaysia protects its fruits.
- Who will head the Indian Agricultural Research Institute?
- The pygmy hog has been sequenced.
- A typology of livestock breeds.
Brainfood: IBPGR collecting, Persimmon diversity, ABS, On farm economics, Wild Colombian potatoes, Indian rice cores, Tibetan chickens, Ligonberry antioxidants, Tanzanian veggie IK, Melon sugar genes, Moroccan lentil diversity, Grasspea diversity, Quinoa ABS
- Plant genetic resources collections and associated information as a baseline resource for genetic diversity studies: an assessment of the IBPGR-supported collections. 35% of 200,000 accessions collected by IBPGR from 1975-95 still in a genebank somewhere.
- Genetic diversity among germplasms of Diospyros kaki based on SSR markers. Chinese non-astringent types closer to Chinese astringent types than to Japanese non-astringent types.
- Ex Post Use Restriction and Benefit-sharing Provisions for Access to Non-plant Genetic Materials for Public Research. Up-front payments can be ok.
- On Farm Conservation of Crop Genetic Resource: Declining De Facto Diversity and Optimal Funding Strategy. Fancy maths tells us to identify the landraces most likely to go extinct, and the farmers who can conserve them most cheaply.
- Current situation of wild Solanum spp. L. sect. Petota (Solanum, Solanaceae) in some Colombian regions. Not great.
- Identification of a diverse mini-core panel of Indian rice germplasm based on genotyping using micro satellite markers. Mini-core of 98 accessions based on molecular data recovers 94% of alleles in geographically-selected core of 6912 accessions from Indian collection. No word on how good the 6912 are in the first place.
- Genomic analyses reveal potential independent adaptation to high altitude in Tibetan chickens. Tibetan chickens fall into 2 groups, both with signs of selection in several genes involved in the calcium-signalling pathway implicated in adaptation to the hypoxia experienced at high altitudes.
- Antioxidant properties of lingonberry (Vaccinium vitis-idaea L.) leaves within a set of wild clones and cultivars. The wilds are better for you.
- Knowledge Sharing Strategies on Traditional vegetables for Supporting Food Security in Kilosa District, Tanzania. Farmers talk about vegetables. Well there’s a shocker.
- Variability of candidate genes, genetic structure and association with sugar accumulation and climacteric behavior in a broad germplasm collection of melon (Cucumis melo L.). 175 melons from 50 countries fall into 7 groups, fitting well with morphology and taxonomy. Ripening genes associated with diversification.
- Genetic diversity analysis of Moroccan lentil (Lens culinaris Medik.) landraces using Simple Sequence Repeat and Amplified Fragment Length Polymorphisms reveals functional adaptation towards agro-environmental origins. Evidence of combination of functional and geographic groupings.
- Genetic Diversity of Grasspea and Its Relative Species Revealed by SSR Markers. Asian landraces different to those from Africa/Europe. And all different from the wilds.
- Quinoa and the exchange of genetic resources: improving the regulation system. Quinoa for Annex 1?