- My favorite agriculture blogs. Can you say “parochial”?
- Want to track Geographical Indicators? Look no further.
- India’s agriculture magazine tackles Agro-Biodiversity For Food Security.
- And GFAR promotes a new initiative to realise the benefits of agrobiodiversity. Love is all around.
- National Plant Genetics Resources Laboratory (NPGRL) at the University of the Philippines at Los Baños checks in to rehab.
- Bioversity scientist plays with fire, for better and more diverse forest regeneration.
- Mutation breeding; Matt explains the lack of breakthroughs in a bit more detail.
- Fabulous, complex story of spiders, flies and microbes. Add ’em together for green flypaper.
Genebanks forgotten, again
Bill Gates highlights his family Foundation’s work on cassava viruses in his latest letter. We have on occasion wondered here why the CGIAR didn’t make more of its work on that subject.
But anyway. I really wanted to rue a different lost opportunity here.
Historically, increasing the productivity of a crop meant finding two seed variants, each with some desirable and undesirable characteristics, and crossing them until you get a combination with mostly the good characteristics of the two parents. This required actually growing tens of thousands of plants to see how they develop in different growing conditions over time—for example, when water is plentiful and when it is not. Now the process is quite different. Imagine the analogy of a large public library with rooms full of books. We used to have to use the card catalogue and browse through the books to find the information we needed. Now we know the precise page that contains the piece of information we need. In the same way, we can find out precisely which plant contains what gene conferring a specific characteristic. This will make plant breeding happen at a much faster clip.
Would it have killed him to slip in some recognition of the genebanks where all those “books” are so painstakingly and expensively kept?
Nibbles: Canis then and now, Training roundup, Soybean genome, Top 10 viruses, PNG drought, Food archaeology, Sturgeon Bay, Moringa
- Dogs were first domesticated animal. But the love affair is cooling off, at least for some breeds.
- Building capacity for animal genetic resources use, and for conservation and sustainable use under the ITPGRFA. And tree domestication. Is someone keeping track?
- BGI continues to take over DNA world.
- And the Worst Plant Virus Oscar goes to…
- How PNG farmers cope with drought. From what is developing into a really useful blog.
- I wish I had time to read 200 pages on ancient Athenian food. But maybe you do?
- Learn about the USDA potato collection, including lots of wild relatives.
- The tree that thinks it’s a supermarket: Moringa in the limelight again.
Nibbles: Rice breeding, West African agriculture, Asian AnGR, Wheat breeding, Chinese semiotics, Neglected plant at NordGen, Fledermaus, PPB
- Norwich boffins save the world. To get the real story, you need to deconstruct the piece using this.
- “Results indicate that the greatest agriculture-led growth opportunities in West Africa reside in staple crops (cereals and roots and tubers) and livestock production.” Minor crops get the shaft again?
- Project tackles conservation of Asian farm animal diversity. I’ve always wondered whether there might be a role for ecotourism. I’d pay to see weird cocks. And hens.
- Pakistani boffins return home with skills to improve wheat P efficiency. And the resources? We shall see.
- Chinese food and plant semiotics. Can’t wait for LanguageLog to get to grips with this.
- NordGen characterizes a weirdly-named exotic Cinderella crop. Can you guess which?
- And can you guess what the “best kept secret of agricultural success” might be? Clue: nothing to do with those East Anglian boffins of the first item.
- Participatory plant breeding and gender analysis. They’re not giving much away at the source site.
Nibbles: Doggy-style diversity, Livestock diversity, Pomato, Non timber, Non beer, Popcorn, Drying rice, Svalbard
- “[D]iversity in domestic dogs derives from a small genetic tool kit.” Really, really small. Like, 50 genes.
- ILRI says we need to maintain indigenous farm animal diversity in Asia. They eat dogs, don’t they?
- You say pomato, I say totato: “Tomato-potato cross benefits farmers.” Fine, but it’s a graft. So why call it a cross?
- Non timber forest products important “in times of crisis” shock.
- Sumerian beer non-alcoholic? Not even beer, but “fermented cereal beverage“.
- Then again, ancient Peruvians discovered popcorn. But not movies.
- IRRI wants a student to re-examine optimal drying conditions for rice.
- The Svalbard Global Seed Vault– is it important for plant genetic resources? Answers here, next week.