Genebanks

July 6, 2012July 6, 2012

Discovering the value of the Greek national genebank

Attentive readers may remember a post several months back announcing a project that is attempting the unenviable task of assigning a dollar (or euro, or maybe even drachma) value to the Greek national genebank, and presumably making some recommendations for funding. Well, the project is off and running and now has a website. One for the feed reader.

LATER: Of course, to get at that valuation, it will be necessary to figure out how much of the material in the Greek genebank is unique. Well, Aegis now has an app for that!

July 6, 2012July 6, 2012

Nibbles: Social CRP, Coconut genebank, Rice breeding, Conservation debate, Mongolian herders, American chestnut, Marine conservation

CGIAR Research Programme on Roots, Tuber and Bananas gets a blog to go with its Facebook page and Twitter feed.
Coconut clones? I don’t think so.
Rice yield gene? I don’t think so.
NY Times hosts a debate on conservation, and genebanks get a look-in.
Mongolia’s reindeer herders get some advice.
“My great grandfather’s legacy is something I grew up knowing and respecting, but my parents’ conservation ethic is something that I have always lived.”
Marine reserves can be good for fish. And abalone?

July 5, 2012July 5, 2012

Nibbles: Wild goat, Heirlooms, Queen’s garden, Baobabs, Bison demise, Friendly yeast, Peruvian potatoes, Saline rice

Old goat redux.
A really nothing piece in the Washington Post about heirlooms.
This is more like it: take home the Queen’s heirlooms. Well, almost.
Here’s a baobab truly worthy of a factsheet.
It was international trade that wiped out the bison.
Fundamentals of On-Farm Plant Breeding Course: The Video.
Another use for yeast.
The Parque de la Papa highlighted. But doesn’t say seeds are even going to Svalbard.
Salinity tolerance in rice: in Goa, and at IRRI.

July 4, 2012July 4, 2012

GCP mounts a full frontal info-attack

CGIAR’s Generation Challenge Programme is mounting a reasonably effective information blitzkrieg, and chickpeas are the shock troops, with blog posts and videos their weapons of choice. A minor triumph is in the offing on the social networking front. But I have to say I think the RSS feeds are a bit of a rout. The main site has way too many. Yet the blogs over at GCP’s main online product, the otherwise quite impressive Integrated Breeding Platform, don’t have any at all, though the discussion forums (and what exactly is the difference?) do. Time to re-think the whole RSS strategy.

July 2, 2012July 3, 2012

Brainfood: Brassica breeding, NUS breeding, Soybean domestication, Bambara groundnut, Jatropha chain, Setaria drought tolerance

Developing genetic resources for pre-breeding in Brassica oleracea L.: an overview of the UK perspective. Genebanks will set you free.
Competitive underutilized crops will depend on the state funding of breeding programmes: an opinion on the example of Europe. Divert some subsidies paid directly to farmers to a Europe-wide breeding programme devoted to NUS.
Analysis of average standardized SSR allele size supports domestication of soybean along the Yellow River. The middle part, to be precise, where it loops north.
Bambara nut: A review of utlisation, market potential and crop improvement. Need some functioning value chains, for pity’s sake. That’s why previous promotion efforts failed miserably. Not because they’re, well, not that great a crop? In fact they’re drought-tolerant, tasty, nutritious; but difficult to process, prepare. So do market research to inform breeding.
State-of-the-art of the Jatropha curcas productive chain: From sowing to biodiesel and by-products. Value chains? You want value chains? I’ve got a state-of-the-art one right here.
Validation of an allele-specific marker associated with dehydration stress tolerance in a core set of foxtail millet accessions. The marker explains about 27% of total variation in dehydration tolerance in a core collection, which is apparently pretty good.