- Had no idea there were so many Maya nuts around. Glad Jeremy reminded me. And some Central Asian nuts for balance.
- The best of Afroculinaria.
- The best of HarvestPlus. Oh for the time to do a mashup. Anyway, does this count? And what’s that you say? You have a paper you’re writing on the subject?
- CIP genebank sees CIMMYT’s ISO accreditation (certification? whatever) and raises it a new piece of software. ILRI genebank doubles down.
- One Data Portal to Rule them All. At FAO. Somewhat underwhelming, frankly.
- Rice boffins target drought-stressed villages
- New map of bioregions. In the Daily Mail?
- Sustainable intensification debate gets nowhere. Pretty cynical note to leave you with, don’t you think?
- Ok, so here’s something a little more festive. California caviar.
- And some beer to go with that.
Brainfood: Bumper bonanza, Old peas, Irrigated meadows, Cereal mashes, Medicinal plants, Diversity and production, Millet gaps, Seed ageing, Flax core
- First off — a pretty big deal. Taylor & Francis have made a bunch of papers related to sustainable agriculture freely available, but only until the end of December. Happy whatever holiday won’t offend you.
- Twentieth-century changes in the genetic composition of Swedish field pea metapopulations. Metapopulations have become isolated populations. In genebanks.
- Effects of different irrigation systems on the biodiversity of species-rich hay meadows. Change from the traditional irrigation system has affected biodiversity levels, but not a huge amount.
- Research regarding the use of wheat biodiversity for obtaining some cereal-based fermented mashes. Let’s go straight to what we need to know here: the best mash come from spelt wheat. Oh, to be the one doing the organoleptic characterization.
- Cultivation and high capitalization of medicinal and aromatic plants in the Romanian-Bulgarian cross-border region. If you’re really interested, there’s a database that brings it all together.
- Crop biodiversity, productivity and production risk: Panel data micro-evidence from Ethiopia. More crops = more production. But the devil is in the details, I suspect.
- Identification of gaps in pearl millet germplasm from East and Southern Africa conserved at the ICRISAT genebank. We used to do this sort of thing by hand in my day.
- At3g08030 transcript: a molecular marker of seed ageing. This mRNA could predict germination performance of a dry seed lot across species. Good for genebanks?
- Assembling a core collection from the flax world collection maintained by Plant Gene Resources of Canada. You don’t hear much about core collections these days, why is that?
Nibbles: Old rice, New quinoa, Fishy stuff, Cropland landscapes, Forest landscapes, Old seed, Superdomestication, Intensification
- Youth compiles list of rare and extinct rice varieties of Assam. Maybe he should look at weedy rice too?
- Meanwhile, American farmers are learning to grow quinoa, probably including some rare varieties.
- The smelliest fish in the world. No traceability needed for that one, I guess.
- Cropland getting mapped. Presumably including the Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems (GIAHS). Help needed by both, by the way.
- Follow the forest discussions at COP18. High on the agenda: what is a landscape? It’s what you study when you’re being holistic, no? Anyway, there’s got to be a connection to the previous links.
- Boffins find a genetic marker for old seed. Will need to Brainfood this one.
- Pat Heslop-Harrison breaks down superdomestication for you.
- SRI gets a scaling up. What could possibly go wrong?
Geographically confused
Some confusing signals from the GIS folks of the CGIAR. We hear that the team behind the CGIAR Research Programme on Roots, Tubers and Bananas (RTB) met recently to discuss the geographic targeting of their interventions. The payoff is in the mail: “…the team is creating an online digital atlas on everything related to RTB crop development.” Promises to be very useful. But is that the same atlas that was announced at more or less the same time to separate fanfare? Certainly some of the same people are involved, but that’s not always a guide. I did play around with the IBP Generation Atlas for half an hour or so and I have to say I’m profoundly unimpressed so far. Sharing doesn’t really work. You can’t import your own data in any way that I can see. And I couldn’t get a number of the maps in the menu to load, for example the crop distribution one. But no doubt it’s all at the very forefront of GIS technology. So I’ll reserve definitive judgement until I’ve had a proper chance to test it. But don’t let me stop you jumping in. It could just be me.
Nibbles: Vegetables, UK funding, Oz funding, Oz genebank, Jefferson, Hawaiian food, Markets, Tree seeds, NUS journal, Geographic targeting, ITPGRFA, Arabica and climate, Protected areas, European farmland biodiversity, Sustainable use, Ethiopian seed video
- Palestinian rooftop gardens. Including crucifers, no doubt.
- Brits support work with rice and wheat wild relatives. Among other things. They’ll probably use some of these genomics things.
- Aussies support sweet potatoes. HarvestPlus rejoices.
- That new Australian genebank. Will it have any sweet potatoes?
- The agricultural legacy of Thomas Jefferson. It doesn’t say here, but I bet he was into sweet potato.
- Hawaiian menus. What, no sweet potato?
- Forget biotech, the road to sexy agriculture is via the supermarket. Where you can buy sweet potato. Maybe even of the organic persuasion.
- Or maybe better tree seeds. Even in the Nordic countries. Or the US. Is cacao a tree?
- Plans for special edition of Sustainability on neglected crops. Like amaranth?
- Geographic targeting reaches roots/tubers. Using this newfangled atlas? Or no?
- Treaty and Consortium love-in filmed. Thanks for sharing. It’s all part of this CGIAR perestroika thing, no doubt.
- What that Kew coffee extinction paper really said.
- Protected areas need work. Especially for coffee (see above).
- Yeah but protected areas is not the only way to go, and Europe now has a bunch of biodiversity indicators for farmland. I guess it’s all part of some big plan.
- Policy brief on sustainable use of PGR. Or, as we used to call it, on farm conservation.
- Which you can kind of see happening here.