- 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.
Nibbles: Fertilizer tree, Indo-European, Human diversity, European pollinators, DNA data quality, Biodiversity maps, Organizzzzzz, Plantain
- Faidherbia albida gets another push. To quote from the recent Crops for the Future dissection of neglected/underutilized species: if it’s so good, how come it’s not used more?
- The Indo-European roots of names for pulse crops. Not nearly as boring as it sounds. Oh, and since we’re on the subject…
- Human biodiversity files: athleticism, foodism.
- Huge EU project monitors pollinators. What could possibly go wrong?
- Cleaning up DNA Sequence Database Hell.
- Nice biodiversity hotspot maps. No plants. Definitely no agrobiodiversity.
- A philosopher’s take on that organic agriculture meta-analysis.
- Not Musa, but still edible.
Nibbles: Heirloom conference, Saving plants, Aquaculture benefits, Ancient Egyptian botany, Coffee blogs, ITPGRFA, GIAH
- National Heirloom Exposition coming up. Any of our readers going? Oh come on, one of our readers must be going!
- Kew head honcho calls for a botanical New Deal.
- WorldFish head honcho calls for an aquacultural New Deal.
- A papyrus of recent botanical literature on ancient Egypt.
- Coffee blogs to follow. Oh gosh, am I blushing?
- Participants “gain more knowledge” at policy workshop. Of the ITPGRFA, that would be.
- A couple of Chinese agricultural systems gain recognition as Globally Important Agricultural Heritage.
What I read on my summer holidays
Yeah, summer is over and I’m back at work. Maybe you noticed I haven’t contributed much here in the past month or so. Or maybe you didn’t. Jeremy kept up a steady stream of agrobiodiversity nuggets pretty much all through August. But my lack of activity on the blog doesn’t mean I haven’t tried to keep up, as you would know if you followed us on Facebook, Twitter or Scoop.it. Anyway, for those that don’t, and would like to catch up on my summer reading, here is, in nibble form, what caught my eye during the past month or so:
- “The potato is a religious commodity in America.” Explaining the governance crisis in the US using the humble spud.
- Wait a minute though: “The sizzle seems to be gone from America’s long-term relationship with the potato.” Which apparently means it needs an extreme makeover, colour-wise. For which you’ll need a genebank.
- A tree’s leaves can be genetically different from its roots. Does that mean we have to re-think all molecular phylogenies?
- And speaking of a tree’s leaves, these ones are a thousand years old and give you a buzz.
- A toff with a passion for pigs. P.G. Wodehouse had something to say about this, didn’t he?
- Turns out WFP has a podcast. And ICIMOD has an RSS feed.
- A mathematician factchecks Michael Pollan.
- Pear with me please, while I tell you about another USDA fruit collection.
- 15 Africa-changing innovations include orange-fleshed sweet potatoes. As if they weren’t there before. Anyway, they were THE story for a couple of weeks in August.
- 12 food security innovations include increasing crop diversity. With orange-fleshed sweet potatoes?
- How to put that banana genome to some use.
- Getting the most out of your enumerators.
- IUCN’s Conservation Campus. Any ag? And on a similar topic, training materials in anthropology.
- Automating conservation assessment of plants. You’ll need provenance data from herbaria such as this one at CIP, of course. Oh, and speaking of CIP, they need a phylogeneticist.
- A market opportunity for the mother-in-law?
- Measuring the health of the oceans. Hey, but it’s not all bad for fish.
- Ten species which rely on ex situ conservation. And why that number will go up. How to pay for it all, though?
- Book on the recent history of agricultural research reviewed. I wonder if they looked at the private sector. Because it seems there may be a case to answer.
- Another big grant for taxonomic databases. Ah but this is all going to be community-driven.
- Looks like this Australian genebank could have done with a decent database, community-driven or not.