- Caribbean coast of Colombia high in cassava genetic diversity. Shakira alerted.
- Costa Rica getting to grips with ITPGRFA. Not many people hurt.
- Fox News Latino has a dietician tell us about Inca foods. In other news, Fox News has a Latino bit.
- Plant Cuttings!
- Did you celebrate the International Day of Struggle against Monoculture Tree Plantations? And does what’s happening with açaí qualify as plantations?
- The London Olympics backlash begins. If you don’t agree with all that, here’s how to make your own meadow. Or restore one. Any crop wild relatives in all meadow-making?
- Nice pic of squash diversity.
- Very geeky presentation on how sequencing the wheat genome is going to solve all our problems. If you can follow it, you’re already convinced.
- Floating plastic islands full of papyrus plants will save Lake Naivasha. I don’t know, but I’d sure like to see it.
Brainfood: Organic ag, Garlic conservation costs, Spelt malting, Wild rice genetics, Diversity and ecosystem function, Old late blight, Urbanization and biodiversity, Seed laws, DNA from herbaria, Fruit & veg & school, Quinoa bars, Maize introgression
- Organic vegetable farms are not nutritionally disadvantaged compared with adjacent conventional or integrated vegetable farms in Eastern Australia. Something for the next meta-analysis.
- Comparing costs for different conservation strategies of garlic (Allium sativum L.) germplasm in genebanks. It depends.
- Malting process optimization of spelt (Triticum spelta L.) for the brewing process. You can make a decent beer from spelt. Can I do the evaluation?
- Genetic differentiation of Oryza ruffipogon [sic] Griff. from Hainan Island and Guangdong, China Based on Hd1 and Ehd1 genes. It’s different, because of different ecology.
- Plant species diversity and genetic diversity within a dominant species interactively affect plant community biomass. In other words, the higher the genetic diversity within the dominant species, the further the effect of species diversity on biomass goes from negative to positive. Bottom line is that you have to consider multiple diversity levels in relating biodiversity to ecosystem functioning. At least in this ecosystem.
- Evidence for presence of the founder Ia mtDNA haplotype of Phytophthora infestans in 19th century potato tubers from the Rothamsted archives. “…the founder Ia mtDNA haplotype survived in potato tubers after 1846 and was present over 30 years later in the UK.”
- Global forecasts of urban expansion to 2030 and direct impacts on biodiversity and carbon pools. Urban area to triple, affecting important biodiversity hotspots. Biggest surprise to me was Turkey. Gotta be a lot of CWRs there that are going to be threatened by urbanization. But I guess this is good news for urban agriculture?
- Seed Governance at the Intersection of Multiple Global and Nation-State Priorities: Modernizing Seeds in Turkey. Developing countries are opting for laws that favor commercialization and privatization because they’re buying into the currently dominant paradigm of what agricultural development means. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t. And if my aunt had wheels she’d be a bus.
- DNA Damage in Plant Herbarium Tissue. There isn’t enough of it to matter.
- Systematic review and meta-analysis of school-based interventions to improve daily fruit and vegetable intake in children aged 5 to 12 y. Fruit yes, veggies no.
- Use of cereal bars with quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa W.) to reduce risk factors related to cardiovascular diseases. Only 22 young(ish) subjects, but promising.
- The Genomic Signature of Crop-Wild Introgression in Maize. The wild relative has helped the cultigen to adapt to highland Mexico.
Nibbles: Polyploidy study, Agrobiodiversity policy, Organic livestock, Innovation, Buffett on small farms
- $2 million to study strawberries sounds like quite a lot, but then it is to investigate polyploidy in general.
- Agroforesters hear about IPR and agrobiodiversity. Probably not for the first, or last, time.
- Let’s not forget that even animal husbandry can be organic.
- “A lack of evidence to convince policymakers holds back progress on grassroots innovation in agriculture.” Weird; doesn’t seem to hold them back on anything else.
- What Howard G. Buffett knows about small farms. Campaign for Real Farming has made his words available.
Nibbles: Diversification talk, Gene award, Community genebanks, GCARD, Natural products, Nutrition talk, Wild bees, GM for drought fail, Face of breeding, Cheese, Bird, Cacao smuggling, CWRs, Perreniation
- ICRISAT DG agrees with Bioversity DG. Kinda. CGIAR DGs communicating via blog. Who’d have thunk it.
- Borlaug Global Rust Initiative gives its first Gene Stewardship Award to Nepali breeders. I wonder if they work with community genebanks at all. Or what they think about them. Or even if they know they are there.
- GCARD 2 is coming, socially networked up the wazoo. Be afraid.
- Authenticating natural health products via barcoding.
- FAO discussion on making agriculture work for nutrition.
- Nice photos of wild bees.
- Not sure if we already linked to the big report on why biotechnology is not delivering drought-resistant crops.
- Meet a Breeder. Conventional, natch.
- Who moved my artisanal cheese?
- Bird diversity on intensive farms like happy Tolstoyan familes: the same everywhere.
- What’s a poor cacao farmer to do? Obey the law and make a loss, or break it in the hope of breaking even?
- Kew does the crop wild relatives thing for Plantwise, and check out that picture!
- Nature discovers perreniation as salvation of African soils; can resilieficiency be far behind?
Nibbles: Yams, Wild relatives, Plant breeding, Bamboo, Funding, Leaves, Red rice, Rice breeder, Governance and poverty
- Yams heading for trouble. What to do?
- Learn something from wild relatives, like they’re doing with tomatoes?
- Go for a totally new plant breeding paradigm?
- I know, let’s all go out and celebrate World Bamboo Day!
- Switzerland gives Laos US$6.3m in support of government’s agrobiodiversity initiative.
- W.K. Kellogg Foundation gives Growing Power US$5m in support of Growing Power’s urban agriculture efforts.
- National Geographic gives leaves a good going-over without mentioning agriculture.
- Farmers in Kerala give Navara red rice as a reason for good health and prosperity.
- World gives Monty Jones, rice breeder, high status.
- Paul Collier fan gives African governance the blame for low agricultural productivity.