- Chickpea breeding in the news, if you can believe it.
- Somehow rice breeding in the news is easier to believe.
- Or potato breeding, for that matter.
- The case for public ownership of seed. Now, that would be news.
- I doubt that changing the sweet potato’s scientific name will ever be news.
- Michigan’s cider lovers round up their favourite apples.
- Visualization on how to make functional foods sustainable.
- A Colombian (seed) exchange.
- People have always eaten meat. Sure, but so what?
- Anyone for coffee?
Nibbles: Macron magic, UK Strategic Priorities Fund, Macadamia, Tepary, Nordic spuds, Diversification, Carolina rice, Couscous, Wild tobacco, Yeast diversity, Da 5 Foods
- France pushes for agricultural development. Money to follow mouth?
- Meanwhile, Britain puts its money into its own food systems.
- The macadamia is not diverse enough. Who’d have thought it.
- Couscous gets protected. Phew, ’cause it’s right on the verge of extinction, isn’t it.
- I hope tepary beans don’t become the next macadamia.
- Reviving old potatoes the Nordic way.
- Malaysia told to look beyond oil palm. To tepary and macadamia, maybe?
- Speaking of diversification, how about Laotian rice in Appalachia?
- Chasing the wild tobacco. See what I did there?
- Yeast has been domesticated by bakers into two genetic groups: industrial and artisanal sourdough.
- A history of the world in entirely the wrong 5 foods.
Nibbles: Benchmarking, Unintended consequences, Kenyan seeds, WFP, China genebank, Evolutionary plant breeding, Citrus, Maize, Lotus silk, Azolla, Spanish genebank
- How committed are 350 food companies to food system transformation? Well, take a wild guess…
- Mind you, transformation is tricky.
- A climate-smart seed system for Kenya? Would be transformative for sure.
- Great that WFP got the Nobel Peace Prize, but they’re only part of the food system picture.
- Another part is genebanks, as China recognizes.
- One way to use all that material in genebanks is through evolutionary plant breeding.
- Citrus: How it started. How it’s going. Meme alert.
- Maize was taken back to Mexico from South America in ancient times. And those early farmers really knew how to process it for maximum benefit, something we’re forgetting.
- A deep dive into lotus silk.
- An even deeper dive into Azolla-covered paddies.
- Esteban Hernández of the Andalusian genebank gets his 15 minutes.
Brainfood: Behaviour change, Banana evolution, Clonal conservation, Pea evolution, Fe fortification, Diet data, Cassava potential, Creole breeds, Water buffalo evolution, Bison and CWR
- A systematic review of conservation efforts using non-monetary, non-regulatory incentives to promote voluntary behaviour change. Mix it up, and get personal.
- Chromosome reciprocal translocations have accompanied subspecies evolution in bananas. Some subspecies of M. acuminata were more involved in cultivar development than others.
- Challenges and Prospects for the Conservation of Crop Genetic Resources in Field Genebanks, in In Vitro Collections and/or in Liquid Nitrogen. Everything that can be, should be in cryo.
- Population genetic structure and classification of cultivated and wild pea (Pisum sp.) based on morphological traits and SSR markers. The species are real, the subspecies maybe less so.
- Iron Absorption from Iron-Biofortified Sweetpotato Is Higher Than Regular Sweetpotato in Malawian Women while Iron Absorption from Regular and Iron-Biofortified Potatoes Is High in Peruvian Women. More than just calories.
- Survey data on income, food security, and dietary behavior among women and children from households of differing socio-economic status in urban and peri-urban areas of Nairobi, Kenya. Lots of data to play around with, including on dietary diversity. But not on biofortification, I don’t think.
- “Rambo root” to the rescue: How a simple, low‐cost solution can lead to multiple sustainable development gains. Grow it on degraded land. After biofortifying it, natch.
- Genetic Diversity and Structure of Iberoamerican Livestock Breeds. Creole breeds are hanging in there, especially in marginal areas. Maybe they could be fed on cassava?
- Whole genome analysis of water buffalo and global cattle breeds highlights convergent signatures of domestication. The same mutations occurred independently and were then selected for in water buffalo and cattle.
- Bison, anthropogenic fire, and the origins of agriculture in eastern North America. Bison favoured the growth of crop wild relatives in the prairies. No word on any attempt to domesticate the brutes, but the above should provide some guidance.
- Archaeogenomics of a ~2,100-year-old Egyptian leaf provides a new timestamp on date palm domestication. Dates showed introgression from wild relatives way back. No evidence of bison involvement.
Nibbles: Community seed bank, Seed system video, MGIS, Svalbard, Mainstreaming NUS
- Indigenous communities can have genebanks too.
- That would make them part of the informal seed system.
- Meanwhile, in the formal sector, the banana international genebank’s information system gets a graphical upgrade.
- And the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, as formal as they come, gets an exhibition centre.
- Orphan crops are called orphan because they are in general better served by the informal than the formal seed system.