- The CGIAR Consortium finds a CGIAR success story. While the Guardian does another.
- Talk on honeybee diversity at UC Davis. Hopefully Robert will be available for comment. Meanwhile, across the Pond…
- Seeing the food security for the trees.
- Yeah I’m just not sure it’s such a good idea to name a new avocado variety Uzi, no matter how good it may be.
- Deconstructing the global land rush. And here’s the data… Jatropha everywhere.
- The deep roots of globalization. Move over jatropha.
- More on that paper on how to recognize a relatively drought-tolerant species.
- All tangled up in natural fibres.
- How to read organic agriculture debates. Just in case you actually want to read them.
- An Indian prepares for the Convention on Biological Diversity‘s meeting in Hyderabad in October. Not too early, is it?
- Bean breeders! Funding alert! You have nothing to lose but your diversity.
- India posts world record rice harvest — using System of Rice Intensification. Take that, doubters.
Brainfood: Alfalfa, Date palm, Apricot, Collecting, Reintroduction, Ribes, Payments
- Assessment of genetic diversity among alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.) genotypes by morphometry, seed storage proteins and RAPD analysis. Morphology fits with geography, the others don’t.
- Insights into the historical biogeography of the date palm (Phoenix dactylifera L.) using geometric morphometry of modern and ancient seeds. Analysis of seed outlines using fancy maths identifies centres of diversity and migration routes.
- Loss of genetic diversity as a signature of apricot domestication and diffusion into the Mediterranean Basin. Or you could use microsatellites. Result: an Irano-Caucasian centre of domestication and two migration routes, N and S of the Mediterranean.
- Big hitting collectors make massive and disproportionate contribution to the discovery of plant species. Therefore, fund a small number of expert collectors in the right places. Luigi stands ready.
- Success Rates for Reintroductions of Eight Perennial Plant Species after 15 Years. Are pretty pathetic. Makes you wonder if all that collecting is worth it.
- Conservation of endemic insular plants: the genus Ribes L. (Grossulariaceae) in Sardinia. Seems rather a fuss for 1 species and 1 subspecies, crop wild relatives or not.
- Indicator-based agri-environmental payments: A payment-by-result model for public goods with a Swedish application. Hang on a minute, why is crop diversity not there?
Nibbles: Fungi, Pastoralism, Climate hoofprints, Ancient farmers, Pineberry, Yellow Rust, Rio+20
- Mushrooms in Art: why, and what good has it been.
- Keep moving that livestock; it’s more profitable.
- And … noted promiscuous communication expert confuses cow and elephant in search of livestock’s climate hoofprint.
- Best blog account of those Swedish farmers from Cyprus.
- Back to the strawberry’s future: meet the pineberry.
- Too late for Robigalia, yellow rust threatens triticale.
- Lecture of Dr Maurits van den Berg – “The future of land”. You’ll get nothing from the link, but the presentation made me wish I’d been there.
Nibbles: Plant data, Wild relatives, Citizen science, Danish pig breed, Fruit names, Genebanks big and small, Taxonomy, Seaweed, Weather data, IPR training, Caribbean & Pacific, Potato research at Birmingham, Taro training in PNG, BioAreas
- Latest Plant Press has interesting stuff on botanical data of various forms. Always worth a skim.
- CSA pamphlet on the importance of crop wild relatives. Why does this feel like a bandwagon? And how long to the backlash?
- And talking of bandwagons, here’s the latest from the one on citizen botany. Does indigenous tree knowledge count as citizen science? How about indigenous weed knowledge?
- And how about using your pet pig to reinvigorate a breed?
- Interesting take on fruit variety names. Can we crowdsource an answer?
- Everything about the opening of that new Mexican mega-genebank. Including the speeches. Nice-looking building, I must say. And from IRRI an example of a genebank from the other end of the scale in the Philippines. And similar, but different, from
CanadaColorado. - Biodiversity bigshots beg for naming blitz. Better hurry. And don’t forget the soil.
- Sargasso Sea coming ashore in Ghana is bad news for fisherfolk. Can they not eat it? Is it bad to ask that?
- How to find your way around weather data.
- Swedes to provide IPR training for PGR types.
- Island nations from opposite sides of the world brought together by agrobiodiversity. Full disclosure: I’ve worked with both regional PGR networks and want to again.
- Brits who worked on spuds.
- And Wontoks who worked on taro.
- Privatizing conservation.
Nibbles: Transgenic American Chestnuts, Moraceae conference, Breadfruit uses, Coconut oil, Potato history, Rat meat
- Transgenic American Chestnuts on trial, as it were.
- 1st International Symposium on Jackfruit and other Moraceae to take place 31 August-2 September. Don’t expect access to the papers if you can’t be there. h/t CFF.
- Breadfruit better than DEET at deterring mosquitoes. Tastier too.
- Crawford Fund opening up opportunities for coconut oil producers.
- History of the potato among the Basques. Well, why not?
- Microkhan disembowels the rat-meat trade of Mozambique.