Never rains but it pours, BBC edition. Hot on the heels of the Food Programme on the conservation of heritage wheats, here comes Gardeners’ Question Time on the cacao genebank at the University of Reading.
Wheat roundup
Great to get an email update from Andy Forbes yesterday on the latest developments at Brockwell Bake. They’ve been busy with their Nordic colleagues of late, as you can read in the latest edition of True Loaf. 1 But the big news is they’ll be on the BBC’s Food Programme later today, along with lots of other heritage wheat enthusiasts.
And the wonderful Wheat Gateway has had a couple of tweaks over Christmas:
Wheat *hub *pages such as for Hen Gymro are intended to link up available historical references, morphological descriptions and modern imagery to germplasm data and in due course current cultivation and usage reports for landrace and other heritage lines of specific interest.
“*with image*” searches on the database has been added so the various image resources (USDA, INRA, BBA, NordGen) can be targeted by users – inspired to do so by the immaculate image collection of the Nordic Genebank.
Brockwell seem to be cornering the market in wheat genetic resources information systems.
Oh, and since we’re at it, here’s philosopher Julian Baggini on our duty of stewardship towards einkorn.
India declares crops covered under Seed Treaty exempt from Biodiversity Act
This edition of the Gazette of India, dated 18 December 2014, communicates a very significant decision for all of us who have an interest in the conservation and use of crop diversity. Here’s the exact language:
What this means is that genebanks under the management and control of the Government of India now have the formal go-ahead to fully implement the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, which India actually ratified a while back, of course. They won’t need to run every request for access to ex situ germplasm by the biodiversity authorities. Facilitated access indeed.
Nibbles: FAO Commission, Private genebank, DivSeek duo, Biofortified sorghum, African supermarkets, Enset, Health crops, Breadfruit conference, Denison podcast, Saving chocolate, Paramo app, CIMMYT genebank video, Pig milk
- FAO says genes are good for climate.
- India’s first private sector genebank established.
- Well, at least one person is really excited about DivSeek.
- And one major journal.
- DuPont video on increasing sorghum Fe and Zn levels in Africa.
- Will they sell it through local vendors or supermarkets?
- Let them eat enset. Which is not, however, on this list of today’s top healthy crops.
- Neither is breadfruit, but that shouldn’t stop you going to this conference in Trinidad.
- Ford Denison writes about his appearance on Eat This Podcast.
- Enough with the scary chocolate stories already.
- Here, go play with this app about the flora of the paramo from Missouri Botanical Garden.
- The CIMMYT genebank in the news.
- Pig milk in your tea, vicar?
Brainfood: Organic convergence, Wine yeast diversity, Cassava genome, Potato wild relatives, PREDICTS predicts, Seed cryo, Community seedbanks, Maize OPV evolution, Conservation conflict, Biofortification
- Organic and Non-Organic Farming: Is Convergence Possible? Yes, but conversion is more likely.
- The vintage effect overcomes the terroir effect: a three years survey on the wine yeast biodiversity in Franciacorta and Oltrepò Pavese, two Northern Italian vine-growing areas. Year more important than place as determinant of yeast diversity.
- Cassava genome from a wild ancestor to cultivated varieties. The genes that have been selected are the ones you’d think. And here’s the thing actually being used.
- Taxonomy and Genetic Differentiation among Wild and Cultivated Germplasm of Solanum sect. Petota. The genes that have been selected are the ones you’d think. Oh, and the taxonomy is fine.
- The PREDICTS database: a global database of how local terrestrial biodiversity responds to human impacts. Could prove useful. But it doesn’t look like the data is available yet.
- C-2001: Survival of short-lived desiccation tolerant seeds during long-term storage in liquid nitrogen: Implications for the management and conservation of plant germplasm collections. It’s not always great.
- Ensuring food security in the small islands of Maluku: A community genebank approach. Won’t be easy.
- Evaluation of Evolution and Diversity of Maize Open-Pollinated Varieties Cultivated under Contrasted Environmental and Farmers’ Selection Pressures: A Phenotypical Approach. Maize OPVs changed a bit in farmers’ fields over 3 years, but not in how they looked.
- Conservation planning in agricultural landscapes: hotspots of conflict between agriculture and nature. Threatened mammals and cropland areas where yield gap is highest are, not surprisingly, mostly found together in sub-Saharan Africa. I wonder if the same could be said for threatened crop wild relatives?
- Biofortification for Selecting and Developing Crop Cultivars Denser in Iron and Zinc. Current strategy is QTL detection followed by MAS, but much more downstream work on processing, extension and acceptance needed.