Genetic diversity

July 5, 2012July 5, 2012

Maps of Peruvian maize races

A very attractive map of the races of Maize found in Peru posted on Facebook sent me scurrying for the source. Turns out it was put out by the Ministry of the Environment last year. Here it is:

Much prettier than another version that one can also find online:

Of course, these types of maps underplay the diversity that you can find in any one locality within Peru, which can also be considerable. Nice to look at nonetheless.

July 2, 2012July 3, 2012

Brainfood: Brassica breeding, NUS breeding, Soybean domestication, Bambara groundnut, Jatropha chain, Setaria drought tolerance

Developing genetic resources for pre-breeding in Brassica oleracea L.: an overview of the UK perspective. Genebanks will set you free.
Competitive underutilized crops will depend on the state funding of breeding programmes: an opinion on the example of Europe. Divert some subsidies paid directly to farmers to a Europe-wide breeding programme devoted to NUS.
Analysis of average standardized SSR allele size supports domestication of soybean along the Yellow River. The middle part, to be precise, where it loops north.
Bambara nut: A review of utlisation, market potential and crop improvement. Need some functioning value chains, for pity’s sake. That’s why previous promotion efforts failed miserably. Not because they’re, well, not that great a crop? In fact they’re drought-tolerant, tasty, nutritious; but difficult to process, prepare. So do market research to inform breeding.
State-of-the-art of the Jatropha curcas productive chain: From sowing to biodiesel and by-products. Value chains? You want value chains? I’ve got a state-of-the-art one right here.
Validation of an allele-specific marker associated with dehydration stress tolerance in a core set of foxtail millet accessions. The marker explains about 27% of total variation in dehydration tolerance in a core collection, which is apparently pretty good.

June 29, 2012June 29, 2012

Nibbles: C4 rice breeding, Tomato genes, Fruit/nut wild relatives, Peruvian cuisine

C4 rice: it’s really very, very complicated. And Ford Denison on the reason. Kinda.
Speaking of tradeoffs, this tomato taste vs colour story is everywhere. What is it about the (lack of) taste of tomatoes that gets people so riled up? And I wonder what the ones grown in Alaska taste like.
I International Symposium on Wild Relatives of Subtropical and Temperate Fruit and Nut Crops: the abstracts are online. Does it include the tomato. Nope, not getting into that one.
There are several subtropical and temperate fruit involved in Peruvian cuisine. Right? Come on, help me out with these segues.

June 28, 2012June 28, 2012

Nibbles: Impact evaluation reviews, Coffee podcast, Pretty on sustainable intensification, Patient capital, Searching for species names, Searching in general, Palestinian agriculture, Korean Neolithic, Mesquite in Africa, CIMMYT-China, Banana trade, UK plant science, Breadfruit, Weed, Beans in Mexico, Macadamia, Organic Cali

How to do impact evaluation. Required reading.
Podcast on the history of coffee from Linn. Soc. Required listening.
How to intensify agriculture sustainably. Meah.
It may well involve patient capital though.
This thing will look for all the species names in a piece of text or website. Bound to come in useful one of these days.
How to use Google properly. And a vaguely agricultural quiz to see if you’ve been listening in class.
Protecting ancient irrigation system on the West Bank.
And finding the oldest agricultural site in East Asia.
The good and bad side of Prosopis in Africa.
CIMMYT in China.
The banana as a weapon.
Touring UK plant science sites.
Mapping breadfruit to save the world.
“Over 78 million Europeans (15–64 years) have tried cannabis…” Purely medicinal purposes, man.
“We wanted to see how farmers are reacting to this global climate change…” Bean farmers, not cannabis farmers.
If you’re at the Noosa Botanic Gardens, Cooroy, you can see rare macadamias. Yeah but can you smoke ’em?
Organic seed systems in California. No, not cannabis, settle down.

June 25, 2012June 25, 2012

Collecting manual for plant genetic resources updated and online

Collecting plant genetic diversity is one of those great fat handbooks essential for anyone interested in, er, collecting plant genetic diversity. New it’ll set you back USD230. What’s more, the information in that dead-tree edition is truly ancient, much of it dating back to before 1995. But here’s good news. A brand-spanking new (and almost complete) version is available for your online edification, and our very own Luigi Guarino remains one of its editors. Old information has been updated. New information has been included. The whole thing can be downloaded (and printed, if you must). What’s more, “the editors invite your comments”.

What are you waiting for?