- Nice podcast on Prof. Alice Roberts’ book on domestication, Tamed.
- Remember yesterday’s Nibble on Mexico’s avocado security problem? Wait till they start growing these seedless ones. Or this one, for that matter.
- Is this jade bok choy the most famous botanically-themed work of art?
- Let them eat cactus.
- Plant breeding as a business: the book.
- You can use Bitcoin to buy Somali goats.
- Corn wasn’t king in the ancient American SW. Ruderals were.
Nibbles: Orphan edition
- The Economist jumps on the genomics-for-orphan-crops bandwagon.
- But is phenomics more important?
- And seed systems, don’t forget seed systems…
- Some of those orphan crops may get an International Day, if India has anything to do with it.
- Immortelle is as orphan as they come, but maybe not in Croatia any more.
- Amaranthus never really went away, not in Mexico.
- Persimmon, meanwhile, is being adopted by the snack industry in the US. But the Japanese are way ahead.
- Some think yerba mate is not orphan enough.
- Is yam an orphan. It depends on what your definition of is is.
- Avocado is the opposite of orphaned in Mexico. It is spoiled rotten.
- Many orphan crops are women’s crops. Case in point: enset.
- Orphan is a relative term, and reversible.
- Exhibit B: sweet potato.
- People often take their orphan crops with them. Even in antiquity.
- Coconut is fast becoming an orphan in Tanzania.
- With 32 cultivars available to grow in Louisiana alone, nobody can say lettuce is an orphan.
- Mexico and Brazil collaborate on crop diversity conservation. Including orphan crops?
- One thing that is probably not a huge priority for orphan crops is their wild relatives. Just saying.
- Anyway, we’re going to need all the orphan crops we can get if James Cameron’s titanic vegetarian utopia is to come true.
Nibbles: Joanne Labate, Gebisa Ejeta, David Spooner, Strawberry 101, Mad honey, First figs, Agrobiodiversity maps, School project, Takesgiving, Private investment
- USDA vegetable crop curator tells it like it is.
- $5 million to find more Striga resistance genes in sorghum.
- Wild potato herbarium specimens find good home.
- How two New World strawberries got together in the Old World and then spread all over the world.
- Hallucinogenic honey: what could possibly go wrong?
- First farmers gave a fig.
- The other of all agrobiodiversity map mashups.
- Cool school project on crop diversity in Europe.
- In other news, “Columbusing” is a thing.
- Private sector investment in conservation: Turning “small and new” into “big and familiar.”
Brainfood: Banana diversity, Cacao and CC, Coffee and CC, Zosya diversity, Certification, Genetic surrogates, Potato diversity, Food sovereignty, Swiss wheat, Seed storage, Golden potato
- Diversity and morphological characterization of Musa spp. in North Kivu and Ituri provinces, Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. New cultivars still being discovered.
- A review of research on the effects of drought and temperature stress and increased CO2 on Theobroma cacao L., and the role of genetic diversity to address climate change. We have the diversity. But for how long?
- Climate change adaptation of coffee production in space and time. Gonna need Plans B and C. But do we have the diversity?
- Evaluation and Breeding of Zoysiagrass Using Japan’s Natural Genetic Resources. Stick to morphology.
- Where are commodity crops certified, and what does it mean for conservation and poverty alleviation? Less for poverty alleviation than for conservation. But more and better spatial data needed, especially on organic certification.
- Environmental and geographic variables are effective surrogates for genetic variation in conservation planning. Phew!
- Genome diversity of tuber-bearing Solanum uncovers complex evolutionary history and targets of domestication in the cultivated potato. More diversity in the landraces compared to wild species than in any other crop, few genes involved in early improvement, and different loci for adaptation to uplands and lowlands; also, wild relatives involved in diversification of long-day types.
- Agricultural biodiversity is sustained in the framework of food sovereignty. Peasants feed the world.
- Crop domestication facilitated rapid geographical expansion of a specialist pollinator, the squash bee Peponapis pruinosa. Bee follows crop follows people.
- Unlocking the diversity of genebanks: whole-genome marker analysis of Swiss bread wheat and spelt. Early breeders missed some stuff.
- A probabilistic model for tropical tree seed desiccation tolerance and storage classification. Predict storage behaviour from morphology.
- Potential of golden potatoes to improve vitamin A and vitamin E status in developing countries. Here we go again.
Nibbles: CWR, Vavilov, Russian wheat, Spinifex, Copal, Pacific veggies, ITPGRFA, GHUs, Brewing, Sustainable meat, Livestock domestication
- FoodTank does crop wild relatives.
- “The inveterate collector who understand the poetics of diversity had left behind a new plant unknown to science.”
- That “inveterate collector” would probably approve of this.
- A VERY tasty grass.
- Chew on that spinifex while burning this stuff for the full botanical multi-sensory experience..
- Pacific people told to cultivate their gardens for health and nutrition. And climate change adaptation.
- Progress on Farmers’ Rights. Incremental, but still.
- The unsung heroes of germplasm distribution get together.
- Reviving the fortunes of NY hops through fancy breeding.
- Too much plant protein is going to animals, so let’s give them insects instead.
- Because animals are bad for equality anyway.