- Webinar on biofortification, today.
- Book on Asian underutilized plant species, which we somehow missed when it came out in 2014. Unless it didn’t.
- The Millennium Seed Bank isn’t just great in and of itself, it also sits in a wonderful garden: the man who has been keeping that going for the past decade has just retired. Best wishes!
- A map of French cheese. Internet surrenders.
- North Jersey donates organic seeds to Zimbabwe. In related news, they also sending coals to Newcastle.
- Online bibliography of food history. There goes the morning.
- All hail the eucalyptuzzzzz genome.
- The unintended consequences of WW2: oregano.
- Follow the construction of the Crops for the Future Centre HQ. Over 10 episodes, mind, so gird your loins.
- Breaking down crop rotation.
- Malaria drugs through the ages. Make mine a G&T.
- Yes, how is quinoa doing in Colorado?
- New pineapples for the Pacific. They’ll probably end up canned.
- Good news: Clumber Park has a Rhubarb Weekend. Bad news: we missed it. Ditto the Goa Mango Festival.
- Mapping every monkey puzzle tree in Britain. Well, someone has to.
- Transgenic chestnuts taking over New York State. You can bet someone’s going to map them.
- The US potato renaissance we all knew was happening finally hits the headlines.
- The latest on coffee improvement, including news from the CATIE collections.
- Tulipmania: The video.
- The father of hybrid corn.
- Would he have approved of saving seeds? I suspect yes.
- Chinese agriculture adds a few (thousand) years.
- Europe has agroforestry too, and lots of it.
- Think I missed something? Check if Jeremy caught it in his Tasty Morsels.
Brainfood: Chinese CWR, Black-bone goat, Agrobiodiversity & nutrition, Niger rice, Rabbit diversity, On farm, Adding value, Native Americans & Svalbard, USDA wheat core, Cooperatives & food security, Maize & CC
- China’s crop wild relatives: Diversity for agriculture and food security. 871 wild species related to crops important in China, some of them endemic and endangered.
- Black-bone goat: An investigation report on new genetic resource of farm animal. Out of China…
- Effects of agricultural biodiversity and seasonal rain on dietary adequacy and household food security in rural areas of Kenya. More dietary diversity is better for your kids’ nutrition, and so is rain.
- Farmers’ rice knowledge and adoption of new cultivars in the Tillabéry region of western Niger. The landrace is hippopotamus-resistant.
- An invasive non-native mammal population conserves genetic diversity lost from its native range. Same for some crop wild relatives?
- Diversifying mechanisms in the on-farm evolution of crop mixtures. Diversity within mixture of 4 French wheat landraces changes in different ways in different places.
- The Role of Local Sheep and Goat Breeds and Their Products as a Tool for Sustainability and Safeguard of the Mediterranean Environment. Cheese made from local breeds is better. Well, at least different.
- Saving seeds: The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, Native American seed savers, and problems of property. “…the Svalbard Global Seed Vault is unique in its potential ability to cross the political and cultural divide over the ownership and conservation of seeds and thereby promote the vital ecological need for both ex situ and in situ seed preservation.”
- Genetic Diversity among Wheat Accessions from the USDA National Small Grains Collection. Geography is a good basis on which to base a core collection.
- Food sovereignty, food security and fair trade: the case of an influential Nicaraguan smallholder cooperative. They can all be integrated, but food security is the difficult one.
- Maize migration: key crop expands to higher altitudes under climate change in the Andes. 10m a year.
Nibbles: Food supplies, Food fotos, Forest foods, Diverse foods, Caribbean cassava, Wild foods, Expo 2015, Gates & SDGs, Nanoparticles
- What the World Eats: The Infographic.
- What the World Eats: The Photo Competition.
- What the World Doesn’t Eat: Forest Foods.
- What the World Should Eat More Of: The Presentation.
- What Grenada Eats: Cassava
- What Christopher McCandless Should Not Have Eaten: Not ODAP After All?
- Gulf states big stars in Milan. So that’s all right then.
- Gates Foundation really doesn’t like the SDGs.
- Boffins find promiscuous Phytophthora killer. Breeders surrender.
Brainfood: Tomato diversity, Tomato characterization, Sweetpotato diversity, Olive characterization, Bamboo as fodder, Chinese liquor, Agroecological livestock, Oasis agrobiodiversity, Pearl millet diversity double
- Genomic variation in tomato, from wild ancestors to contemporary breeding accessions. A first domestication in South America, a second step in Mesoamerica, occasional hybridization in the wild, differentiation through human selection. Some Ecuadorian and Peruvian diversity still unexplored for breeding.
- Characterization of a collection of local varieties of tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) using conventional descriptors and the high-throughput phenomics tool Tomato Analyzer. Instant gratification comes to tomato characterization.
- Molecular diversity and genetic structure of 380 sweetpotato accessions as revealed by SSR markers. Also a two-step domestication history? What are the odds?
- Association of SSR markers with contents of fatty acids in olive oil and genetic diversity analysis of an olive core collection. Let the molecular-assisted breeding begin.
- Genetic Evaluation of Nutritional and Fodder Quality of Different Bamboo Species. Remarkably, some species are ok.
- Genetic Diversity Among the Microorganisms in Daqu Used for Beidacang Liquor as Revealed by RAPD Analyses. Well that’s a new one on me, but it’s good to have the data.
- Farm animal genetic and genomic resources from an agroecological perspective. If you’re going to really be ecological in your management of livestock genetic resources, you need to factor in ecosystem services, and figure out how genomic tools are going to help you. Well, that pretty much goes for crops too, surely.
- The labor of agrodiversity in a Moroccan oasis. Not all agrobiodiversity is that old.
- Identification of pearl millet (Pennisetum glaucum (L.) R. Br.) germplasm with unique popping quality in the national genebank collections of India. Amazing what you can find in genebanks.
- Iniadi pearl millet germplasm as a valuable genetic resource for high grain iron. See what I mean?
Nibbles: CWR gaps, Genebanks vid, Landrace cuisine, Perennial rice, High-tech evaluation, Egyptian cure, Weird tuber, Aroids news, Tibet transition, Worms & development, Hybrid artemisia, Sea potato, Grape microbes, Seed book, Seychelles parks, Brosimum hype, Kenya & bamboo, Tea & CC, Extinction and CC, Nutrition paradox
- CIAT crop wild relatives team announces 3 new papers on gaps in ex situ collections: potato, sweet potato & pigeonpea. Take a break, people, please.
- And CIAT genebank features in nice video on why we need genebanks. So also the IRRI genebank, which is relevant to the next Nibble. We do joined-up nibbling here.
- Fine dining with Filipino rice landraces. Go Manny!
- None of those rice landraces are perennial. Yet. If they ever are, it’ll be due to a wild relative.
- Fusarium head blight resistance in wheat dissected using a synchrotron. Avengers assemble!
- Oxyrhynchus papyrus identifies hangover cure. Or so the Daily Mail says, so, you know…
- Oh wow, the Mail is definitely on a botanical roll, now they’re all over a Kardashian-shaped tuber.
- New Edible Aroids Newsletter. Nothing Kim-shaped about these tubers.
- Wheat and barley replaced millet in E Tibet around 2000 BC after cooling period. This going into reverse now, I wonder?
- Some biodiversity you don’t want, trust me.
- Speaking of unwelcome biodiversity, there’s a new hope in the fight against malaria: hybrid artemisia.
- More on that potato that the Dutch are growing in sea water. Like they have a choice.
- Microbes are part of terroir.
- Q&A with The Triumph of Seeds author.
- The coco-de-mer is a pretty triumphant seed.
- You say ramòn nut, I say Maya nut.
- Kenya needs bamboo. Says the International Network for Bamboo & Rattan. Wow, two active crop networks in today’s Nibbles.
- Yesterday it was arabica that was in trouble, today tea. Damn you, climate change.
- They’re the lucky ones: they may be in trouble, but they’re not going extinct…
- More production does not automatically mean less stunting. Damn you, real world.