GIS – Page 79 – Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

July 11, 2013July 11, 2013

The Indonesian fires and crop wild relatives

I know what you’re wondering. You’re wondering whether those fires in Indonesia which are causing so much trouble with haze in Singapore and other neighbouring places are also endangering any crop wild relatives back home. Well, thanks to the following Twitter exchange with the GIS people at Kew, I now know (or have been reminded, actually) that NASA makes available global data on active fires:

@AgroBioDiverse @worldresource yes with GeoCAT & kml layer import – this is from last 24 hrs http://t.co/3utE5w6cMb pic.twitter.com/RqtpAIsm0n

— KewGIS (@KewGIS) July 10, 2013

We can of course mash that up in Google Earth with, say, the distribution of wild rice (Oryza spp) from Genesys. That would be the little pale blue circles in the map reproduced below.

Which does suggest that at least some of the Indonesian fires may be occurring in wild rice habitats. They may actually be beneficial to some of the weedier species, though, for all I know. Anyway, as ever, it’s nice to have the data. And, just as importantly, be able to play with it.

July 11, 2013July 11, 2013

Nibbles: Bahamian pigs, Llamas far from home, Ugandan aquaponics, Better broccoli, African atlas, Chinese sesame imports, Root & tuber maps, NZ genebank access

The next big livestock thing is swimming pigs.
Or maybe llamas. Not swimming ones, mind, settle down.
Nope, it’s farmed fish. Which do swim, though not very far.
Meanwhile, Cornell re-engineers broccoli.
And HarvestChoice puts out an African atlas. Online resources coming in due course.
Which does not show you sesame cultivation in Ethiopia, alas, at least not yet, let’s wait for the online version.
Speaking of atlases, RTBMaps is in Beta. I’ll have to play with it and get back to you.
New Zealand changes genebank rules to speed up forage breeding. To do with quarantine rather than ABS, though.

July 8, 2013July 3, 2013

Brainfood: Leafy greens, Korean rice, Molecular breeding, Poultry conservation, Tree genomes, Pathogen genetics, Grazers and CC, Sustainable rangelands, Available land, Ecosystem services

Analysis of urban consumers’ willingness to pay a premium for African Leafy Vegetables (ALVs) in Kenya: a case of Eldoret Town. An 80% premium! But in Eldoret. And Nairobi?
Analysis and comparison of the γ-oryzanol content based on phylogenetic groups in Korean landraces of rice (Oryza sativa L.). Some groups are browner than others.
What is the SMARTest way to breed plants and increase agrobiodiversity? Just another name for MAS. But some crops are SMARTer than others.
Conservation of local Turkish and Italian chicken breeds: a case study. Turks can learn from Italians. And probably vice versa, I bet, although that’s not explored as much here.
Open access to tree genomes: the path to a better forest. Hard to argue with. The open access bit more than the genomes bit.
Evolution, selection and isolation: a genomic view of speciation in fungal plant pathogens. Know your enemy. Easier to figure out how new species become different than how they stay that way.
Long-Term Climate Sensitivity of Grazer Performance: A Cross-Site Study. Hotter conditions means poorer forage quality means smaller bison. And maybe cattle. All other things being equal, like genetics, and range management. Which of course they never are.
Ecosystem function enhanced by combining four functional types of plant species in intensively managed grassland mixtures: a 3-year continental-scale field experiment. See what I mean? And more.
Estimating the world’s potentially available cropland using a bottom-up approach. Less than you’d think.
Spatial interactions among ecosystem services in an urbanizing agricultural watershed. Very very limited places provide multiple services, especially crop production and water quality, which means you need to protect huge areas. But they’ll be mosaics.

July 5, 2013July 6, 2013

Nibbles: Sustainable aquaculture, Mekong fish project, Peruvian anchovetas, Ugandan fishing standards, Bangladesh fish celebrations, Beef vs fish, FAO on GIS

Sustainable fish farming in Spain. With video goodness.
A project to estimate the value of Mekong fish.
Eating fish, rather than feeding them to pigs, to conserve them in Peru. The fish, not the pigs. And more on the same fish, but another place. I think it’s the same fish anyway.
Codex Alimentarius standards are important even to Ugandan artisanal fisherfolk. Also with video goodness.
It’s National Fish Week in Bangladesh.
“So should we mourn that the cow is overtaken by the fish?”
Fish need GIS too.

July 1, 2013July 2, 2013

Brainfood: Phenology & CC, Potato nutrition, Buckwheat honey, Visitors in parks, Urban gardeners, Introgression from wild sheep, Catholic conservation, Tomato domestication

Herbarium specimens reveal the footprint of climate change on flowering trends across north-central North America. 2.4 days per °C.
Carotenoid profiling in tubers of different potato (Solanum sp) cultivars: Accumulation of carotenoids mediated by xanthophyll esterification. 60 cultivars, including landraces, fall into 3 main groups. Need to keep an eye out for those xanthophyll esters.
Buckwheat honeys: Screening of composition and properties. In other news, there is monofloral buckwheat honey in Italy and E. Europe. But not as much as the producers say.
Using geotagged photographs and GIS analysis to estimate visitor flows in natural areas. Very cool, but try as I might I cannot think of an application in agricultural biodiversity conservation. Maybe you can.
Quiet sustainability: Fertile lessons from Europe’s productive gardeners. Food gardening in Europe’s cities is not about an “urban peasantry” putting essential food on the table. And it’s not about expousing a yuppie alternative lifestyle. It’s just about the sheer fun of it.
Introgression and the fate of domesticated genes in a wild mammal population. Coat colour polymorphisms in wild Soay sheep was caused by admixture with more modern breed 150 years ago.
Catholicism and Conservation: The Potential of Sacred Natural Sites for Biodiversity Management in Central Italy. So apparently there’s a “common view that Christianity is anti-naturalistic.” Well, it’s wrong. What’s Christianity’s view of agrobiodiversity, I wonder?
Comparative transcriptomics reveals patterns of selection in domesticated and wild tomato. DNA differences due to selection at 50 genes, transcription differences at thousands.