- Organic vegetable farms are not nutritionally disadvantaged compared with adjacent conventional or integrated vegetable farms in Eastern Australia. Something for the next meta-analysis.
- Comparing costs for different conservation strategies of garlic (Allium sativum L.) germplasm in genebanks. It depends.
- Malting process optimization of spelt (Triticum spelta L.) for the brewing process. You can make a decent beer from spelt. Can I do the evaluation?
- Genetic differentiation of Oryza ruffipogon [sic] Griff. from Hainan Island and Guangdong, China Based on Hd1 and Ehd1 genes. It’s different, because of different ecology.
- Plant species diversity and genetic diversity within a dominant species interactively affect plant community biomass. In other words, the higher the genetic diversity within the dominant species, the further the effect of species diversity on biomass goes from negative to positive. Bottom line is that you have to consider multiple diversity levels in relating biodiversity to ecosystem functioning. At least in this ecosystem.
- Evidence for presence of the founder Ia mtDNA haplotype of Phytophthora infestans in 19th century potato tubers from the Rothamsted archives. “…the founder Ia mtDNA haplotype survived in potato tubers after 1846 and was present over 30 years later in the UK.”
- Global forecasts of urban expansion to 2030 and direct impacts on biodiversity and carbon pools. Urban area to triple, affecting important biodiversity hotspots. Biggest surprise to me was Turkey. Gotta be a lot of CWRs there that are going to be threatened by urbanization. But I guess this is good news for urban agriculture?
- Seed Governance at the Intersection of Multiple Global and Nation-State Priorities: Modernizing Seeds in Turkey. Developing countries are opting for laws that favor commercialization and privatization because they’re buying into the currently dominant paradigm of what agricultural development means. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t. And if my aunt had wheels she’d be a bus.
- DNA Damage in Plant Herbarium Tissue. There isn’t enough of it to matter.
- Systematic review and meta-analysis of school-based interventions to improve daily fruit and vegetable intake in children aged 5 to 12 y. Fruit yes, veggies no.
- Use of cereal bars with quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa W.) to reduce risk factors related to cardiovascular diseases. Only 22 young(ish) subjects, but promising.
- The Genomic Signature of Crop-Wild Introgression in Maize. The wild relative has helped the cultigen to adapt to highland Mexico.
Nibbles: Organic breeding, Agroforestry, Metallophytes, Fermentation, Grain storage
- Meta-analysis or no meta-analysis, breeders still want to breed for organic conditions.
- Farm Radio does tree farming.
- A plea for metallophytes. Every damn plant group has a lobby these days. I bet some of them are crop wild relatives though.
- As does almost every style of food preparation. Although I have to say I myself can never read enough about fermentation.
- This video is advertised as being about food preservation, and I was going to link it to the above, but it turns out to be about seed storage. Which is interesting enough, and important too, but not the same thing. A clever video, which I personally think doesn’t in the end make its point.
Nibbles: Irish Famine book, Breeding for adaptation, Neolithic diets, Randy Thaman, Ecological Babylon, IPR for smallholders, Botanical gardens
- Don’t underestimate the importance of a new book on the Irish Famine, despite the weird construction used in praising it.
- Impossible to overestimate the importance of crop breeding for climate change adaptation. And would you like a presentation with that?
- Cannot underestimate the diversity of early Neolithic diets. No, wait.
- Difficult to overestimate the contribution made by Prof. Randy Thaman to the conservation of agrobiodiversity in the Pacific. One of several honoured by IUCN for services to conservation.
- Fed up with linguistic tricks? Well, too bad, because here’s another one. It turns out you can use agricultural biodiversity terminology as examples to explain what’s wrong with ecology.
- Here we go again. Easy to underestimate the importance of IPR legislation in enabling smallholders to conserve agrobiodiversity.
- Plain impossible to list the x best botanical gardens in the world.
Brainfood: South American threat map, Bee domestication, Rice origins, Legume diversity, Lima bean domestication
- Analysis of threats to South American flora and its implications for conservation. Bottom line: Ecuadorian and Colombian Andes, southern Paraguay, the Guyana shield, southern Brazil, and Bolivia. But don’t let that divert your attention from the cool maps.
- Management increases genetic diversity of honey bees via admixture. No genetic bottleneck there. And the same in more words, but not as many as the original paper.
- Phylogeography of Asian wild rice, Oryza rufipogon: a genome-wide view. When in doubt, throw more markers at it. Two groups in O. rufipogon, only the Chinese/Indochinese one related to cultivated rice (indica). Japonica out on a limb. And the longer version.
- Legume Diversity Patterns in West Central Africa: Influence of Species Biology on Distribution Models. Temperature variables are most important.
- Multiple domestications of the Mesoamerican gene pool of lima bean (Phaseolus lunatus L.): evidence from chloroplast DNA sequences. Andean and Mesoamerican cultivated genepools confirmed, and two sub-genepools within the latter, one originating in western central Mexico and the other between Guatemala and Costa Rica. Will they mash up with the study in the first link? Some of the people involved are neighbours and friends.
Agrobiodiversity surveys galore
Within days of each other, surveys have been announced on Who is working on agricultural biodiversity? and On-farm management of PGRFA. I don’t know if there’s a connection between the two. Is something brewing out there? I think we should be told.