- Anissa makes a meal of red rice from Western China eco-museum.
- Want to influence the US Feed the Future “global hunger and food security initiative”? Course you do.
- Peak heat and maize yields in the US. Bear it in mind when you read today’s flurry of interest in a new study from David Lobell et al.
- Seed mixtures not a good idea? Say it isn’t so!
- $4 million to continue development of biofortified sorghum.
- Cooking up a storm, millets edition.
- They’ve outlasted the dinosaurs, but they still need help.
- USDA gets blue in the face about blueberries.
Nibbles: Fair mangoes, Rice domestication, Saline collections, Spice collections, Aquaculture, Salmon
- Fair trade Haitian mangoes hit the shelves.
- Molecular boffins use nifty new toys to re-write rice history. Until the next time.
- The genebank of the International Centre for Biosaline Agriculture in Dubai has found material suitable for, ahem, saline agriculture.
- The genebank of the Indian Institute of Spices Research in Calicut has a large collection of, ahem, spices.
- The downside of tilapia.
- And, speaking of fish, it’s not all bad news.
Brainfood: Diet, Olives, Beef, Shade trees, Tree regeneration, Poverty, Weeds, Birds
- Farming for balanced nutrition: an agricultural approach to addressing micronutrient deficiency among the vulnerable poor in Africa. Dietary diversity is a good idea for many reasons.
- Cultivar characterization of Aegean olive oils with respect to their volatile compounds. Only two varieties, and they do differ.
- Beef Authentication and Retrospective Dietary Verification Using Stable Isotope Ratio Analysis of Bovine Muscle and Tail Hair. Back40 has an explanation of why this is more important than all the certification schemes in the world.
- Promoting native trees in shade coffee plantations of southern India: comparison of growth rates with the exotic Grevillea robusta. Some native species might be able to compete, more research needed.
- Regeneration of Vitellaria paradoxa and Parkia biglobosa in a parkland in Southern Burkina Faso. Vitellaria doing better, possibly because farmers are overharvesting Parkia seeds.
- Defining the poor by the rural communities of Burkina Faso: implications for the development of sustainable parkland management. It’s complicated.
- Does soil biota benefit from organic farming in complex vs. simple landscapes? Organic farming increases weed diversity. No word on what it does for birds, but…
- Species richness and composition of bird communities in various field margins of Poland. Some types of field margins are better than others. No word on what they do for weeds.
Brainfood: Biotechnology, Pollinators, Mulberries, Rice blast, Locavores, Roselle, Cassava, Protected areas, Traditional vegetables, Vitis, European diversity
- Agricultural biotechnology for crop improvement in a variable climate: hope or hype? Your guess is as good as mine.
- Pollinator insects benefit from rotational fallows. They do indeed.
- Biological and productive characteristics of silkworm mulberry varieties of different ploidy and their use for raising silkworms in different seasons. Amazing; more silk faster from polyploid mulberries.
- Mapping quantitative trait loci conferring blast resistance in upland indica rice (Oryza sativa L.). They’re there.
- Food relocalization for environmental sustainability in Cumbria. Fair enough, but what, actually, are the locavores going to eat?
- Relationships among twelve genotypes of roselle (Hibiscus sabdariffa L.) cultivated in western Mexico. Twelve genotypes split into two groups, could be important for breeding and production.
- Variation in qualitative and quantitative traits of cassava germplasm from selected national breeding programmes in sub-Saharan Africa. There is some, but not for everything.
- Global protected area impacts. There are some, but not everywhere.
- Diversity, geographical, and consumption patterns of traditional vegetables in sociolinguistic communities in Benin: Implications for domestication and utilization. 245 species, only 19% cultivated, with big differences among ethnic groups and geographical areas. Research and promotion needs identified.
- Observed trends in winegrape maturity in Australia. 1.7 days earlier per year for 1993–2009, 0.8 days earlier per year for 1985–2009.
- Still a lot of diversity out there, Europe edition: common bean in Sicily, melons near Madrid.
Brainfood: Processing, Berries, Bush tomato, Rwanda, Bean erosion, Agroforestry seed, Trees, Rice nutrition
- Special issue of Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences on food processing, “a critical variable in human economies and social and symbolic systems.” Looks like the editorial is open to all.
- Investigation of genetic diversity in Russian collections of raspberry and blue honeysuckle. Some of them are much richer than others.
- Solanum centrale, bush tucker: new microsatellites reveal diversity and polyploidy; and it benefits from arbuscular mycorrhiza, especially in low P soils.
- The Crop Intensification Program in Rwanda: a sustainability analysis. It isn’t.
- Wholesale replacement of lima bean (Phaseolus lunatus L.) landraces over the last 30 years in northeastern Campeche, Mexico. There was.
- Certification of agroforestry tree germplasm in Southern Africa: opportunities and challenges. Need a scheme based on the FAOs Quality Declared Seed (QDS) with truth-in-labelling, with 3 germplasm categories (audit, select and genetically improved) as a start.
- And speaking of trees … Silver fir stand productivity is enhanced when mixed with Norway spruce: evidence based on large-scale inventory data and a generic modelling approach. Diversity good for silver firs, no effect on Norway spruce.
- Genotypic variation and relationships between quality traits and trace elements in traditional and improved rice (Oryza sativa L.) genotypes. Traditional varieties have more.