Fruits and nuts

October 4, 2012

Know your apples

You know that horrible feeling when you realize you’ve used the wrong apple variety? Well, you need never have it again, not with this handy new flowchart from Slate.

Now, if they could only do something similar for another important multi-purpose crop…

September 26, 2012May 7, 2013

Nibbles: Darwin herbarium, Saving seeds, Hunger Season, Grafting, Farmers’ rights, Vitamin A scandal, Plant hunting

Did you know Darwin collected crop wild relative specimens on the Beagle?
Saving the Running Conch. And its stories.
Melinda Gates plugs “Hunger Season.” Including to AGRA, presumably.
I want a fruit salad tree too.
If you know how to implement Farmers’ Rights, the ITPGRFA would like to hear from you.
Don’t keep taking the (vitamin A) pills.
Hunters, pirates. You pays your money…

September 25, 2012September 25, 2012

Nibbles: Cryo primer, Ag development paradigms smackdown, Edible book, Roots & tubers conference, Deep taxonomy, WWF ag investment report, Forecasting rape disease, Amaranth, Competition

Science 2.0 Conservation 101 #fail.
It’s the roads, stupid. Well, not only. Cowen cowed.
Big book on the edible plants of Central America online.
Big root and tuber meet gets off the ground in Nigeria with pean for cassava.
How to link taxonomic names to everything
Responsible investment in agriculture. Mitt Romney alerted.
Video on diseases of oilseed rape, Rothamsted shares forecast (and it’s not good). So, is there any diversity in host response?
Amaranth, big time.
Correcting the capitalist tools on their misunderstanding of evolution. The tragedy is, they don’t seem to know they don’t know.

September 24, 2012September 24, 2012

Nibble: Colombian cassava, ITPGRFA in Costa Rica, Inca foods, Chaffey, Plantation, Artificial meadows, Squash, Wheat genome, Papyrus islands

Caribbean coast of Colombia high in cassava genetic diversity. Shakira alerted.
Costa Rica getting to grips with ITPGRFA. Not many people hurt.
Fox News Latino has a dietician tell us about Inca foods. In other news, Fox News has a Latino bit.
Plant Cuttings!
Did you celebrate the International Day of Struggle against Monoculture Tree Plantations? And does what’s happening with açaí qualify as plantations?
The London Olympics backlash begins. If you don’t agree with all that, here’s how to make your own meadow. Or restore one. Any crop wild relatives in all meadow-making?
Nice pic of squash diversity.
Very geeky presentation on how sequencing the wheat genome is going to solve all our problems. If you can follow it, you’re already convinced.
Floating plastic islands full of papyrus plants will save Lake Naivasha. I don’t know, but I’d sure like to see it.

September 24, 2012September 24, 2012

Brainfood: Organic ag, Garlic conservation costs, Spelt malting, Wild rice genetics, Diversity and ecosystem function, Old late blight, Urbanization and biodiversity, Seed laws, DNA from herbaria, Fruit & veg & school, Quinoa bars, Maize introgression

Organic vegetable farms are not nutritionally disadvantaged compared with adjacent conventional or integrated vegetable farms in Eastern Australia. Something for the next meta-analysis.
Comparing costs for different conservation strategies of garlic (Allium sativum L.) germplasm in genebanks. It depends.
Malting process optimization of spelt (Triticum spelta L.) for the brewing process. You can make a decent beer from spelt. Can I do the evaluation?
Genetic differentiation of Oryza ruffipogon [sic] Griff. from Hainan Island and Guangdong, China Based on Hd1 and Ehd1 genes. It’s different, because of different ecology.
Plant species diversity and genetic diversity within a dominant species interactively affect plant community biomass. In other words, the higher the genetic diversity within the dominant species, the further the effect of species diversity on biomass goes from negative to positive. Bottom line is that you have to consider multiple diversity levels in relating biodiversity to ecosystem functioning. At least in this ecosystem.
Evidence for presence of the founder Ia mtDNA haplotype of Phytophthora infestans in 19th century potato tubers from the Rothamsted archives. “…the founder Ia mtDNA haplotype survived in potato tubers after 1846 and was present over 30 years later in the UK.”
Global forecasts of urban expansion to 2030 and direct impacts on biodiversity and carbon pools. Urban area to triple, affecting important biodiversity hotspots. Biggest surprise to me was Turkey. Gotta be a lot of CWRs there that are going to be threatened by urbanization. But I guess this is good news for urban agriculture?
Seed Governance at the Intersection of Multiple Global and Nation-State Priorities: Modernizing Seeds in Turkey. Developing countries are opting for laws that favor commercialization and privatization because they’re buying into the currently dominant paradigm of what agricultural development means. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t. And if my aunt had wheels she’d be a bus.
DNA Damage in Plant Herbarium Tissue. There isn’t enough of it to matter.
Systematic review and meta-analysis of school-based interventions to improve daily fruit and vegetable intake in children aged 5 to 12 y. Fruit yes, veggies no.
Use of cereal bars with quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa W.) to reduce risk factors related to cardiovascular diseases. Only 22 young(ish) subjects, but promising.
The Genomic Signature of Crop-Wild Introgression in Maize. The wild relative has helped the cultigen to adapt to highland Mexico.