- Survival seed bank in the news again. Must be Christmas.
- Turkish nibbles: wine, pictachios. That wine one will no doubt run and run.
- How to make sure nutrition gets a seat at the agricultural development table. And Danny breaks it down for ya.
- What leads to spurts in conservation effort? In situ only, but instructive.
- Sesame is big business in Ethiopia.
- Boffins find yet another bit of DNA that will save the world.
Nibbles: Sesamum publications, Organic China, Melaku Worede biopic, Pre-breeding smackdown, Price of spice, Pineapple breeding
- A bibliography of sesame. Good to have.
- All you want to know about organic farming in China. Who knows when it might come in useful.
- The legacy of Melaku Worede. Proud to know him.
- European pre-breeding meeting. Would be good to go.
- The Spice Trade 2.0. Good gig if you can get it.
- Coconut-tasting pineapple. Why?
Brainfood: Bumper bonanza, Old peas, Irrigated meadows, Cereal mashes, Medicinal plants, Diversity and production, Millet gaps, Seed ageing, Flax core
- First off — a pretty big deal. Taylor & Francis have made a bunch of papers related to sustainable agriculture freely available, but only until the end of December. Happy whatever holiday won’t offend you.
- Twentieth-century changes in the genetic composition of Swedish field pea metapopulations. Metapopulations have become isolated populations. In genebanks.
- Effects of different irrigation systems on the biodiversity of species-rich hay meadows. Change from the traditional irrigation system has affected biodiversity levels, but not a huge amount.
- Research regarding the use of wheat biodiversity for obtaining some cereal-based fermented mashes. Let’s go straight to what we need to know here: the best mash come from spelt wheat. Oh, to be the one doing the organoleptic characterization.
- Cultivation and high capitalization of medicinal and aromatic plants in the Romanian-Bulgarian cross-border region. If you’re really interested, there’s a database that brings it all together.
- Crop biodiversity, productivity and production risk: Panel data micro-evidence from Ethiopia. More crops = more production. But the devil is in the details, I suspect.
- Identification of gaps in pearl millet germplasm from East and Southern Africa conserved at the ICRISAT genebank. We used to do this sort of thing by hand in my day.
- At3g08030 transcript: a molecular marker of seed ageing. This mRNA could predict germination performance of a dry seed lot across species. Good for genebanks?
- Assembling a core collection from the flax world collection maintained by Plant Gene Resources of Canada. You don’t hear much about core collections these days, why is that?
Nibbles: Polymotu, Korean genebank, Arizona fruits, B4N, Rice song, Medieval food
- A “grand, almost surreal vision” of coconut conservation.
- A grandish vision of ex situ crop conservation in Korea.
- A very down-to-earth vision of fruit conservation in Arizona.
- An extremely wacky vision of the post-agricultural world.
- A workmanlike vision of biodiversity for nutrition project.
- A musical vision of rice husking.
- A historical vision of food in the Middle Ages.
Nibbles: Vegetables, UK funding, Oz funding, Oz genebank, Jefferson, Hawaiian food, Markets, Tree seeds, NUS journal, Geographic targeting, ITPGRFA, Arabica and climate, Protected areas, European farmland biodiversity, Sustainable use, Ethiopian seed video
- Palestinian rooftop gardens. Including crucifers, no doubt.
- Brits support work with rice and wheat wild relatives. Among other things. They’ll probably use some of these genomics things.
- Aussies support sweet potatoes. HarvestPlus rejoices.
- That new Australian genebank. Will it have any sweet potatoes?
- The agricultural legacy of Thomas Jefferson. It doesn’t say here, but I bet he was into sweet potato.
- Hawaiian menus. What, no sweet potato?
- Forget biotech, the road to sexy agriculture is via the supermarket. Where you can buy sweet potato. Maybe even of the organic persuasion.
- Or maybe better tree seeds. Even in the Nordic countries. Or the US. Is cacao a tree?
- Plans for special edition of Sustainability on neglected crops. Like amaranth?
- Geographic targeting reaches roots/tubers. Using this newfangled atlas? Or no?
- Treaty and Consortium love-in filmed. Thanks for sharing. It’s all part of this CGIAR perestroika thing, no doubt.
- What that Kew coffee extinction paper really said.
- Protected areas need work. Especially for coffee (see above).
- Yeah but protected areas is not the only way to go, and Europe now has a bunch of biodiversity indicators for farmland. I guess it’s all part of some big plan.
- Policy brief on sustainable use of PGR. Or, as we used to call it, on farm conservation.
- Which you can kind of see happening here.