The moment he (and we) have been waiting for: #luigigoestosvalbard.
Let’s get that #hashtag trending.
Brainfood: By-the-numbers Indian edition, with a touch of Bangladesh
- SGDB: A Sugarcane Germplasm Database. Cool, but only 131 accessions? One would have thought there’d be more.
- Essential Oil Composition of Bothriochloa bladhii (Retz.) S.T. Blake: An Introduction from Tropical Region of Western Ghats of India. It’s a widespread neotropical grass. There are about 200 accessions in the world’s genebanks. I wonder if this lot will end up there too.
- Conservation of agricultural biodiversity – an experience in the Chotonagpur plateau region. By the Indian Statistical Institute, Giridih. 40 horsegrams collected, among other things. Does NBPGR know? Is there a database?
- Genome Classification of Musa cultivars from Northeast India as Revealed by ITS and IRAP Markers. 36 out of 38 cultivars had been correctly identified on morphology. Relationship to the national banana collection unclear.
- Correlation and Path Coefficient Analysis of Quantitative Characters in Spine Gourd (Momordica dioica Roxb.). Now we know what to select for. 50 accessions used.
- Population structure and genetic diversity analysis of Indian and exotic rice (Oryza sativa L.) accessions using SSR markers. Microsat study of 82 Asian genotypes, including some from India, identifies a few markers of use in breeding. Wheel successfully re-invented.
- Livelihood and Revenue: Role of rattans among Mongoloid tribes and settlers of Andaman and Nicobar Islands, India. Sources of food, building materials and money (via export trade), but only if harvesting is sustainable, which it doesn’t look like it is. Need a plan, including better silviculture and rotational harvesting. Oh, and get rid of the middlemen.
- Bioprospecting, biopiracy and food security in India: The emerging sides of neoliberalism. All of the above are potential neoliberal stooges.
- Comparative karyomorphological studies of three edible locally important species of Allium from India. A chive is not a chive is not a chive. But it’s hard work to tell them apart.
- Crop diversification, crop and energy productivity under raised and sunken beds: results from a seven-year study in a high rainfall organic production system. Rotations including vegetables all round better than rice monocropping. Nothing neoliberal about that. But who does nothing but rice monocropping? I guess these guys could tell you…
Nibbles: Citrus in Italy, Banana genebank, Post-2015, Wheat Yield Partnership, Kenyan seed company, UC Davis symposium, Dingo genetics
- The history of citrus in Italy.
- The Independent visits the global banana genebank and still doesn’t figure out that there are no seeds there.
- Rome-based UN food agencies come up with post-2015 food security and nutrition targets. Not many people hurt.
- The wheat people have the answer.
- Going where no seed company has gone before.
- UC Davis Plant Breeding symposium to feature CIP genebank stalwart.
- The dingo is different.
Brainfood: Sunflower genomics, Omani chickens, Ozark cowpea, Amerindian urban gardens, Thai homegardens, Global North homegardens, African pollination, Ugandan coffee pollination, Use of wild species, Wheat and climate change, Iranian wheat evaluation, Tunisian artichokes, Fig core, Onion diversity, Distillery yeasts
- Genomic variation in Helianthus: learning from the past and looking to the future. Paleopolyploid events, transposable elements, chromosomal rearrangements. Is there anything these plants don’t have? But then these guys would say that, wouldn’t they.
- Assessment of genetic diversity and conservation priority of Omani local chickens using microsatellite markers. Unsurprisingly, the Dhofar (far S) and Musadam (far N) populations are the most different. I collected crops in both places way back when, and I bet you it would be the same for things like alfalfa and sorghum. Or cowpea, which brings me to…
- Just Eat Peas and Dance: Field Peas (Vigna unguiculata) and Food Security in the Ozark Highlands, U.S. Still important after all these years. (I suspect Gary Nabhan would have predicted this, but I can’t even get an abstract of his paper Food Security, Biodiversity and Human Health: Ethnobiology as a Predictive Science.)
- Amerindian Agriculture in an Urbanising Amazonia (Rio Negro, Brazil). Traditional systems survive move to cities just fine.
- Human-Induced Movement of Wild Food Plant Biodiversity Across Farming Systems is Essential to Ensure Their Availability. Just like in Brazil, people move wild species to their homegardens in Thailand too.
- Urban home food gardens in the Global North: research traditions and future directions. Uhm, could maybe Brazilian and Thai homegarden studies guide similar work in the North… Yep, and here’s how.
- Priorities for Research and Development in the Management of Pollination Services for Agricultural Development in Africa. Old and traditional may not mean weak and out of date, but change gonna come anyway.
- Social and Ecological Drivers of the Economic Value of Pollination Services Delivered to Coffee in Central Uganda. No wait, change here already.
- Use it or lose it: measuring trends in wild species subject to substantial use. Wild species which are being used by people tend to be doing better than those that are not. Yeah, but settle down, the data are not that great.
- An assessment of wheat yield sensitivity and breeding gains in hot environments. The successes have been coming from the lower potential material, not the elite of the elite.
- Adaptation Patterns and Yield Stability of Durum Wheat Landraces to Highland Cold Rainfed Areas of Iran. It’s not always about heat. Anyway, in either case, thank goodness for diverse worldwide germaplasm collections.
- Karyological and genome size insights into cardoon (Cynara cardunculus L., Asteraceae) in Tunisia. The wild populations from Sicily and Tunisia are closest to the crop.
- Ex situ conservation of underutilised fruit tree species: establishment of a core collection for Ficus carica L. using microsatellite markers (SSRs). Fancy maths allows Spanish researchers to recover all microsats within a collection of 300 figs in only about 10% of the accessions. So who gives a fig for the rest, right?
- Assessing the genetic diversity of Spanish Allium cepa landraces for onion breeding using microsatellite markers. Alas, all the Spanish Allium cepa landraces fall in the same cluster, so a core could be tricky. These guys really know their onions.
- Biodiversity of non-Saccharomyces yeasts in distilleries of the La Mancha region (Spain). Gonna need some booze to wash down the figs and onions, right?
Nibbles: GMO debate, IPCC report, SPC ag strategy, Teff, Biofortification conference, Urban protected areas, Costa Rican ecosystems
- Our Nature Comment genebank paper used to both denigrate and promote GMOs. Must be doing something right.
- Same thing likely to happen with Fifth Assessment Report?
- SPC’s Land Resources Division new strategic plan. Good to see an important role for the Centre for Pacific Crops and Trees.
- The future of teff. Two sides to every story. But does it feature in your breakfast?
- Biofortification conference off the ground.
- Urban protected areas: I wonder how many crop wild relatives are involved.
- Costa Rican ecosystems in trouble: I wonder how many crop wild relatives are involved.