- Floral Transcriptome Sequencing for SSR Marker Development and Linkage Map Construction in the Tea Plant (Camellia sinensis). Neat, to be sure, but not entirely clear why the transcriptome of a part of a crop that is not economically exploited should be of more than academic use to anyone. But no doubt someone will set us right on this.
- Emergence of Agriculture in the Foothills of the Zagros Mountains of Iran. Eastern Fertile Crescent just as important as western.
- Analysis of main agronomic characteristics and utilization status of rice resources in Hunan Province. Hunan has a provincial genebank with more than 12,000 accession, “repetition eliminated.”
- The comparison of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture and the Nagoya Protocol. Like the above, this is in Chinese, except for the abstract, which recommends ratification of both relevant instruments. I hope someone is listening.
- Biodiversity of Arbuscular Mycorrhizal fungi in Agricultural crops of western Himalayas. Everybody’s at it. Well, almost.
- Assessment of breeding progress in sugar beet by testing old and new varieties under greenhouse and field conditions. It has been steady and is set to continue. At least in Germany.
- Why crop yields in developing countries have not kept pace with advances in agronomy. Let them eat German sugar beets. But seriously: agronomist says it’s about the agronomy.
- Molecular mechanisms involved in convergent crop domestication. It’s mutations at orthologous loci, and it can be copied.
- Differential survival and growth of wild and cultivated seedlings of columnar cacti: Consequences of domestication. Gotta wonder if mutations at orthologous loci were involved.
- NAL1 allele from a rice landrace greatly increases yield in modern indica cultivars. But it came from a tropical japonica landrace from Indonesia, and works its magic via pleiotropic effect on plant architecture.
Brainfood: Yam age, Cacao conservation, Eucarpia consultation report, Wheat sequencing, Pesticides & earthworms, Abandoned farmland & conservation, Agroforestry, New Guinea agriculture, Soybean cores, Bean taste
- Clonal diversity and estimation of relative clone age: application to agrobiodiversity of yam (Dioscorea rotundata). Some clones are almost two thousand years old.
- Development of a cost-effective diversity-maximising decision-support tool for in situ crop genetic resources conservation. The case of cacao. Sure, you can use molecular markers and fancy maths, but in the end you’ll still need to make some judgement calls.
- Fishing in the gene pool — how useful was the catch? We have the technology. Do we have the policies?
- The Wheat Black Jack: Advances Towards Sequencing the 21 Chromosomes of Bread Wheat. See what I mean about the technologies?
- Reduction of pesticide use can increase earthworm populations in wheat crops in a European temperate region. Prince Charles will be pleased.
- Areas of Increasing Agricultural Abandonment Overlap the Distribution of Previously Common, Currently Threatened Plant Species. In Japan, abandoned farmland can be good and bad for threatened species. Damn scientists. Never a straight answer.
- Can agroforestry option values improve the functioning of drivers of agricultural intensification in Africa? Yes. But please, sir, what’s option value?
- Biodiversity through Domestication. Examples from New Guinea. What 8000 years of horticulture will do to diversity. I wonder if some yam clones go back that long.
- Establishment of the integrated applied core collection and its comparison with mini core collection in soybean (Glycine max). You lost me at integrated.
- Variability in sensory attributes in common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.): a first survey in the Iberian secondary diversity center. Agronomy does not correlate with taste. So you can breed for both.
Nibbles: Wild veg, Cleome, Barberries, Alley-cropped wheat, Bison, Seed potatoes, Veg database, IPR of PGRFA
- Wild veg are very much in the news today. Teresa Borelli and Danny Hunter are unlocking their potential.
- Meanwhile, Eileen Omosa actually has unlocked their potential. Here’s her take on Cleome gynandra (smoked out by Luigi’s photo of same).
- And then there are barberries, scourge of rust-susceptible wheat.
- Some trees, though, properly deployed, can be good for wheat. My head’s spinning with all that complexity.
- Saddest story you’ll read all day? Or most hopeful? A timeline of the status of the bison in North America.
- Seed degeneration to be studied. And about time too. Course, they don’t mean true seed. That never degenerates, not even in the
- World Vegetable Center’s spiffy genebank, whose database contains 438 species. As odd a way to advertise the database as any.
- And here’s a thought to strike terror into the hearts of genebank curators everywhere: plant genetic resources may not all be public goods after all, says noted expert Michael Halewood.
PGR and climate change: The video of the book
Twenty years ago there was Climatic Change and Plant Genetic Resources. Now there is, ahem, Plant Genetic Resources and Climate Change. If you don’t have the $120-odd for the book, you can always watch the 30-odd minute video. Actually, both are well worth it.
Deserts genebank rises from ashes
Some good news from the Egypt Deserts Gene Bank. This just in from its head, Dr Mohamed Amar:
The EDGB was looted and much valuable equipment destroyed during the uprisings in Egypt in February 2011. One of my key tasks was to rebuild the gene bank and increase its international network and collaborative research. Therefore, great funding was allocated from the budget of the Desert Research Center for the rehabilitation of the bank, to better than it was. In April 2013, the Egyptian Desert Gene Bank was reopened in the presence of senior leaders of the Desert Research Center and the governor of North Sinai. All equipment has been updated according to the latest standards. At the same time, we have been provided many scholarships for staffs outside Egypt, in China and other countries, as part of the rehabilitation of human resources.
We wish them all the best.