- Genetic diversity in European men and one of the organisms they exploit. And another.
- CIAT cassava entomologist rings warning bell.
- ILRI boffins point out why they don’t have enough money. Yeah, but what’s to be done about it?
- Malnutrition in Kenya and Guatemala. Are school gardens an/the answer? FAO thinks so.
Nibbles: Kiss apple, Cryptic variation, Brewing yeast history, Sandalwood genebank, Large chile, Red dye, Grassland, Fish eco-labeling, Radiation
- Koreans breed bite-sized apple for breath-freshening. Why can’t I find a picture?
- Climate change bad for genetic diversity too. Tell that to taro in Cameroon.
- Lager yeast came from South America. Thank you, Argentina! And more on long-distance microbe movement.
- Field Gene Bank of Threatened Plants from the Western Ghats threatened.
- Man’s 16-inch chili may be a record. Get your mind out of the gutter.
- The source of Turkish Red.
- “The proper use of native grasslands is to use them as grasslands…”
- Something fishy about eco-labeling.
- Japanese boffins trying to breed radiation-tolerant rice. Maybe they should look at this map in their search for parents for their crossing programme.
Nibbles: Nutrition, Famine, Incentives, Pests & Diseases, Employment, Genebank support, Commercialisation, Hay & Straw, Nitrogen fixing
- Jess dissects nutrition mystification. So hey, Jess, what field do you work in?
- Can agricultural research help eradicate famine? CGIAR boss asks the tough ones.
- Giant FAO document on Payments for Ecosystem Services and Food Security.
- Crop diversity and disease pressure, The case of maize in China.
- Wanna job? Crops for the Future Research Centre is hiring.
- Our chums at the Global Crop Diversity Trust get a Dutch treat.
- Nagoya Protocol threatens to conserve Mexican biodiversity.
- The Scientist Gardener distinguishes hay from straw.
- Ford Denison scrutinizes nitrogen-fixing cereals paper.
Brainfood: Barley genes, Stability & Diversity, Access & Benefit Sharing,
- Analysis of >1000 single nucleotide polymorphisms in geographically matched samples of landrace and wild barley indicates secondary contact and chromosome-level differences in diversity around domestication genes. They’ve been exchanging genes! Oh, and the site of domestication may be further south.
- Identifying population- and community-level mechanisms of diversity–stability relationships in experimental grasslands. Stability depends on a few dominant species that are out of sync with one another.
- Effective governance of access and benefit-sharing under the Convention on Biological Diversity. Identifies six critical factors that determine the effectiveness of ABS governance.
- Diversity and abundance of arthropods in subtropical rice growing areas in the Brazilian south. They’re abundant! And diverse!
Onions evaluated “for food security”
Scientists at Warwick University’s Crop Centre have examined “96 of the world’s onion varieties” for resistance to basal rot (caused by the ubiquitous Fusarium oxysporum) and their ability to form close relationships with certain beneficial fungi. The press release doesn’t go into any detail, such as which varieties top the lists, or anything useful like that, although it does raise some questions. Like, where were the onions from? Andrew Taylor, the researcher in charge, said this:
“We have developed a unique onion diversity set from material sourced from across the globe. We now have a extremely useful library of the variation in traits … all of which will be extremely useful to growers and seed producers dealing with changing conditions and threats to onion crops.”
Spiffy. And a nice alternative, eventually, to current control methods. But what exactly is this “unique onion diversity set”. Is it, by any chance, anything to do with the Allium collection maintained at the old UK National Vegetable Collection at Wellesbourne, recently threatened with closure? And if so, why wouldn’t that have been mentioned by the Warwick Crop Centre, which absorbed Wellesbourne and its Genetic Resources Unit? Surely anything good that comes out of the Wellesbourne genebank is an argument for continued support.
On a purely personal note, I’d love to know whether two varieties, Up-to-date and Bedfordshire Champion, were among the 96 that were evaluated. That’s because in 1948 the UK Ministry of Agriculture Fisheries and Food noted that Up-to-date had excellent resistance to white rot, while Bedfordshire Champion was highly susceptible. In the mid 1960s, MAFF decided they were the same variety, under synonyms, and dropped Up-to-date from the National Catalogue.Wellesbourne did maintain it, and it would be interesting to know whether the two had different profiles in this latest round of evaluation.