- Mexicans can’t afford avocados.
- “Vostok — delo tonkoe, Petrukha!“
- New blog on crop wild relatives in the US, courtesy of our friend Colin.
- Royal villa has nice garden shock.
- “Three-quarters of date palm trees in Iraq right now … are of just one variety.”
Brainfood: Millet diversity, Maize landraces and hybrids, Potato carotenoids, Wheat domestication, Value chains, Population modeling, Rhizobium diversity, Yeast diversity, Core collection, Wild Zea, Cotton geneflow, Forest fires, Forest diseases
- Identification of trait-specific germplasm and developing a mini core collection for efficient use of foxtail millet genetic resources in crop improvement. All the goodness of Setaria italica diversity in just 35 accessions.
- Farmers’ adoption of maize (Zea mays L.) hybrids and the persistence of landraces in Southwest China: implications for policy and breeding. There are pros and cons to both hybrids and landraces, and participatory plant breeding could bring together the pros and get rid of the cons.
- Carotenoid concentrations of native Andean potatoes as affected by cooking. Some carotenoids were decreased by boiling, others not so much.
- Domestication evolution, genetics and genomics in wheat. A big summary of what we know so far and what we might learn by sequencing some wild wheat relatives.
- Research Principles for Developing Country Food Value Chains. Multidimensional demands by consumers demand multidimensional research by scientists. I think.
- Range shift promotes the formation of stable range edges. Species can move for reasons other than climate change.
- Genetic diversity of rhizobia associated with indigenous legumes in different regions of Flanders (Belgium). A new genus? In Flanders?
- Assessment of yeast diversity in soils under different management regimes. Type of management and vegetation has an effect. Yeah, well, you had to be there.
- Efficiency of PowerCore in core set development using amplified fragment length polymorphic markers in mungbean. Software for making core collections seems to work.
- Three new teosintes (Zea spp., Poaceae) from México. New entities, apparently. Species? Subspecies? More study needed, natch.
- Recent long-distance transgene flow into wild populations conforms to historical patterns of gene flow in cotton (Gossypium hirsutum) at its centre of origin. Four out of eight populations have transgenes.
- Effectiveness of strict vs. multiple use protected areas in reducing tropical forest fires: A global analysis using matching methods. Indigenous areas and multiple use are best.
- The sudden emergence of pathogenicity in insect–fungus symbioses threatens naive forest ecosystems. It can happen anywhere, any time.
Nibbles: Biodiversity fund, Mexican maize landraces, Przewalski’s horse
- Dutch biodiversity fund to pay dividend in cheese. Gouda, presumably.
- Landraces save farmers from climate change, yada yada.
- Horse wild relative wilder than originally thought.
Punjabis saving iconic Italian cheese
It was almost exactly 345 years ago that Samuel Pepys famously dug a hole in his garden in order to save his parmesan cheese from the Great Fire of London:
…and I took the opportunity of laying all the papers of my office that I could not otherwise dispose of. And in the evening Sir W. Pen and I did dig another, and put our wine in it; and I my Parmazan cheese, as well as my wine and some other things.
I like to think the great diarist would have been fascinated to know both that production of that caseinic wonder continues to this day around Parma (with the no doubt invaluable protection of the European Union), and that it is currently largely in the hands of Sikh immigrants:
In the middle of the Po Valley, where the xenophobic Northern League has its core voters, there is now a symbol that coexistence between different cultures and religions can work very well. In Pessina Cremonese, between Mantua and Cremona, the largest Sikh temple in Europe was recently inaugurated. And all agree: without this Indian folk and religious community this area would be much poorer, and typical Italian products such as Parmesan cheese would perhaps be no more.
Himalayan landraces and climate change
I think it may be worth unpacking yesterday’s Himalayan Nibble a little bit. It all started with an IPS story about Nepali women abandoning hybrids and other imported varieties for local landraces in the face of drier and hotter conditions. That’s becoming a metanarrative of sorts, but the interesting thing about this particular example of adaptation is that it came out of a WWF project.
When WWF-Nepal started consultations with villagers on how to protect water resources and crops, the women pointed out that the indigenous seeds they had used in the past were better suited to the changing weather conditions.
One doesn’t as a rule credit WWF with much of an interest in agriculture, or at least I don’t — or didn’t. I’ve now learned better. The piece also highlights the role of community seedbanks (CSB).
Operating from a room in a one-storey building, the seed bank today stocks 68 varieties of seeds, including grains like rice, maize and millets, and vegetables like tomato, green chilli, cauliflower and cabbage. The women’s cooperative runs from the adjacent room.
Which is quite a coincidence because yesterday also saw the paper “Banking for the future: savings, security and seeds: a short study of community seed banks in Bangladesh, Costa Rica, Ethiopia, Honduras, India, Nepal, Thailand, Zambia and Zimbabwe” summarized over at Eldis. One of the recommendations of the study is that:
agricultural research institutions should extend their expertise and services for free to assist and support communities and NGOs in setting up and maintaining CSBs
Fair enough, but what about extension? I ask because also on Eldis, on the same day, we find the study “Determinants of adoption and extent of agricultural intensification in the central mid-hills of Nepal,” which concludes that:
sustainable agricultural intensification can be achieved by improving extension programmes, credit provision, infrastructural services and the promotion of irrigation facilities
Anyway, be that as it may, I think we can all agree that there’s something interesting going on in Nepal in terms of the use of landraces to adapt to climate change. It may not be the answer, but it certainly seems to be an answer. So why, pray tell, are they not listening in Bhutan? There’s definitely not much talk of community seedbanks and the role of landraces in a SciDev piece, again out on the same day mind, on the problems being faced by that country’s farmers due to climate change. Ah, but:
An upcoming regional meeting on climate change in the Himalayas, to be held in Bhutan in November 2011, will see experts discussing water, energy and biodiversity and devising strategies to build climate change resilience for food security in the region.
I hope those Nepali women with their community seedbank will be invited.