- Application of genetic diversity–ecosystem function research to ecological restoration. Cultivars vs local populations vs genetic diversity approaches in restoration reviewed. More research needed, natch, but genetic diversity should not be dismissed out of hand in a bid for rapid establishment or long-term persistence, as it may well be best for ecosystem functioning.
- Application of consensus theory to formalize expert evaluations of plant species distribution models. Given arm-twisting, experts like models.
- Exploring dietary guidelines based on ecological and nutritional values: A comparison of six dietary patterns. The Dutch should eat less meat. No word on beer.
- Market-based mechanisms for biodiversity conservation: a review of existing schemes and an outline for a global mechanism. You can’t monetize what you can’t measure.
- Genomic resources for breeding crops with enhanced abiotic stress tolerance. You still need the phenotyping.
- Perceptual distinctiveness in Native American maize (Zea mays L.) landraces has practical implications. Kernel colour diversity is a marker for other, more interesting, kinds of diversity.
- Can agro-ecosystems efficiently complement protected area networks? Yes, but only in combination with expansion of protected natural habitats. For birds in Israel, that is.
- Indicators for genetic and phenotypic diversity of Dactylis glomerata in Swiss permanent grassland. Management alters both genotype and phenotype.
- A ‘Reality Check’ in the Management of Tree Breeding Programmes. Have come far, but still a ways to go, in particular with regard to the balance between DNA-based vs conventional breeding and genetic gain vs genetic preservation.
- Yield and Economic Performance of Organic and Conventional Cotton-Based Farming Systems — Results from a Field Trial in India. Organic soybean may be a viable long-term option. Cotton and wheat, jury still out. But early days yet, these rotation trials take a long time to get going.
- Long-distance dispersal of the coconut palm by migration within the coral atoll ecosystem. Hugh Harries, one of the authors, in a recent email to us: “Recent reviews have blown dust from old reports of pre-Colombian coconuts in Panama and demonstrated how the rate of germination distinguishes the naturally selected wild coconut from the domestically selected sort. This review formulates a hypothesis which could identify a previously unconsidered route along which the primordial coconut might travel between the South American and Indian tectonic plates without being indigenous on either.” That is, atoll-hopping.
- Differentiation between fiber and drug types of hemp (Cannabis sativa L.) from a collection of wild and domesticated accessions. Must have been fun doing the evaluation.
Dope diversity denied?
There’s one thing I want to know about what’s going to happen now that marijuana has been legalized in a couple of states in the US. And it’s not on CNN’s list. 1 No, not where a visitor can actually smoke the stuff legally, as opposed to just buying it. Or how I can get a job in the industry. What I want to know is what will happen to diversity. There are some indications that legalization may lead to an increase in intellectual property protection over particular strains. I hope someone out there is gathering the baseline data, and saving the seeds, just in case. Not to mention learning lessons that could then be applied to, I dunno, opium in Afghanistan?
Nibbles: Pig evolution, Genomics field guide, Genome editing, Chilean agroecology training, Oxford Farming Conferences, Grape variety database, Food prices database, Amazonian history, Debunking tomatoes, INFOODS NUS list, Coptic gardens, Aid agencies map
The catching up continues:
- “Genomics is a powerful tool…”: Pigs speciate, admix, fly.
- But in the wrong hands…
- I wonder which types of hands these genome editors have.
- Ok, enough of that. Women, agroecology, capacity building, a fashionable country: what’s not to like?
- I wonder if any of the ladies are at the Oxford Real Farming Conference. Or were. They were probably NOT at the Oxford Farming Conference. Oh the wit of these alternative farming types. You could have followed both on Twitter, were you so minded, and less confused than I.
- Chile — for it is she — of course grows a lot of grapes. Want to know which varieties? Course you do.
- Damn, grapes not included in this World Bank crowd-sourced food price dataset. Which I think we may have linked to before, but what the hell.
- I know we’ve linked to ancient Amazonian civilization stuff before, but this is a predictive model, no less.
- Busted: The tomato.
- The INFOODS “List of underutilized species contributing to the Nutritional Indicators for Biodiversity” is out. Prices not included.
- I somehow thought there would be more underutilized species in this Ethiopian monastery.
- Who pays for (some of) this? Check out the Guardian’s interactive map of European development agencies.
Nibbles: Information, Domestication, Cats, Conference, Gunpowder gardening, Policy advice, Potatoes, Ancient vineyards, New UG99, Bovine emissions, Cacao ants, Palaeo-diet, Bloody quinoa, Tokyo’s honey, Urban biodiversity, Ilex, Conifers
- Wow! Just wow. Big Picture Agriculture has launched an incredibly useful website.
- Chromosomes, crops and superdomestication, a slideshare presentation by Pat Heslop-Harrison.
- Cats, domesticated? Not as far as I’m concerned. Still, Ancient Chinese cats ate rats, leading to their domestication.
- Independent plant breeders, a conference just for you.
- Great ammunition for the lazy gardener.
- IBPES told to “tap the wisdom of indigenous peoples”.
- Kenyan policymakers told to consider the potato.
- Basque vineyards of a millennium ago.
- A new strain of UG99 wheat rust? But this time, the world is ready.
- Variable diets linked to variable emissions shock.
- scidev.net reports that ants protect cacao trees from fungal diseases. (Yes, I’m taking short cuts here.)
- Palaeolithic people preferred nutrition-rich places.
- And quinoa remains as confusing as ever.
- Tokyo’s local honey.
- Although agriculture barely features in a paean to urban biodiversity. It should.
- The holly and the coffee: The Botanist in the Kitchen does Yerba Maté
- Ready for the inevitable ennui of next Christmas, a taxonomy of conifers.
Brainfood: Tea flower transcriptomics, Ag origins, Hunan rice, ITPGRFA & CBD, Mycorrhiza, Sugar beet breeding, Agronomy, Molecular domestication, Cactus domestication, Rice yield gene
- Floral Transcriptome Sequencing for SSR Marker Development and Linkage Map Construction in the Tea Plant (Camellia sinensis). Neat, to be sure, but not entirely clear why the transcriptome of a part of a crop that is not economically exploited should be of more than academic use to anyone. But no doubt someone will set us right on this.
- Emergence of Agriculture in the Foothills of the Zagros Mountains of Iran. Eastern Fertile Crescent just as important as western.
- Analysis of main agronomic characteristics and utilization status of rice resources in Hunan Province. Hunan has a provincial genebank with more than 12,000 accession, “repetition eliminated.”
- The comparison of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture and the Nagoya Protocol. Like the above, this is in Chinese, except for the abstract, which recommends ratification of both relevant instruments. I hope someone is listening.
- Biodiversity of Arbuscular Mycorrhizal fungi in Agricultural crops of western Himalayas. Everybody’s at it. Well, almost.
- Assessment of breeding progress in sugar beet by testing old and new varieties under greenhouse and field conditions. It has been steady and is set to continue. At least in Germany.
- Why crop yields in developing countries have not kept pace with advances in agronomy. Let them eat German sugar beets. But seriously: agronomist says it’s about the agronomy.
- Molecular mechanisms involved in convergent crop domestication. It’s mutations at orthologous loci, and it can be copied.
- Differential survival and growth of wild and cultivated seedlings of columnar cacti: Consequences of domestication. Gotta wonder if mutations at orthologous loci were involved.
- NAL1 allele from a rice landrace greatly increases yield in modern indica cultivars. But it came from a tropical japonica landrace from Indonesia, and works its magic via pleiotropic effect on plant architecture.