- What I really need today is some Tibetan amdo milk tea. Very parky out.
- Failing that, these cartograms will keep me warm.
- This list of supposedly amazing agriculture maps is only meh, though. Needed more cartograms.
- Oh wait, there are other fermented options out there.
- ICIPE gets into Big Data.
- Toystory has some big data of his own. Worrying perhaps to think what he’s done to the diversity of the breed, but let’s not be churlish about his achievement. At least he wasn’t a Nazi.
- UK welcomes back some bees.
- There was a big UC Davis–Mars Symposium yesterday on “An exploration of scientific discovery, innovation and collaboration in food, agriculture and health.” Some of it was on Twitter.
- Roundup of crop wild relatives etc. research at US Davis.
One wheat database to rule them all
Interesting to see Brockwell Bake, of all people, come up with an online database which
…brings together publicily available data for around 398,000 wheat lines from many wheat germplasm collections including the European Wheat Database, the Vavilov Insitute (Russia), the Australian winter cereals collection, USDA/GRIN (USA), CIMMYT, ICARDA and the Nordic Gene Centre with additional collection site information from FIGS plus pedigree, synonym and genetic data from GRIS and gene symbol and class information from the Catalogue of Gene Symbols to create a central point to help you find wheat lines of interest to you.
In terms of coverage, that’s not far short of what Genesys has, which is 415,070 accessions. Online data does get around…
Nibbles: American goats, Ancient dogs, Colorado sheep, Beer vs Wine, Vitis breeding, Southern cooking, Pennsylvania farming, Cherokee seeds
- A distinctly US flavour to Nibbles today, for some reason.
- A map of every goat in the US. Texas is the goat hotspot.
- Not there with dogs yet, but at least we now know when they arrived.
- How about sheep, though?
- Interestingly, there are more wineries than breweries in Texas.
- Saving the winegrape, molecule by molecule. Including in Texas?
- Saving Southern cooking, seed by seed. You remember that peanut thing from yesterday?
- But Pennsylvania cooking?
- How about Cherokee cooking?
Nibbles: Eggplant, Potato seeds, Survey report
Let’s take this nice and slow …
- A history of the eggplant, and its usurpation. Is that even a word?
- The fun to be had from a few true
friendspotato seeds. - It’s out! “Lessons learned about ways and means to conserve and use genetic diversity to build resilience to climate change in food and agriculture systems survey report” (PDF)
Brainfood: Teak origins, Rice diversity, Urban ag, Mapping anthropogenic pressure, Fungal divesity, Bitter cucumber
- Genetic resources of teak (Tectona grandis Linn. f.)—strong genetic structure among natural populations. Centre of diversity in semi-moist eastern coast of India and in Myanmar.
- Analysis of Genetic Diversity and Population Structure of Rice Germplasm from North-Eastern Region of India and Development of a Core Germplasm Set. 10% of 7000 very diverse accessions recovers 99.9% of allelic diversity.
- Global assessment of urban and peri-urban agriculture: irrigated and rainfed croplands. Urban croplands represent 6% of total. No word on what percentage of genetic diversity, but I bet more than 6%.
- Satellite Earth observation data to identify anthropogenic pressures in selected protected areas. Some data can be used to identify some pressures.
- Global diversity and geography of soil fungi. Climatic factors are key, but look at the diagram.
- Biosynthesis, regulation, and domestication of bitterness in cucumber. So that Dutch breeder, who Jeremy always mentions, who once tasted 10,000 cucumber cotyledons in his quest to breed a nice-tasting one, would not have to do so now. Which is a pity.