- Genetic structure of the Greek olive germplasm revealed by RAPD, ISSR and SSR markers. Reflects usage.
- Genotyping of Vitis vinifera L. within the Slovak national collection of genetic resources. Unclear whether it reflects usage.
- Molecular confirmation of species status for the allopolyploid cotton species, Gossypium ekmanianum Wittmack. It has been hiding in collections as “wild” G. hirsutum, but it really isn’t.
- North American animal breeding and production: meeting the needs of a changing landscape. We’ll need a better fit of genotype to production environment, better meat quality, better animal health and decreased residual feed intake; climate change will make it more difficult, but it will still be possible, especially using new genomic tools.
- Urban agriculture: a global analysis of the space constraint to meet urban vegetable demand. We’re going to need bigger cities, to grow enough vegetables in them, to feed them. No, wait…
- Niche Markets for Agrobiodiversity Conservation: Preference and Scale Heterogeneity Effects on Nepalese Consumers’ WTP for Finger Millet Products. That’s Willingness to Pay. And there is a bit of the population with enough of it to suggest that a price premium could translate into more acreage. And maybe more public investment.
- Selection and Crossbreeding in Relation to Plumage Color Inheritance in Three Chinese Egg Type Duck Breeds (Anas platyrhynchos). Hybrids are better layers, but then you can lose the desired plumage. Here’s how to have your beautiful duck and eat it too.
- Micronutrient Density and Stability in West African Pearl Millet — Potential for Biofortification. There is some, but there would be more if some Indian material was used in breeding too.
- Genetic diversity in kiwifruit polyploid complexes: insights into cultivar evaluation, conservation, and utilization. Interploid crosses can increase genetic diversity. The red-fleshed cultivars are genetically distinct. Red? Really?
- Natural hybridization, introgression breeding, and cultivar improvement in the genus Actinidia. We should collect new material in natural hybrid zones.
Nibbles: Pig genes, Eating pork, Mesoamerican crops, Apple family farming, Global food security, Wild food in Europe, Student crop videos, Important plants, Teff, Finger millet, Pacific NW grains, African veggies, Genius mangoes
- Asian genes in European pigs are a good thing.
- How about American pigs though?
- Great Spanish language cacao infographic. And more along the same lines.
- Innovative apple family farming in the Tyrol.
- Not sure that will be much use in terms of global food security, as per this recent review, but you never know. Because, you know, climate change?
- Well, there’s always wild food. Though in some places more than others.
- Student videos on the origin of food plants.
- But did any of them change their lives?
- Oxfam thinks teff can change lives.
- Different part of same continent, different grain to revitalize.
- Different continent, different grains to revitalize.
- Bah, who needs cereals when you have indigenous vegetables?
- Wait, what? Seedless mangoes? Why is this not first-page news?
Nibbles: Soil map, Dealing with pH, Egypt pix, Samoa taro & breadfruit, Fruit genomics, GM video, Twitter
- Need soil info? There’s an app for that!
- Like pH, for instance?
- Photographing Egypt’s farms.
- Frozen Samoan taro, anyone? Only the beginning…
- Also from Samoa, a landmark breadfruit deal.
- Alas, breadfruit is not one of the tree fruits included in the website Tree Fruit Genome Database Resources (tfGDR). Maybe they should get together with DivSeek? Or the guy growing 40 different fruits on one tree.
- Soybean genetic modification 101, with video goodness.
- While both Jeremy and I are otherwise engaged, blogging in general and Nibbling in particular might be a bit slow, but you can keep up with us on Twitter. If you dare.
Nibbles: BBC series, Pacific breadfruit & yams, Sustainable diets, Cuba atlas, MSB standards, Biofortification on radio, German food scandals, Mexican foods, Non-PC food, CWR interviews, Old Irish sources, ITPGRFA funding, Crop Trust presentations, ISHS, Neural crest and domestication, Wheat genome
- That BBC mega-doc on botany just started.
- PGR News from the Pacific: breadfruit and yams. My former colleagues keeping busy.
- How sustainable is your diet? Here comes the data.
- Cool historical atlas of Cuba has some agricultural stuff.
- The Millennium Seed Bank’s Seed Conservation Standards, final draft.
- Kojo Nnamdi Show on biofortification.
- German sausage and beer industries hit by scandal. What the hell will Luigi survive on?
- Maize beer, maybe. And amaranth.
- Thankfully neither of which have objectionable names.
- Nigel Maxted of University of Birmingham on crop wild relatives.
- His mate and mine Ehsan Dulloo of Bioversity, on the same thing.
- Ancient Irish apples, both wild and cultivated.
- Seed Treaty is short of funds, but they are working on it.
- The Crop Trust is on Slideshare!
- Banana symposium coming up in August.
- A theory of mammal domestication.
- First stab at the bread wheat genome. A tour de force.
The latest on the Bogia Coconut Syndrome
The main reason for my quick trip to Papua New Guinea last week was to get up to date on Bogia Coconut Syndrome (BCS). Readers with a long(ish) memory may remember that we blogged about this some time back. Quick recap. BCS is a phytoplasma disease first reported about 20 years ago in Yaro Plantation, near Bogia, Madang Province, on the northern coast on PNG.
Since then, it has devastated coconuts in a large contiguous area SE of Bogia, but it has also leap-frogged to a number of sites further along the coast towards Madang and beyond. In 2013, it was spotted in Mobdub, which is only a few kilometres from the Stewart Research Station of PNG’s Cocoa & Coconut Research Institute (CCI), home of COGENT’s International Coconut Genebank for the South Pacific (a collection placed under Article 15 of the International Treaty through a tripartite agreement involving the PNG government, Bioversity on behalf of COGENT and FAO). Here’s Alfred Kembu, the curator of the collection, talking about it in a video by Roland Bourdeix, who used to be the coordinator of COGENT, the global coconut network:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSADJB4tKXEThere are more videos on the disease and the threat it poses to the collection by COGENT and CIRAD. The closest outbreak to the collection is now about 2 km away. There has been a ban in place in Madang for 3 years now on the movement of nuts that have not been de-husked or are sprouting, as the pattern of movement suggests human agency.
At one of these outbreak sites 1, first spotted in 2009, the affected area went from a radius of 200 m in 2011 to 1800 m in 2013; all palms are expected to be dead there within 2-5 years. The disease can kill 1-5 palms per month, meaning that a 1 ha plantation can be destroyed in 4 years. This is an extremely dangerous disease for local smallholders, as well as for the genebank. The same phytoplasma is suspected to affect other palm crops, such as oil palm and betel nut, but also banana and possibly others. This photo shows palms at different stages of development of the disease. In the final stage, nothing but the stem is left.
I went to Madang to take part in the inception workshop of the ACIAR-funded project “Bogia Coconut Syndrome in Papua New Guinea and related phytoplasma syndromes: Developing biological knowledge and a risk management strategy,” which is led by Prof. Geoff Gurr of Charles Sturt University, Queensland, Australia. The project activities, which will last four years, center on intensive and repeated surveying and sampling of both plants and insects in a number outbreak areas (in particular for DNA analysis using “loop-mediated isothermal amplification,” or LAMP, which is apparently a method of identifying phytoplasma DNA which is more efficient and cheaper than standard PCR), followed by a series of transmission experiments.
Although the main output will be basic scientific information on BCS (its causal organism, location in the host plant(s), possible alternate hosts, vector(s) etc, none of these are currently entirely clear), a management plan for the disease will also be devised on the basis of the results. The two-day workshop focused on discussing methodological and logistical issues pertaining to the project, which will involve a number of other PNG institutes apart from CCI, but we also talked about the possible relocation of the germplasm collection to a safer locality. Not quite ready for that yet, but we’ll keep working on it. Here is a shot of part of the collection, by the way: talls on the left, dwarfs on the right, cacao in the understory, which is sold to generate some income to help keep the collection going.
We’ll keep you posted…