- Avenues to meet food security. The role of agronomy on solving complexity in food production and resource use. Wait, what, it’s not all about the breeding?
- Population studies of native grass-endophyte symbioses provide clues for the roles of host jumps and hybridization in driving their evolution. Wait, what, we have to conserve these things too now?
- Morphological diversity in breadfruit (Artocarpus, Moraceae): insights into domestication, conservation, and cultivar identification. Cool, we now have a multi-access Lucid key to help us recognize varieties.
- Geographical variation of foxtail millet, Setaria italica (L.) P. Beauv. based on rDNA PCR–RFLP. Geographic differentiation, centre in East Asia, evidence of migration, yada yada.
- Within-genotype epigenetic variation enables broad niche width in a flower living yeast. Wait, what, now we have to document the epigenome too?
- Phylogeography of Asian wild rice, Oryza rufipogon: a genome-wide view. Fancy markers come through where lesser breeds caused confusion. Two groups, clinally arranged, with the China-Indochina group close to indica, neither close to japonica. So one, Chinese, domestication event, yada yada.
Agricultural biodiversity and population in Laos
Normally, I would elegantly link some trenchant comments on the Agrobiodiversity Initiative in the Lao PDR (TABI), whose website has recently been pointed out to us, ((Thanks, Cedric.)) to the equally recent release of the AsiaPop dataset. But Lao PDR is, annoyingly, not (yet?) one of the countries for which AsiaPop has spatial population data. Which is a pity because TABI does have some interesting-looking maps on its study sites as well as a rather more forbidding, though no doubt extremely useful, online metadata platform.
Failing that, I’ll just leave you with TABI’s own description of TABI:
TABI is a long term commitment by the Lao Government and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) which seeks to conserve, enhance and manage the biological diversity found in farming landscapes in order to improve the livelihoods of upland farm families in northern Laos. During its first phase (2009-2012) TABI is geographically focusing on Luang Prabang and Xieng Khouang Provinces in the north of Laos.
Nibbles: GIBF, Identifiers, Farming animals, Geomedicine, Seed saving, Seeds of Success, CWRs, CORA 2012, Sourdough culture bank, Phenology, Wild Coffea, Cassava conference, Condiments, Gulf truffles, Cashew nut, Home gardens, Tea, Bacterial diversity
- GIBF taxonomy is broken. We’re doomed. No, but it can be fixed. Phew.
- Maybe start with a unique identifier for taxonomists? Followed by one for genebank accessions… Yeah. Right.
- Domesticating animals won’t save them. And more on the commodification of wildlife. Is that even a word?
- Geomedicine is here. Can geonutrition be far behind? We’re going to need better maps, though.
- Saving heirlooms, one bright student at a time.
- “Botanists Make Much Use of Time.” If you can get beyond the title, there’s another, quite different, but again quite nice, seed saving story on page 3.
- “Why aren’t these plants the poster children [for plant conservation]?” You tell me.
- Or, instead of doing something about it, as above, we could have a week of Collective Rice Action 2012.
- You can park your sourdough here, sir.
- How Thoreau is helping boffins monitor phenology. But there’s another way too.
- “She drinks coffee. She farms coffee. She studies coffee.” Wild coffee.
- Massive meet on the Rambo Root. Very soon, in Uganda.
- Ketchup is from China? Riiiight. Whatever, who cares, we have the genome!
- And in other news, there are truffles in Qatar. But maybe not for long.
- The weirdness of cashews.
- The normalcy of home gardens as a source of food security — in Indonesia.
- Ok, then, the weirdness of oolong tea.
- Aha, gotcha, the normalcy of office bacterial floras! Eh? No, wait…
Sunflower guru bags medal
Plant scientist Loren Rieseberg awarded Linnean Society's Darwin-Wallace medal #linneansociety
— Sandra Knapp (@SandyKnapp) May 24, 2012
I don’t see it on its website yet, but the Linnean Society of London has just awarded the prestigious Darwin-Wallace Medal to Loren Rieseberg, according to Twitter traffic. Dr Riesberg is an expert on sunflower genetics and evolution, and has done much pioneering work on the wild relatives. As luck would have it, I interviewed him recently about his work, and you can listen to the result here. Congratulations to Loren.
Brainfood: Healthy berries, Maghrebi arpicots, Visualizing DNA relationships, Below-ground plant diversity, European apples, Rice storage, Barley movement
- Antiglycation activity of Vaccinium spp. (Ericaceae) from the Sam Vander Kloet collection for the treatment of type II diabetes. The tropical ones are better. But who is Sam Vander Kloet, I hear you ask?
- Genetic diversity and differentiation of grafted and seed propagated apricot (Prunus armeniaca L.) in the Maghreb region. Well, there really isn’t much.
- Trees and/or networks to display intraspecific DNA sequence variation? And.
- Below-ground plant species richness: new insights from DNA-based methods. Theory says it will be higher than above-ground richness.
- New Insight into the History of Domesticated Apple: Secondary Contribution of the European Wild Apple to the Genome of Cultivated Varieties. No genetic bottleneck, and lots of contribution from local wild relative, making European apples closer to that than to Central Asian ancestor.
- Viability of Oryza sativa L. seeds stored under genebank conditions for up to 30 years. Genebanks work.
- Barrier analysis detected genetic discontinuity among Ethiopian barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) landraces due to landscape and human mobility on gene flow. Barriers to human movement, rather than mere distance, lead to genetic differentiation in barley.