Fruits and nuts

August 26, 2013August 26, 2013

Brainfood: Touristic islands, Pearl millet diversity, Barley diversity, Maize diversity, Weird chickpea, Sweet potato diversity, Pawpaw diversity, Grewia domestication, Agrobiodiversity is the key, Sunflower relative dynamics

Sorry about the Brainfood hiatus lately. Back now, and with a vengeance.

Plant genetic resources in a touristic island: the case of Lefkada (Ionian Islands, Greece). Landraces and tourism can coexist.
Assessment of genetic diversity among pearl millet [Pennisetum glaucum (L.) R Br.] cultivars using SSR markers. The cultivars coming out of a given breeding programme cluster together. No!
Population genetic structure in a social landscape: barley in a traditional Ethiopian agricultural system. Farmer management trumps even altitude.
Environmental and social factors account for Mexican maize richness and distribution: A data mining approach. Oh no it doesn’t.
Identification of an upright peduncle and podding genotype in chickpea germplasm conserved in the National Genebank. That’s one out of 18,873.
Molecular, morphological and agronomic characterization of the sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas L.) germplasm collection from Mozambique: Genotype selection for drought prone regions. 6 out of 28 local genotypes are drought tolerant. No word on whether they’re yellow fleshed too.
Genotyping a large collection of pepper (Capsicum spp.) with SSR loci brings new evidence for the wild origin of cultivated C. annuum and the structuring of genetic diversity by human selection of cultivar types. The taxonomy is ok. Human selection is reflected by genetic diversity. A quarter of the accessions can be chosen which contain 97% of the genetic diversity. In other news, France has a collection of 1,300 peppers.
Phenotypic and Genetic Diversity of Papaya. Wild papayas from South America are closer to an allied genus than to the cultigen.
Grewia flavescens: a potential horticultural crop? Well, maybe.
Agricultural biodiversity as a link between traditional food systems and contemporary development, social integrity and ecological health. You need sustainable small farms tied into global markets for high value food crops and ecosystem services. Marx rolls over in his grave.
Proximity to agriculture alters abundance and community composition of wild sunflower mutualists and antagonists. Wild relative populations nearer to cultigen have more pollinators but fewer seed and leaf munchers than those further away. Not entirely sure what that means for in situ conservation, but I’m sure it’s something.

August 23, 2013August 23, 2013

Nibbles: Atlantic potatoes, Andean feasting, Lupin biodiversity, Vegetable grafting, Agrobiodiversity survey, Seed lending library, Lathyrus factsheet, Wild horses, School feeding

Tracing Canary Island potatoes back to the Andes.
Lupin diversity, all in one handy place.
Bangladeshi women are grafting away.
Wanna take a survey of “lessons learned about ways and means to conserve and use genetic diversity to build resilience to climate change in food and agriculture systems“? Uhm.
Maybe they should survey this guy.
Kew takes on the grasspea.
I have my freedom but I don’t have much time…
FAO spots a win-win-win in school feeding programme linked to family farms.

August 22, 2013

Nibbles: Superweeds, Old spices, Companies and nutrition, Bananas and cacao, Coffee pix, Potato restaurant, Millet processing, Aussie social herbarium, Rockefeller Story, Apple nutrition, And a bottle of rum…

Those who like that sort of thing will no doubt enjoy this discussion at Biofortified of that recent paper about a herbicide resistance transgene possibly giving a fitness advantage to weeds. And more.
As for me, I’d rather read about Neolithic spices. Or beer.
Some food companies more committed to nutrition than others shock. But good to have the data.
Bananas to the rescue in cacao plantations. If I had the willpower I’d try to mash it up with the previous thing. Anyway, coffee next?
Eating more spuds in the Village. Eating more millets in the village.
Australian National Herbarium gets a Facebook page.
The history of the Rockefeller Foundation’s agriculture work. That would include the Green Revolution.
Really confused Telegraph piece on heirloom and/or organic apples.
I guess I missed National Rum Day. But I’m nevertheless glad that it exists.

August 16, 2013August 23, 2013

Nibbles: Afghanistan, Cereal domestication, Apple degradation, Map app

Another soldier, this time a Brit, “Rebuilding Afghanistan through agriculture … as part of a counter-narcotics cell that encouraged farmers to grow legal agricultural crops, such as wheat, instead of illegal opium poppies”.
Wild wheats and barley responded better to higher CO2, and that’s why they were domesticated.
Climate change is also changing one of my favourite apples — for the worse.
Kew reviews map app. No idea where our mapping expert is.

July 29, 2013July 11, 2013

Brainfood: Wheat breeding, Wild chicken diversity, Wild rice diversity, Sustainable biofuels, Biofuels and biodiversity, Land sparing & sharing, Soil fertility, Cooking cassava, Cherimoya value chains

Genetic Diversity and Population Structure of Tetraploid Wheats (Triticum turgidum L.) Estimated by SSR, DArT and Pedigree Data. Diversity in morphology and storage proteins in Italian durum varieties decreases after 1990, but not in molecular markers.
Genetics driven interventions for ex situ conservation of red junglefowl (Gallus gallus murghi) populations in India. 9 birds from the most diverse population of 4 were selected to breed with all the others to rescue them from the perils of inbreeding.
Geographic variation and local adaptation in Oryza rufipogon across its climatic range in China. Some variation correlated with geography, but plenty of plasticity too.
Debate: Can Bioenergy Be Produced in a Sustainable Manner That Protects Biodiversity and Avoids the Risk of Invaders? It depends. But they’re not talking about agricultural biodiversity.
Scenarios for future biodiversity loss due to multiple drivers reveal conflict between mitigating climate change and preserving biodiversity. Looks like growing biofuels to counter climate change might not be a great biodiversity conservation strategy. But we knew that from the above.
Beyond ‘land sparing versus land sharing’: environmental heterogeneity, globalization and the balance between agricultural production and nature conservation. As the scale of analysis increases, you have to be more careful about addressing environmental heterogeneity. You mean like mosaics?
Overview of long term experiments in Africa. Rotations are better than monoculture for soil fertility. Well, it’s good to have the data.
Effects of boiling and frying on the bioaccessibility of β-carotene in yellow-fleshed cassava roots (Manihot esculenta Crantz cv. BRS Jari). Fry away. Finally some good news.
Value chains of cherimoya (Annona cherimola Mill.) in a centre of diversity and its on-farm conservation implications. They can be bad.