- Tequila and bats. Two of my favourite things.
- Continuing the Mexican theme, we have a World Food Prize 2014 winner.
- I wonder what he thinks of the changes he’s seen during his illustrious career in the international system for PGR conservation and use.
- I bet there’s a few endangered conifers, and maybe some ex situ collections, in Mexico.
- I hope there weren’t any among the plants stolen from the RBG Edinburgh recently.
- But perhaps there were some fruits and nuts from Kyrgyzstan?
- Well, the way to go is home nurseries, clearly.
- Maybe even with the GM chestnut, why not?
- Meanwhile, in the South Pacific, CePaCT has been really busy.
Nibbles: Detecting diseases, Better bees, Millet milestone, Passenger pigeon, Land rights, Mongol mayhem, Jumping genes
- Sensors for volatile organic compounds will detect crop diseases for ya. Then a drone comes in and zaps them?
- Breeding better bees.
- “So why not simply replace the traditional variety with Dhanshakti?” Answers on a postcard, please.
- Bringing back the passenger pigeon.
- The impact of land rights around the world. Including on conservation of agricultural biodiversity?
- What the Mongols ate, and how we know it. Some millet. Maybe some passenger pigeons. Interesting concept of land rights.
- Sorry we’re one day late celebrating Barbara McClintock’s birthday.
Nibbles: Colombian chocolate, Urban ag, Subaks, GM debate, Taxonomy online, Genebank tools online, BBC on Kew, Australian seed bank, Cedar of Lebanon, Pizza philosophy, Feijoada
- Move over Juan Valdez. Cacao farmers want to emulate a marketing icon.
- Urban agriculture not all it’s cracked up to be. Living up to that urban ag icon, Cuba, is hard.
- Bali’s iconic, traditional subaks are a complex adaptive system, and much better than modern rice farming alternatives. Makes you wonder why they need protecting, though.
- GM bananas will save us. Not by themselves they wont. I don’t know why I keep linking to this stuff. Nothing at all iconic about it.
- Iconic taxonomic revision tools online.
- Something else that’s online is a bunch of tools for analyzing genebank data. Soon to be iconic, no doubt. As soon as people use them. So get cracking.
- Huge BBC documentary on Kew coming up. I bet the iconic Millennium Seed Bank will feature.
- Speaking of iconic genebank buildings, today’s one comes from Australia.
- The history of an iconic Middle Easter tree?
- The philosophy of an iconic Italian delicacy. Well, Neapolitan, really.
- And in honour of the World Cup (I refuse to put FIFA in front, let them sue me), an iconic Brazilian dish. And don’t worry, those beans are safe. Somewhere iconic.
Brainfood: Homegardens, AnGR genomic conservation, Forest services, Desert wheat, Wild artichoke, Enset ethnobotany, Turkish sheep, Eggplant evaluation, Bolivian maize, Cattle & fire
- Biodiversity conservation in home gardens: traditional knowledge, use patterns and implications for management. Most cliches about homegardens are valid in Benin, apart from the one which suggests old people know more about them.
- Genomics applied to management strategies in conservation programmes. How gene jockeys can help you maintain enough diversity within breeds, but no more.
- Living close to forests enhances people׳s perception of ecosystem services in a forest–agricultural landscape of West Java, Indonesia. And agroforests perceived as being best providers of services, even better than actual forest.
- Saharan wheats: before they disappear. Surprisingly, they have not been much studied.
- The wild gene pool of globe artichoke. Four wild species lack studies of crossability with the cultigen, but look interesting and could actually be in GB2.
- Indigenous knowledge, use and on-farm management of enset (Ensete ventricosum (Welw.) Cheesman) diversity in Wolaita, Southern Ethiopia. Maybe 100 varieties, 10 dishes, lots of knowledge.
- Genetic diversity in nine native Turkish sheep breeds based on microsatellite analysis. Most variation within breeds, but not much higher that that of European breeds.
- Genetic Diversity, Population Structure, and Resistance to Phytophthora capsici of a Worldwide Collection of Eggplant Germplasm. 99 accessions, 4 species, 5 continents, 32 countries, 1 resistant genotype.
- Conserving agrobiodiversity amid global change, migration, and nontraditional livelihood networks: the dynamic uses of cultural landscape knowledge. Things are changing, but maize diversity abides.
- Fuel, fire and cattle in African highlands: Traditional management maintains a mosaic heathland landscape. Sustainable management of vegetation (including some CWR?) in Ethiopian highlands means using fire and cattle in consort.
Brainfood: Lima been diversity, Cassava diversity, Urban soils, Oil palm seed supply, Ginger ploidy, Certification, Gene flow, Maize & drought, Coffee seed storage, Pathogens on seeds, Wheat breeding, Intensification tradeoffs
- Genetic structure within the Mesoamerican gene pool of wild Phaseolus lunatus (Fabaceae) from Mexico as revealed by microsatellite markers: Implications for conservation and the domestication of the species. Three, not just two, genepools.
- Farmer’s Knowledge on Selection and Conservation of Cassava (Manihot esculanta) Genetic Resources in Tanzania. Farmers exchange landraces, some of which are widespread and others more restricted in distribution. Only about 10% are new, but some have been lost.
- Urban cultivation in allotments maintains soil qualities adversely affected by conventional agriculture. You can farm in cities without killing the soil.
- Social institutional dynamics of seed system reliability: the case of oil palm in Benin. Farmers are being increasingly screwed.
- Natural occurrence of mixploid ginger (Zingiber officinale Rosc.) in China and its morphological variations. About a quarter of plants have both diploid and tetraploid cells, and they look different; no plants are wholly tetraploid. Weird.
- Conserving biodiversity through certification of tropical agroforestry crops at local and landscape scales. Certifying the coffee or cacao farm only is usually not enough.
- Is gene flow the most important evolutionary force in plants? May well be, which means that conservationists, among others, need to take it into account. Fortunately, they have the data-rich genomic tools to do so.
- Greater Sensitivity to Drought Accompanies Maize Yield Increase in the U.S. Midwest. It’s agronomy’s fault.
- Desiccation and storage studies on three cultivars of Arabica coffee. Yeah, not orthodox. Didn’t we know that already though?
- Seed-borne fungi on genebank-stored cruciferous seeds from Japan. There’s lots of them. And something needs to be done about it.
- Delivering drought tolerance to those who need it; from genetic resource to cultivar. In making synthetic wheat, you can fiddle with the AB as well as the D genomes, but then you have to phenotype properly under target stress conditions, and have a way of tailoring the resulting global public goods to local needs.
- The Effects of Agricultural Technological Progress on Deforestation: What Do We Really Know? Not as much as we thought we did.
- Large-scale trade-off between agricultural intensification and crop pollination services. Intensification bad for pollinators in France, so bad for agricultural productivity and stability.
- Achieving production and conservation simultaneously in tropical agricultural landscapes. Intensification good for smallholder income in Uganda, bad for birds. If only birds were pollinators.