- Breeding maize for high yields limits its plasticity.
- “The rich ate fine, floured wheat bread. But if you were poor you cut your teeth on rye and black bread.”
- USA, MLS and ITPGRFA.
- Rethinking conservation. Again.
- Content-free article on growing rice in slightly salty water.
- BBC catches up with coffee rust.
- Making animal feed sustainable. Easier said than done.
Nibbles: Banana, Chocolate, Agricultural biodiversity, Conservation
- A new-to-science sweet-and-sour banana. The crop wild relative wallahs better get on it.
- Tasty report on chocolate diversity.
- It says here that “Agricultural diversity the key to food security”. Why weren’t we told before?
- Big push for “radical new thinking on biodiversity conservation”. No sign of agriculture.
Nibbles: Halloween roots, Fred’s great potatoes, Ellis on TV, CIP genebank online, Weird potato, Weird watermelon, Paul Gepts, Caucasian sheep, Livestock hybrids, COP23
- Halloween is an agricultural thing. Basically.
- Frederick the Great had a thing for potatoes. Among other things.
- CIP genebank manager on TV. He has a thing for potatoes too. As you can tell from his new website.
- Pop quiz: Can you find this N American potato in the CIP genebank?
- The extraordinary story of the ancient Native American crookneck watermelon. Bet it goes well with S. jamesii.
- Paul Gepts gets award. No word on his thoughts on potatoes, but he does like beans.
- Transhumance lives in the Caucasus.
- What in tarnation is a zubron?
- Making the case for climate action on agriculture at COP23. And vice versa.
Brainfood: Finger millet genotyping, Spanish apple diversity, Wheat value chains
- Development of SSR Markers and Their Use in Studying Genetic Diversity and Population of Finger Millet (Eleusine coracana L. Gaertn.). “This study may form the basis for a finger millet breeding and improvement program.” My emphasis.
- Analysis of the genetic diversity and structure of the Spanish apple genetic resources suggests the existence of an Iberian genepool. Iberian material different to international and commercial stuff.
- Sustainability Performance of Food Chains: Linking Biodiversity and Nutritional Value in Italian Wheat-to-Bread Chains. We have indicators!
Brainfood: Rice introgression, African rice cores, Cereal domestication rates, Power vegetables, Biodiversity services, Afrikaner cattle diversity, Conservation funding
- Introgression from cultivated rice alters genetic structures of wild relative populations: implications for in situ conservation. Not totally wild any more.
- Genetic Variation and Population Structure of Oryza glaberrima and Development of a Mini-Core Collection Using DArTseq. 2,179 accessions, 5 geographic groups, 16% recover >95% of polymorphisms.
- Geographic mosaics and changing rates of cereal domestication. Applying fancy maths to archaeobotanical remains shows that selection pressures varied in time, and started slow.
- Tapping the economic and nutritional power of vegetables. Eat your veggies, damn it!
- To what extent can ecosystem services motivate protecting biodiversity? Not enough.
- Genetic diversity of Afrikaner cattle in southern Africa. 3 groups, but not geographically determined, and lots of diversity despite recent declines in numbers.
- Nominal 30-m Cropland Extent Map of Continental Africa by Integrating Pixel-Based and Object-Based Algorithms Using Sentinel-2 and Landsat-8 Data on Google Earth Engine. Next level. But when will be be able to distinguish crops?
- Reductions in global biodiversity loss predicted from conservation spending. But the impact of spending goes down with with increasing development pressure.