- Watch out for the millets renaissance.
- This small wild pig is already having a renaissance.
- Can you help with the renaissance of some Iraqi vegetable seeds?
- Alpine botanicals will be having anything but a renaissance. Genebanks anyone?
- No way to call the uptick in interest in biodiversity in the financial industry a renaissance. I’m not even sure it’s an uptick, actually. Absinthe, anyone?
- Will the EU’s Farm to Fork plus biodiversity strategies lead to an environmental renaissance?
Brainfood: Extra livestock edition
- Resilience and livestock adaptations to demographic growth and technological change: A diachronic perspective from the Late Bronze Age to Late Antiquity in NE Iberia. The changing balance between sheep, cattle and pigs through time was driven by socio-economics more than environment.
- Heat stress will detrimentally impact future livestock production in East Africa. 4-19% of livestock production will have more heat to cope with.
- Pastoralism in the highest peaks: Role of the traditional grazing systems in maintaining biodiversity and ecosystem function in the alpine Himalaya. A ban on grazing would be counter-productive.
- The evolving interface between pastoralism and uncertainty : reflecting on cases from three continents. Adaptive herd management, livelihood mosaics, persisting mobility, reticular territories, and articulated social networks have been enough, but for how long more?
- Redefinition of the Mora Romagnola Pig Breed Herd Book Standard Based on DNA Markers Useful to Authenticate Its “Mono-Breed” Products: An Example of Sustainable Conservation of a Livestock Genetic Resource. Fraudsters beware.
- Estimating the genetic diversity of Pacific salmon and trout using multigene eDNA metabarcoding. DNA was recovered from the water, for pity’s sake.
Nibbles: Transformation, Livestock pod, Coffee pod, GHUs, Viz double, Yaupon, Wild foods, GRIN, Korean vegetables, Oz Indigenous bakers, Warwick vegetables
- IAASTD ten years on. Not many people hurt.
- Interesting new ILRI podcast hits the airwaves.
- And here’s another new podcast: A History of Coffee. So far so pretty good.
- Meanwhile, CIP rounds up recent webinars on germplasm health.
- Fun visualizations on the seasonality of food.
- Speaking of visualizations, RAWGraphs is a pretty neat tool.
- North America used to have a native caffeinated beverage, the attractively named Ilex vomitoria.
- Maybe South Africa’s local wild foods have a better chance.
- Using USDA’s genebank database, GRIN.
- Not sure if this Korean-American farmer does (access USDA’s genebank database, do keep up), but probably.
- I wonder if any of these Australian wild foods will find their way into a genebank, just in case.
- Genebanks like the UK veggie one at Warwick.
Brainfood: Rewilding, Neotropical domestication, Teosinte hybrids, Milpa, Wild grapes, Wild banana, Wild rice, European landrace trifecta, Ethiopian coffee double, Eco-anger
- Agricultural wilding: rewilding for agricultural landscapes through an increase in wild productive systems. But would it be sparing or sharing?
- Disentangling Domestication from Food Production Systems in the Neotropics. “Wild” is a contested concept in the Neotropics anyway.
- Evidence for Multiple Teosinte Hybrid Zones in Central Mexico. Maize systems are already pretty wild in Mexico.
- Maize intercropping in the milpa system. Diversity, extent and importance for nutritional security in the Western Highlands of Guatemala. And they’re doing pretty well, thank you very much.
- Extensive introgression among North American wild grapes (Vitis) fuels biotic and abiotic adaptation. Plenty of wilding in American grapevines too.
- Conservation status assessment of banana crop wild relatives using species distribution modelling. There’s a danger of banana de-wilding.
- A route to de novo domestication of wild allotetraploid rice. The upside of dewilding.
- Landrace added value and accessibility in Europe: what a collection of case studies tells us. Landraces can maybe help with that rewilding of agriculture in Europe, as they are mostly adapted to marginal, low-input systems.
- The Analysis of Italian Plant Agrobiodiversity Databases Reveals That Hilly and Sub-Mountain Areas Are Hotspots of Herbaceous Landraces. Like I said, landraces can help.
- Locally Adapted and Organically Grown Landrace and Ancient Spring Cereals—A Unique Source of Minerals in the Human Diet. Plus they’re good for you.
- Not my cup of coffee: Farmers’ preferences for coffee variety traits – Lessons for crop breeding in the age of climate change. Which is not to say landraces don’t need improvement every now and then.
- The potential for income improvement and biodiversity conservation via specialty coffee in Ethiopia. But in the end, it’s about the value added.
- From anger to action: Differential impacts of eco-anxiety, eco-depression, and eco-anger on climate action and wellbeing. Does any of the above make you angry? Good!