Fruits and nuts

August 23, 2010August 23, 2010

Fruit diversity in SE Europe

Fuad Gasi tells us about an interesting effort to document the diversity of fruits in the former Yugoslavia.

A new regional collaboration between the Faculty of Agriculture and Food Sciences, University of Sarajevo and the Faculty of Agriculture, University of Zagreb has been established in the field of fruit (including Vitis) genetic resources. This collaboration is being strengthened through the SEEDNet project (South East European Network on Plant Genetic Resources) financed by SIDA (Swedish International Development Agency). So far, we have had a publication on apple genetic resources in Bosnia and Herzegovina as a result of this collaboration. We are currently preparing a similar publication on plum genetic resources that will present results of a study made on autochthonous plums from B&H, Croatia and Serbia, focusing mainly on different synonyms of Pozegaca, but not exclusively (molecular and morphological data, as well as some food processing qualities). Similar work has been done on the chestnut and is currently being done on the pear.

August 4, 2010August 4, 2010

Nibbles: Iron beans, Tomatoes, Fruit, Africa college

Learn about iron beans from a HarvestPlus video, maybe.
Learn about the tomato in Ghana, more than you might need to know if you read all the reports.
Learn how Andy Jarvis spoke truth to ex-power, about fruit data gathering project prospects.
Learn how the Africa College, based at Leeds University in the UK, is working on a range of agricultural problems.

July 30, 2010July 30, 2010

Nibbles: CGIAR “change”, Cuba, Data, Pavlovsk, Homegardens, Soil bacteria, Thai rice

GFAR publishes list of Megaprogramme (or whatever they are called) consultations.
Cuba’s Miscellaneous Crops Under-delegate Rolando Macias Cardenas reports on tomato paste. In other news, Cuba has a Miscellaneous Crops Under-delegate. No, wait, that’s not really news.
While Sachs et al. moan about better agricultural data, CIAT go out and get it.
The Pavlovsk TweetMedvedev campaign rolls on.
“…maximum diversity can be conserved at an intermediate level of income” in Javanese bamboo-tree homegardens.
Right, so trees “farm” bacteria. What some people will write in a press release.
Thailand’s rice farmers trying to cope with climate change. Like they have a choice.

July 28, 2010July 28, 2010

Not the world’s first red apple

Of course it is tiresome for you, Dear Reader, to have to wade through me correcting the mainstream media, but when duty calls I am powerless to refuse.

The BBC was all breathless a couple of days ago with news of a new apple variety on sale in England that has red flesh. Oooh. Ah. It’s like a tomato! And a large chunk of the little report was taken up by the breeder explaining that no GM was involved, just 15 years of crosses and selection and 20,000 seedlings rejected in favour of three that made the grade as worthwhile varieties. ((How long before somebody says, “well, it would have been much quicker, cheaper, easier,” to do it by GM or at least marker-assisted selection?))

What really struck me, though, was not the utter imbecility of the reporter, or even what the bloody apple looked like. It was the fact that nobody had seemed to ask whether this was in fact the world’s first red-fleshed apple, as reported by FOXNews and The Daily Mail. ((Yeah, yeah. I know. Fish in a barrel.)) It isn’t that there are some wild red-fleshed apples out there, and this is the first one that’s good to eat. There have even been a fair number of commercial, good to eat, red-fleshed varieties. It’s just that reporters swallow rubbish so uncomplainingly. Google is your friend.

The photo (by Kayirkul Shalpykov, Bioresource, and lifted from the Living on Earth website) is of “Niedzwetzky apples (malus niedzwetzkyana), famous for their red flesh. There are 111 known trees left in the world”. Not sure I believe that either.

July 27, 2010July 27, 2010

Nibbles: Plant breeding book, Ug99, NGS, Monitoring, Genetic diversity and productivity, Adaptive evolution, Amaranthus, Nabhan, Herbarium databases, Pepper, Shade coffee and conservation, Apples, Pathogen diversity, Phytophthora

Book on history of plant breeding reviewed.
Rust never sleeps.
Ask not what next generation sequencing can do for you.
Long-term datasets in biodiversity research. Nothing about genetic diversity though. Bummer.
And genetic diversity is important, is it? Yep, it increases productivity, at least in Arabidopsis.
No evidence of adaptive evolution in plants. What? Surely some mistake? I’m serious. And don’t call me Shirley.
The latest from Worldwatch on African leafy veggies. Again, some links would have been nice.
And Worldwatch also interviews Gary Nabhan on Vavilov.
You can browse Tropicos specimens in Google Earth.
Using pepper to protect stored rice.
More evidence of the goodness of shade coffee.
The diversity of Bosnian apples.
Mammal plus bird species richness explains 72% of country-to-country variation in the number of human pathogens. Diversity begets diversity. But which way does the causality go?
Phytophthora infestans in Estonia: “…higher proportion of metalaxyl resistant isolates from large conventional farms than from small conventional farms or from organic farms.” Metalaxyl is a fungicide.