- The Czech national genetic resources programme in a nice brochure.
- Food Sovereignty: A Critical Dialogue, by Patrick Mulvany. Another nice brochure. Not entirely clear why it’s not included in the Journal of Peasant Studies special edition on the relevant conference.
- Forests can have Big Data too. Yes, it’s Global Forest Watch. And more from WRI, but it’s really all over the intertubes. No sign of the brochure. Yet.
- “So when I eat this [corn] I eat with all the energy of my history.” No brochures needed.
- Making agroforestry and agriculture in general attractive to yutes. Would a brochure help?
Nibbles: CGIAR priorities, Drought tolerant rice, Agroecology bibliography, Amaranthus seed production video, Ethiopian genebank, Yemeni genebank
- UN Special Rapporteur on food thinks “questions of the 60s are not the questions of today.” Does he think the CGIAR is answering the questions of the 60s? One suspects so, but surely there are points of agreement, e.g. nutrition, food systems, natural resources management…
- Farmers would be willing to pay quite a premium for drought tolerant (DT) rice hybrids, but for DT varieties not so much. That’s an opportunity for public-private partnerships. Or is that a 60s answer to a 60s question?
- Mr de Schutter probably knows all about this bibliography of agroecology in action. Which all seems so much more 60s than hybrid rice somehow.
- How 60s is it to want to produce decent amaranthus seed? It’s totally unfair, but I can’t resist linking to this now.
- Ethiopian genebank, set up in response to the genetic erosion of the 60s, gets nice, long writeup in The Guardian by way of introduction to a bare-bones couple of final paragraphs on some G8 poverty reduction plan. Nice video though.
- There was no Facebook in the 60s for genebanks to strut their stuff on.
Brainfood: Value of Chiloé, Zimbabwe sorghum, Rosa karyotypes, PSM diversity, Pear diversity, Medic clines, Wild rices, Barley adaptation, Coffee agroforesty
- Valuing cultural ecosystem services: Agricultural heritage in Chiloé island, southern Chile. Willingness to pay at US$50.5 per person per year, and not related to distance from site.
- Assessments of genetic diversity and anthracnose disease response among Zimbabwe sorghum germplasm. New sources of resistance (for the US) in even a moderately diverse collection.
- Karyotype Analysis of Wild Rosa Species in Xinjiang, Northwestern China. It’s just amazing to me that people still do karyopypes.
- Explaining intraspecific diversity in plant secondary metabolites in an ecological context. Trait variance in these things is considerable, partly genetic and can evolve, maybe even faster than mean trait values.
- Identifying genetic diversity and a preliminary core collection of Pyrus pyrifolia cultivars by a genome-wide set of SSR markers. Close relationship between China and Japan, and Sichuan a bit of a nexus.
- Genomic Signature of Adaptation to Climate in Medicago truncatula. Found genes associated with position along 3 environmental clines in a set of populations, then were able to predict performance of other populations based on genotype.
- Could abiotic stress tolerance in wild relatives of rice be used to improve Oryza sativa? Yes, and from these particular places.
- An efficient method of developing synthetic allopolyploid rice (Oryza spp.). Should make using those wild relatives a bit easier.
- Can barley (Hordeum vulgare L. s.l.) adapt to fast climate changes? A controlled selection experiment. Maybe not. Not even the landrace.
- Coffee landscapes as refugia for native woody biodiversity as forest loss continues in southwest Ethiopia. “Coffee farms could support a considerable portion, though not all, of the woody biodiversity of disappearing forests.” No word on what it does to the coffee, though.
Nibbles: New potatoes, Wild species, Native maize, Conservation course, Indigenous fishery, Yield trends
- Wild relative rescues potatoes. Which wild relative? Well for that you’ll have to read the paper. The FAQ on that. Or if you want an alternative. More the better, I guess. And just to remember what makes it all possible: diversity in fields and genebanks.
- Wild species not just useful to food security as sources of genes, of course. And more.
- Indigenous peoples save corn.
- Maybe some of them would be interested in this MSc at Bangor.
- Indigenous peoples can catch — and save? — fish after all.
- So is there stagnation in yield increases or what? Lobell reviews book that says maybe not.
Nibbles: Texan blackeyed peas, Pest distributions, Better eucalypts, City gardens, Allopolyploidy, Chilean agroforestry, Sahel agroforestry
- Texas A&M builds better
mousetrapcowpea. - Huge survey of the distribution of crop pests.
- Spanish tree breeders assisting in the despoliation of the Ethiopian plateau. Totally unfair, I know, there’s plenty of reasons why improving eucalyptus production in Ethiopia is a good idea. But I just wish similar effort had gone into local trees.
- They increased the biodiversity of city gardens and nobody noticed. Wonder if it would have been the same in allotments. Meanwhile, however…
- It takes 4-5 million years for allopolyploids to become different enough for their hybrids to be sterile.
- Save the Espinal!
- More water wouldn’t help sorghum in the Sahel. Yes, you guessed it, the World Congress on Agroforestry is still going on.