- Another view of that organic tomatoes, stress and nutrients study that was all over the place yesterday.
- IRRI provides a reality check on Golden Rice. Maybe they should just have stressed it.
- Speaking of which, have we already linked to this piece on how beet has got poorer in nutrients?
- Thinking of setting up a map portal? Say about the geographic distribution of nutritional problems? Read this first.
- From SRI to SFMI. Yeah, but what is happening to nutrient levels?
- Did we also link to these pretty photos of apples before? Well, I don’t care, it’s worth seeing them again. And just imagine how much the different varieties differ in nutrients.
- How nutritious is sourdough anyway? Anyone?
- Yeah, yeah, but is rotation good for nutrient content?
- Which will all be very interesting to the new Bioversity DG, no doubt.
- Not to mention to some of the potential candidates for the World Food Prize.
Brainfood: Cotton hybrids, Lentil drought phenotyping, Wild Prunus, Italian food discourse, Disturbance and diversity, Olive domestication, Rhizobium diversity, Intensification, Niche model uncertainty
- Interspecific hybridization in Gossypium L.: characterization of progenies with different ploidy-confirmed multigenomic backgrounds. They can be made, with some difficulty, and could be useful.
- A new phenotyping technique for screening for drought tolerance in lentil (Lens culinaris Medik.). In hydroponics. Seems to work.
- Polyploidy and microsatellite variation in the relict tree Prunus lusitanica L.: how effective are refugia in preserving genotypic diversity of clonal taxa? The island populations are particularly important.
- Trade-off or convergence? The role of food security in the evolution of food discourse in Italy. The food crisis had quite an impact.
- Diversity loss with persistent human disturbance increases vulnerability to ecosystem collapse. Suppression of fire in a species-rich grassland has resulted in a very low diversity but highly productive vegetation. Unfortunately, when you re-introduce fire, the whole thing collapses.
- The complex history of the olive tree: from Late Quaternary diversification of Mediterranean lineages to primary domestication in the northern Levant. Don’t forget the 3 refugia in Middle East, Aegean and Gibraltar. And, coincidentally, more.
- Isolation and characterization of salt-tolerant rhizobia native to the desert soils of United Arab Emirates. I hope someone conserves them.
- The compatibility of agricultural intensification in a global hotspot of smallholder agrobiodiversity (Bolivia). Peaches for cash didn’t do anything nasty to the diverse maize landraces. Which are in any case conserved ex situ, just to be on the safe side? Right?
- Detrital diversity influences estuarine ecosystem performance. Diverse mud makes for healthier seagrasses and mangroves.
- Conservation Planning with Uncertain Climate Change Projections. Gotta look at those sensitivities.
Nibbles: Farm size, Evidence-based policy, Priority sites, Tibetan grasslands, Sustainable intensification, Lipid improvement, Medicinal plants, Local fish, Wheat access, Purple yam,
- Small is beautiful. No, wait… And more from where that came, ahem, from.
- Evidence? We don’t need no stinking evidence.
- CIAT blogs about a workshop about a model about prioritization about populations about breeding about beans. While its peach palm thing gets picked up.
- Tibetan grasslands feel the heat. Not entirely certain why ICRAF should care, but it’s good to know.
- Peaches compatible with maize in Bolivian agrobiodiversity hotspot. Not nearly enough info in this release, will need to chase it up. And here it is.
- Rothamstead engineers lipids. But it’s for better nutrition, so that’s ok.
- Trad med in RSA.
- Fish as an ingredient of complementary foods. Nutritious, I’m sure, but I suspect Crocodile Dundee’s comment on the iguana applies.
- US wheat breeders worried about access. Maybe if the country ratified the ITPGRFA?
- Filipinos really like purple sweets, apparently. Here are some made of purple yam, ube, Dioscorea alata, call it what you will.
Brainfood: Vitamin C, Nutrition and health, European protected areas, Coffea diversity, Climate change modelling, Soil microbes, Niche modelling, Conflict, Human modified landscapes, Horse diversity, Pigeon diversity
- The challenge of increasing vitamin C content in plant foods. Surely not just because it is challenging?
- Health economics and nutrition: a review of published evidence. “[A]pproaches and methodologies are sometimes ad hoc in nature and vary widely in quality.” Ain’t that always the way.
- European protected areas: Past, present and future. The future will need to be different from the past.
- Genetic structure and diversity of coffee (Coffea) across Africa and the Indian Ocean islands revealed using microsatellites. Good correspondence with morphological species. Madagascar a diversity hotspot.
- Special Issue of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology on Agricultural prediction using climate model ensembles. There’s more than one way to identify a potential adaptation hotspot. Well that’s reassuring. Not.
- Changes in soil microbial functional diversity under different vegetation restoration patterns for Hulunbeier Sandy Land. Restoring desertified grassland led to more soil microbial diversity. Which is good because…?
- A review of composition studies of Cameroon traditional dishes: Macronutrients and minerals. 117 of them. Good for Fe, Zn, Mg.
- Essential elements of discourse for advancing the modelling of species’ current and potential distributions. There’s lots of methods, all quite different, embrace the diversity.
- Understanding and managing conservation conflicts. Build up an evidence base, and employ some social scientists to explain it.
- On the hope for biodiversity-friendly tropical landscapes. In the end, it’s about the agriculture. In more ways than one.
- Genetic Diversity in the Modern Horse Illustrated from Genome-Wide SNP Data. High maternal, low paternal during domestication. Low diversity breeds the ones you’d expect. Similar breeds the ones you’d expect.
- Genomic Diversity and Evolution of the Head Crest in the Rock Pigeon. Middle Eastern origins, Darwin vindicated. Again.
Brainfood: Peanuts, CC and biodiversity data, Climate change and vegetables, Biodiversity indicators, Lettuce diversity, Brazilian intensification, Brazilian natural products, English organic, Bolivian traditions, Protecting sea cucumbers, Urban meadows, Crop expansion, Chinese forests, Peach palm, Ancient RNA, Sweet potato movement, Date conservation
- A study of the relationships of cultivated peanut (Arachis hypogaea) and its most closely related wild species using intron sequences and microsatellite markers. It’s a wise peanut that knows its parents: A. duranensis and A. ipaënsis, apparently.
- Creative Commons licenses and the non-commercial condition: Implications for the re-use of biodiversity information. The devil is in the detail. But basically, the Non-Commercial CC license is not what it sounds like.
- Projecting annual air temperature changes to 2025 and beyond: implications for vegetable production worldwide. The devil is in the detail.
- Essential Biodiversity Variables. There are even some on genetic diversity, and domesticated species get a mention. And no, not this sort of thing, do be serious.
- Genetic composition of contemporary proprietary U.S. lettuce (Lactuca sativa L.) cultivars. Romaine and crisphead much less diverse than leaf types. About 10 cultivars main ancestors. Couple wild species used. Lots of other cool stuff in this issue of GRACE. Maybe one day we’ll do a Brainfood on a single issue of a journal? Would people like that? Is anyone listening?
- Insights into Brazilian agricultural structure and sustainable intensification of food production. That insight is spelled GMO. Ah, but with added agroecological and educational goodness.
- Development of a Natural Products Database from the Biodiversity of Brazil. No doubt soon to be patented. See above.
- Food production vs. biodiversity: comparing organic and conventional agriculture. There’s a tradeoff between biodiversity (off-farm) and yield (on farm), at least in lowland England.
- Laggards or Leaders: Conservers of Traditional Agricultural Knowledge in Bolivia. Abandonment of traditional practices, including crop diversity, more to do with getting work off-farm than with age or education.
- Sea cucumbers in the Seychelles: effects of marine protected areas on high-value species. They are positive.
- Creating novel urban grasslands by reintroducing native species in wasteland vegetation. Seeding can create diverse native meadows in urban settings, even if people use them. I don’t know why this should make me feel so happy.
- Crop Expansion and Conservation Priorities in Tropical Countries. So much for peak farmland.
- Role of culturally protected forests in biodiversity conservation in Southeast China. They’re important, especially for tree diversity.
- Peach palm (Bactris gasipaes) in tropical Latin America: implications for biodiversity conservation, natural resource management and human nutrition. They’re good for nutrition and income, but could be even better.
- Deep Sequencing of RNA from Ancient Maize Kernels. That’s right — RNA! It confirms previous ideas, and offers a new tool to look at domestication.
- Historical collections reveal patterns of diffusion of sweet potato in Oceania obscured by modern plant movements and recombination. Speaking of which, the old tools are not that bad. Yes, the sweet potato did come to Polynesia in prehistoric times from South America. But not only.
- On-Farm Diversity of Date Palm (Phoenix dactylifera L) in Sudan: A Potential Genetic Resources Conservation Strategy. Yup, there’s potential alright. Now can we see made real?