- Harvesting wild flax in the Galilee, Israel and extracting fibers — bearing on Near Eastern plant domestication. The wild stuff was harvested before the Neolithic Revolution.
- Building resilience to water scarcity in southern Spain: a case study of rice farming in Doñana protected wetlands. Better to restore part of the rice fields to natural wetlands.
- Evaluation of rice dominance and its impact on crop diversity in north of Iran. Rice can’t catch a break in Iran either.
- Evaluation of four Mozambican cowpea landraces for drought tolerance. One of them is promising.
- Agro-Biodiversity Spatial Assessment and Genetic Reserve Delineation for the Pollino National Park (Italy). Somewhat gratuitous use of GIS, as far as I can see, but pretty maps.
- A comparative analysis of genetic variation in rootstocks and scions of old olive trees — a window into the history of olive cultivation practices and past genetic variation. Much more variation among rootstocks than scions.
- The diversity of local Georgian agricultural animals. I’d like to see a Megrelian horse one day, they sound cool.
- Crowdsourcing to create national repositories of microbial genetic resources: fungi as a model. Why just fungi, though?
Nibbles: Colombian chocolate, Urban ag, Subaks, GM debate, Taxonomy online, Genebank tools online, BBC on Kew, Australian seed bank, Cedar of Lebanon, Pizza philosophy, Feijoada
- Move over Juan Valdez. Cacao farmers want to emulate a marketing icon.
- Urban agriculture not all it’s cracked up to be. Living up to that urban ag icon, Cuba, is hard.
- Bali’s iconic, traditional subaks are a complex adaptive system, and much better than modern rice farming alternatives. Makes you wonder why they need protecting, though.
- GM bananas will save us. Not by themselves they wont. I don’t know why I keep linking to this stuff. Nothing at all iconic about it.
- Iconic taxonomic revision tools online.
- Something else that’s online is a bunch of tools for analyzing genebank data. Soon to be iconic, no doubt. As soon as people use them. So get cracking.
- Huge BBC documentary on Kew coming up. I bet the iconic Millennium Seed Bank will feature.
- Speaking of iconic genebank buildings, today’s one comes from Australia.
- The history of an iconic Middle Easter tree?
- The philosophy of an iconic Italian delicacy. Well, Neapolitan, really.
- And in honour of the World Cup (I refuse to put FIFA in front, let them sue me), an iconic Brazilian dish. And don’t worry, those beans are safe. Somewhere iconic.
Sharing Genesys data made easier
And yeah, I know, it takes two to tango, and it’s not exactly easy to share that Genesys data either, less easy than sharing the Iraqi atlas map if we are honest. We’re working on that…
That was back in May. Check out the new “Download KLM” button in Genesys now.
Nibbles: Early ag, Land data, CAP, African droughts, Risotto, Cowpea research, Reforestation
- Conditions at the dawn of Fertile Crescent agriculture were wetter and more, well, fertile. Been downhill ever since.
- Digitizing land data may not be good for women.
- European agricultural policies bad for diets.
- Africa will continue to face droughts. Looks like nobody can catch a break today.
- Ah, ok, here’s something good. Italian rice a hit in China. Gotta get your victories where you can.
- And some feel-good stuff on cowpea research in Mozambique.
- And to conclude our return from the slough of despond, some encouraging news about forest restoration.
Nibbles: Wheat database, Livestock maps, Indian apple genebank, UC Davis strawberries, Cheese fungi postdoc, Fruit domestication, Brassica genome, Early hunting dogs, Threatened species numbers, Bolivia conservation
- A Wheat Germplasm Database To Rule Them All. No, not from CGIAR.
- New livestock maps of the world. Yes, from CGIAR.
- Kashmir ponders an apple genebank.
- More from Game of Strawberries.
- Wanna study the population genomics of cheese fungi? Course you do.
- Domesticating local fruit trees good for nutrition, but need secure tenure and good planting material.
- Building better broccoli, the genome way.
- Early domesticated dogs helped in mammoth hunts.
- Current extinction rate about 1000 times higher than background. Databases can help with that, believe it or not.
- Building a national PGRFA system in Bolivia. When will they ratify the ITPGRFA, though?