- Important job opening at USDA running the Ames Plant Introduction Station. 50,000 accessions, people.
- Online database on the effectiveness of protected areas.
- 100-year seed experiment kicks off.
- Towards more sustainable sugarcane in India. Spoiler alert: juice, not molasses.
- The Neolithic temples of Malta were used to worship food.
- The “fish pepper” of Black Chesapeake homegardens lost, and found..
- News clip on the USDA central genebank at Ft Collins.
- Invest 50 mins in learning about eucalypts.
Meta-Brainfood for the weekend
Time to clean up a few things, I think. For a while now, I’ve been hoarding links to edited volumes. My idea was to do a special dedicated Brainfood on each one, but I now fear that just ain’t gonna happen. Too much other stuff on. So here they are. Maybe one of you will help me out? You know what to do. A pithy one or two sentences summarizing each paper, based on the abstract only if you’re into the whole brevity thing. Interested? Let me know in the comments below, and we’ll set something up. Our first guest-curated Brainfood…
Here they are:
- Do you remember the 2017 book Against The Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States by James C. Scott? I think we may have blogged about it. Anyway, it suggested that it was grain (as opposed to tuber) cultivation that led to the development of hierarchical states. Grain is visible and portable, and so easy to tax, you see. There are interviews with the author galore if you like podcasts. Ok, well, the Cambridge Archaeological Journal had a whole Review Symposium deconstructing that particular revisionist narrative.
- In 2018, something called the 1st International Conference on Genetic Resources and Biotechnology was held in Bogor, Indonesia. A bit of a misnomer, it was really mainly about “[i]nformation system and exchanges of genetic resources for effective crop improvement.” These are the proceedings, and all of the dozens of papers are open access. Maybe someone out there could do their Top 10.
- This one is not as relevant as the others, but it’s interesting nonetheless: Remote Sensing of Plant Biodiversity. Surely some of the 20 contributions have something to say about agricultural biodiversity? Who’s willing to have a look?
- Then there’s the Special Issue of Application in Plant Sciences on Machine Learning in Plant Biology: Advances Using Herbarium Specimen Images. Yummy. Automated identification of CWR specimens, anyone?
- And finally, just out, a Topical Collection in Agriculture and Human Values on Agriculture, Food & Covid-19. Come on, who can resist a hot-take (well, a Rapid Response Opinion) entitled Maybe there is an alternative after all?
Looking forward to hearing from you.
And don’t worry, there’ll be a normal Brainfood on Monday as usual.
Nibbles: UN training, Genebanks double, CG spatial data, Fruit IPR, Citrus greening, Sikkim diversity, Bulgarian lavender, Biogenetic Paradoxes, Heroin, Palestinian eggplant
- Training courses on multilateral environmental agreements, including CBD and Plant Treaty.
- CGIAR dashboard on the Genebank Platform. More data here.
- Some of the above are included in this list of the world’s most high profile genebanks.
- The latest spatial crop data from CGIAR. Useful for genebanks, among other things.
- Protecting fruit intellectual property. Wait, that didn’t come out right.
- I guess this fruit is next.
- Sikkim’s agricultural diversity as colours on a palette.
- Lavender is a nice colour, whether in France or Bulgaria.
- Book on nation-building through agricultural biodiversity. Bulgarians unavailable for comment.
- Poppy diversity being helped by solar panels to build something or other in Afghanistan.
- Palestinian paean to the bitinjan. Jeremy goes to town on it in his latest newsletter.
Brainfood: Perennial favourites, Feral grapevines, Silky cat, Damaged yams, Maize vs sorghum, Sunflower ecotypes, Fungal diversity, Pacific voyaging, Vitamin seeds, Biogeoinformatics, Natural language, Evaluation, Aquaculture
- Perennial vegetables: A neglected resource for biodiversity, carbon sequestration, and nutrition. Over 600 perennial veggies on 6% of global vegetable cropland.
- Genomic Evidences Support an Independent History of Grapevine Domestication in the Levant. Separate from what happened in the Caucasus, that is.
- Distribution, prevalence and severity of damages caused by nematodes on yam (Dioscorea rotundata) in Nigeria. A quarter of tubers and half of heaps showed nematode symptoms.
- Maize long-term genetic progress explains current dominance over sorghum in Argentina. Follow the money.
- Phenotypic and physiological responses to salt exposure in Sorghum reveal diversity among domesticated landraces. Salinity tolerance was acquired early but then lost in some geographic regions where it wasn’t needed. See what happens when you invest in a crop?
- Massive haplotypes underlie ecotypic differentiation in sunflowers. It’s the recombination-suppressing inversions, stupid.
- GlobalFungi, a global database of fungal occurrences from high-throughput-sequencing metabarcoding studies. Cool. Do landraces of a crop next.
- The earliest domestic cat on the Silk Road. Coincided with rapid urbanization in the 9th century.
- Native American gene flow into Polynesia predating Easter Island settlement. Yeah, but did Americans go west of their own accord or in Polynesian boats? And did they have sweetpotatoes with them? And cats?
- Genetic markers associated with seed longevity and vitamin E in diverse Aus rice varieties. 5 markers on 4 chromosomes.
- Biogeoinformatics for the management of Farm Animal Genetic Resources (FAnGR). Software for monitoring erosion and detecting locally adapted genotypes. Plus preserve traditional practices.
- Computing on Phenotypic Descriptions for Candidate Gene Discovery and Crop Improvement. Casually talk about a plant in the field –> fancy math –> the plant’s genotype.
- Data synthesis for crop variety evaluation. A review. Focus on ranking. Oh, to mash it up with the above.
- Scenarios for Global Aquaculture and Its Role in Human Nutrition. For aquaculture to contribute to nutrition it needs enabling trade and economic policies. Well I never.
Nibbles: Data storage, CG reform, Tequila, Seed saving trifecta, ROI, Jeremy
- A Svalbard for data, in Svalbard.
- IPES-Food critiques OneCGIAR as being insufficiently decentralized, context-specific, agroecological, and power-equitable.
- Tequila FAQ. Probably need a shot after the above.
- Seed saving made easy; maybe too easy.
- The above, applied, in the Pacific.
- The above, applied, everywhere.
- The ROI of conservation. In situ only, alas.
- Jeremy’s latest newsletter: Brazilian agribusiness, boycotts & slavery, cashew boom, peanut crash, Jay Rayner’s suggestions. Do subscribe.