- Introducing a New Breed of Wine Yeast: Interspecific Hybridisation between a Commercial Saccharomyces cerevisiae Wine Yeast and Saccharomyces mikatae. The future of wine?
- Breeding systems, hybridization and continuing evolution in Avon Gorge Sorbus. You had me at “Avon Gorge, Bristol, UK, is a world ‘hotspot’ for Sorbus diversity.”
- Taro leaf blight — A threat to global food security. Yes, but we have the technology…
- Agromorphological characterization of Sesamum radiatum (Schum. and Thonn.), a neglected and underutilized species of traditional leafy vegetable of great importance in Benin. Yes, but we need the technology…
- Phenoscope: an automated large-scale phenotyping platform offering high spatial homogeneity. Somebody mention technology?
- An Inventory of Crop Wild Relatives of the United States. More than you’d think.
- Empirical Test of an Agricultural Landscape Model. The Importance of Farmer Preference for Risk Aversion and Crop Complexity. It’s not just about profit. At least in the UK.
- Using citizen scientists to measure an ecosystem service nationwide. Bullshit. No, really, it’s about the decomposition of cow pats.
- Intragenesis and cisgenesis as alternatives to transgenic crop development. Spingenesis.
- Managing biodiversity rich hay meadows in the EU: a comparison of Swedish and Romanian grasslands. Both need more input from local knowledge.
- Mediterranean Hedysarum phylogeny by transferable microsatellites from Medicago. Wait, Sulla? What happened to Hedysarum?
- Polymorphic microsatellite markers in pineapple (Ananas comosus (L.) Merrill). And?
Nibbles: Trees, Gates on CG, Gardens, NUS surveys, GMOs, Free range livestock, Tasty fish, Traditional potatoes
- Britain gets a tree seed bank. Wait, it didn’t already have one? St Helena seems to, sort of. And Cameroon. And why they’re needed more than ever; and more. Although in Brazil trees can be the bad guys.
- Bill Gates praises CIMMYT, and the CGIAR as a whole.
- A Renaissance garden recreated in NYC.
- A survey on moringa. And one on achocha and oca.
- And speaking of deconstructing weird crops, how about saffron?
- Yet another one of those GMOs-are-not-as-bad-as-you-think pieces. Is any of this getting through, I wonder?
- Free range pigs in Kenya and the USA.
- Speaking of free range livestock… Well, a species distantly related to livestock anyway. Oh, and here’s another restoration story, from another continent.
- Free range glass eels too. And salmon, after a fashion.
- Traditional potatoes in fancy Lima restaurants. Maybe with pork or fish?
Nibbles: Lemons, Quinoa, Sago, Onions
Iron Chef edition:
- Preserve Amalfi lemons. (No, not that kind of preserve.)
- Ist International Quinoa Research Symposium comes to Washington. (No, not that Washington.)
- Sago before rice in Ancient China. (A remark about sago being dessert isn’t going to fly, is it?)
- Know your onions and, er, “make love to them”?
Nibbles: Historical coffee, Conservation agriculture, Ecosystem services, Good weeds
- Kew’s data manglers are breathing life into the archives, but I need more narrative on coffee rust.
- Singing the praises of conservation agriculture in Tanzania.
- IFPRI discovers ecology, and it’s complicated.
- Not to be outdone, CIAT discovers weeds are important food.
Brainfood: Carrot domestication, Nigerian diets, Rotations & ecosystem services, Bangladeshi diets, Maize breeding sites, Olives and climate change, Mixtures and invertebrates, Genebank information systems
- Genetic structure and domestication of carrot (Daucus carota subsp. sativus) (Apiaceae). Origin in Central Asia, but no genetic bottleneck (sic).
- Data collection and assessment of commonly consumed foods and recipes in six geo-political zones in Nigeria: Important for the development of a National Food Composition Database and Dietary Assessment. Nigerians eat a lot of soup.
- The integration of crop rotation and tillage practices in the assessment of ecosystem services provision at the regional scale. Good trick if you can do it.
- Nutritional composition of minor indigenous fruits: Cheapest nutritional source for the rural people of Bangladesh. If only the rural people knew about this.
- Effectiveness of selection at CIMMYT’s main maize breeding sites in Mexico for performance at sites in Africa and vice versa. Is high. Phew.
- Olive trees as bio-indicators of climate evolution in the Mediterranean Basin. Olives in Germany by 2100?
- Crop genetic diversity benefits farmland biodiversity in cultivated fields. Mixed wheat fields better for soil invertebrate biodiversity than fields with single varieties.
- IT background of the medium-term storage of Martonvásár Cereal Genebank resources in phytotron cold rooms. The interesting thing is that the system links genebank data with breeders’ data. Don’t see that a lot.