- Important job opening at USDA running the Ames Plant Introduction Station. 50,000 accessions, people.
- Online database on the effectiveness of protected areas.
- 100-year seed experiment kicks off.
- Towards more sustainable sugarcane in India. Spoiler alert: juice, not molasses.
- The Neolithic temples of Malta were used to worship food.
- The “fish pepper” of Black Chesapeake homegardens lost, and found..
- News clip on the USDA central genebank at Ft Collins.
- Invest 50 mins in learning about eucalypts.
Meta-Brainfood for the weekend
Time to clean up a few things, I think. For a while now, I’ve been hoarding links to edited volumes. My idea was to do a special dedicated Brainfood on each one, but I now fear that just ain’t gonna happen. Too much other stuff on. So here they are. Maybe one of you will help me out? You know what to do. A pithy one or two sentences summarizing each paper, based on the abstract only if you’re into the whole brevity thing. Interested? Let me know in the comments below, and we’ll set something up. Our first guest-curated Brainfood…
Here they are:
- Do you remember the 2017 book Against The Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States by James C. Scott? I think we may have blogged about it. Anyway, it suggested that it was grain (as opposed to tuber) cultivation that led to the development of hierarchical states. Grain is visible and portable, and so easy to tax, you see. There are interviews with the author galore if you like podcasts. Ok, well, the Cambridge Archaeological Journal had a whole Review Symposium deconstructing that particular revisionist narrative.
- In 2018, something called the 1st International Conference on Genetic Resources and Biotechnology was held in Bogor, Indonesia. A bit of a misnomer, it was really mainly about “[i]nformation system and exchanges of genetic resources for effective crop improvement.” These are the proceedings, and all of the dozens of papers are open access. Maybe someone out there could do their Top 10.
- This one is not as relevant as the others, but it’s interesting nonetheless: Remote Sensing of Plant Biodiversity. Surely some of the 20 contributions have something to say about agricultural biodiversity? Who’s willing to have a look?
- Then there’s the Special Issue of Application in Plant Sciences on Machine Learning in Plant Biology: Advances Using Herbarium Specimen Images. Yummy. Automated identification of CWR specimens, anyone?
- And finally, just out, a Topical Collection in Agriculture and Human Values on Agriculture, Food & Covid-19. Come on, who can resist a hot-take (well, a Rapid Response Opinion) entitled Maybe there is an alternative after all?
Looking forward to hearing from you.
And don’t worry, there’ll be a normal Brainfood on Monday as usual.
Aiming for Ames
There’s an important job opening at USDA running the Plant Introduction Station at Ames, Iowa. That’s something like 50,000 accessions to be responsible for. You can also explore the holdings of USA020, as it’s known in the trade, in Genesys. Maize is the big one, but there’s so much more there. A dream job for someone who wants to really do something to protect and use crop diversity.
Questionnaire on seed conservation and security
Do you conserve crop diversity or contribute to seed security at the local or national levels? If so, the DIVERSIFARM project would like to hear from you.
The questionnaire survey is carried out as part of the research project Pathways to food security, poverty alleviation and livelihoods through the implementation of farmers rights to crop genetic diversity (DIVERSIFARM), carried out by the Fridtjof Nansen Institute, Norway, in collaboration with University of Cape Town, South Africa; Mekelle University, Ethiopia; The Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT; German Institute for Tropical and Subtropical Agriculture; and Norwegian University of Life Sciences. Following this survey, further research and case-studies will be carried out, with the ultimate goal of identifying a roadmap to scale up successful models.
Please complete, and pass on…
Nibbles: UN training, Genebanks double, CG spatial data, Fruit IPR, Citrus greening, Sikkim diversity, Bulgarian lavender, Biogenetic Paradoxes, Heroin, Palestinian eggplant
- Training courses on multilateral environmental agreements, including CBD and Plant Treaty.
- CGIAR dashboard on the Genebank Platform. More data here.
- Some of the above are included in this list of the world’s most high profile genebanks.
- The latest spatial crop data from CGIAR. Useful for genebanks, among other things.
- Protecting fruit intellectual property. Wait, that didn’t come out right.
- I guess this fruit is next.
- Sikkim’s agricultural diversity as colours on a palette.
- Lavender is a nice colour, whether in France or Bulgaria.
- Book on nation-building through agricultural biodiversity. Bulgarians unavailable for comment.
- Poppy diversity being helped by solar panels to build something or other in Afghanistan.
- Palestinian paean to the bitinjan. Jeremy goes to town on it in his latest newsletter.