If you liked a Brainfood item about African crops in Suriname, you’ll love this interview with Edith Adjako, a woman of Maroon descent, recorded by one of the authors, Tinde van Andel.
Nibbles: Konzo double, ANI, ICRISAT genebank, World Potato Congress, Coffee sequence, Food Forever job
- The fascinating story of konzo, nicely told.
- You’ll remember my take on that, of course.
- Speaking of my take, on the release of the Access to Nutrition Index I ask: cui bono genebanks?
- Somebody mention genebanks? Yes, ICRISAT.
- Consider the beauty of the humble potato.
- Nobody ever calls coffee humble.
- Wanna tell the world about any of the above?
Nibbles: Turkish roses, Old apple tree, Kenyan reforestation, Pillar coral, ICARDA, Comical CWR
- The black roses of Halfeti.
- That original Bramley is still hanging on.
- Seedballs!
- A coral genebank? Why not.
- More on the ICARDA genebank.
- Sketching crop wild relatives.
Nibbles: Cloisters, Plum breeding, Wild tomatoes, Phytosanitary regulations, Public breeding, EU regulations, Svalbard @10, Local grains, Chips, ICRAF double
- Medieval monastery gardens deconstructed.
- Burbank’s plums decoded.
- The wild tomatoes of the Galapagos evaluated.
- Germplasm exchange expedited.
- Public sector plant breeding advocated.
- Farmer-saved seeds saved?
- Svalbard Global Seed Vault celebrated.
- Local flour milled.
- Potato chips (crisps) invented.
- Indigenous trees taken seriously. Very seriously.
Brainfood: Genebanks genomics, Improving forages, 3000 rices, Sweet potato dispersal, Diversity on farm double, Herbaria double, Phenotyping box, Invasives, Meta-meta-analysis, Rice domestication, Soil depth
- Role of genomics in promoting the utilization of plant genetic resources in genebanks. Genebanks don’t need to do genomics themselves to benefit from genomics.
- Improving the Yield and Nutritional Quality of Forage Crops. Case in point.
- Genomic variation in 3,010 diverse accessions of Asian cultivated rice. Case in point. Multiple independent domestications. Tomorrow, the world.
- Sweet potato dispersal or human transport? Maybe no evidence one way or another after all. Rebuttal of: Reconciling Conflicting Phylogenies in the Origin of Sweet Potato and Dispersal to Polynesia. And the counter to the rebuttal. This genomics stuff not so easy after all.
- Review: Meta-analysis of the association between production diversity, diets, and nutrition in smallholder farm households. It’s not always there. But that would have been a high bar.
- Agricultural diversification as an important strategy for achieving food security in Africa. Case in point. More diverse households and farming systems are more food secure, but only up to a point, and it depends on various factors. 43% of African cropland will be difficult to diversify.
- Using herbaria to study global environmental change. Have been used to monitor the effects of climate change, habitat change, pollution and invasives on plants.
- Green Digitization: Online Botanical Collections Data Answering Real‐World Questions. Gotta get the stuff digitized first though.
- The ‘PhenoBox’, a flexible, automated, open‐source plant phenotyping solution. Somebody mention digitizing?
- Dissecting the null model for biological invasions: A meta-analysis of the propagule pressure effect. The success of aliens is down to their numbers. Wonder if it works for pest and disease organisms too.
- Are systematic reviews and meta-analyses still useful research? We are not sure. All righty then. Scrap the above.
- Shattering or not shattering: that is the question in domestication of rice (Oryza sativa L.). From one of the authors, Debarati Chakraborty: Loss of shattering through sh4 is not a crucial step for rice domestication. Genetics, cultural anthropology and archaeology suggests that primitive agrarians were dependent on wild or semi-domesticated shattering rice.
- Rooting for food security in Sub-Saharan Africa. Sub-Saharan Africa probably hasn’t the rootable soil depth for monster maize yields.