- Growing coffee at 2400m could be the new normal.
- A history of coffee rust, thanks to Prof. Stuart McCook and WCR. Not much of a problem at 2400m.
- Oh and here’s a podcast on the history of coffee, an interview with the author of Coffeeland: “drinking coffee is a symptom of working for other people.” Lot of that lately: In Our Time, Eat This Podcast.
- Breeding grapes the smart way. That just seems to mean have access to a germplasm collection and choose your parents carefully.
- Which is what Borlaug did. Ok, plus he was lucky.
- Hunan gets a genebank. Prosperity ensues.
- Could there have been a Green Revolution in Westeros? With that genetics?
Nibbles: Alert edition
- Book alert: Biodiversity, Food and Nutrition — A New Agenda for Sustainable Food Systems.
- Thread alert: Monumental analysis of crop yield trends in the USA.
- Woke alert: WorldVeg ticks a lot of boxes with its work on a peppers core collection.
- Policy alert: Why haven’t farmers’ varieties found a place in national and global seed markets?
Nibbles: Taste edition
- The Stairway to Heaven of barley breeding for whiskey involves thinking about taste a bit more.
- Taste comes into maize breeding too.
- Jeremy talks taste with Margot Finn. Oh and there’s his latest newsletter.
- Farmerama podcasts on cereals in small-scale farming in the UK and beyond.
- Nothing small-scale about ancient farming in the Nile Valley.
- Make ancient Roman bread during lockdown. Then compare and contrast with the Egyptian kind?
- What did the Romans ever do for the rural economy of Britain anyway?
- Course on communicating the value of biodiversity. Wasn’t all the above enough?
Brainfood: French Neolithic, African forages, Sorghum inflorescences, Root morphology, Folium, Tillage, Sparing, Food localness, Indian diet diversity, Sourdough, Genomics costs, Breeding strategies
- Early Neolithic (ca. 5850-4500 cal BC) agricultural diffusion in the Western Mediterranean: An update of archaeobotanical data in SW France. Agriculture came to southern France from southern Italy around 5700 BC, initially focusing on hulled wheats, then transitioned to naked cereals as it moved inland.
- Improved feeding and forages at a crossroads: Farming systems approaches for sustainable livestock development in East Africa. Adoption of tropical forages at scale can make a big difference to livelihoods in East Africa, but will need careful consideration of agroecological and socioeconomic settings. My mother-in-law unavailable for comment.
- Comprehensive 3D phenotyping reveals continuous morphological variation across genetically diverse sorghum inflorescences. Fancy gadgets and maths show that botanical sorghum races overlap more in morphology than genetics.
- Using clear plastic CD cases as low‐cost mini‐rhizotrons to phenotype root traits. Now do roots.
- A 1000-year-old mystery solved: Unlocking the molecular structure for the medieval blue from Chrozophora tinctoria, also known as folium. 6′-hydroxy-4,4′-dimethoxy-1,1′-dimethyl-5′-{[3,4,5-trihydroxy-6-(hydroxymethyl)tetrahydro-2H-pyran-2-yl]oxy}-[3,3′-bipyridine]-2,2′,5,6(1H,1′H)-tetraone, if you must know.
- Generating a rule-based global gridded tillage dataset. The most amazing thing about this is that there are only 6 types of tillage.
- The global cropland-sparing potential of high-yield farming. We could give up 40% of current farmland if yields of 16 major crops were higher. Unclear what all those farmers would do. Or what kind of tillage they would use.
- Local food crop production can fulfil demand for less than one-third of the population. Still going to need global supply chains.
- Regional differences in agricultural and socioeconomic factors associated with farmer household dietary diversity in India. And national supply chains for that matter.
- Influences of Ingredients and Bakers on the Bacteria and Fungi in Sourdough Starters and Bread. Bakers are part of bread.
- Strategies for reducing per‐sample costs in target capture sequencing for phylogenomics and population genomics in plants. Down to $22 per sample, if you play your cards right.
- Evolutionary insights into plant breeding. When you’ve played those cards, target selective sweeps for introgression, among other things. Oh, and gene editing. Here, read these tweets from one of the authors.
Nibbles: Online courses, Colombian seeds, California grapes, Living lockdown
- Online courses on plant-related stuff.
- Beautiful catalog of Colombian heritage seeds.
- California mission grapes came from Peru, not Mexico.
- Taking care of living collections under coronavirus lockdown.