Nibbles: Genebanks in Brazil, Tunisia, Ghana, Ethiopia, Goan rice, Wheat adoption, Peruvian hot peppers & cacao, Amazonian fruits and nuts, Dates, Great Hedge of India, Conservation genetics presentation

  1. Safety duplicating a chickpea collection.
  2. Tunisia’s genebank in the news.
  3. Ghana’s genebank trying to save taro.
  4. Using a genebank to improve Elephant grass.
  5. On-farm conservation of rice in Goa.
  6. Molecular tools show that a couple of varieties account for about half the wheat acreage in Bangladesh and Nepal. Hope all the landraces are in genebanks, and safety duplicated.
  7. Celebrating Peruvian pepper diversity.
  8. Peru’s cacao diversity doesn’t need help, apparently.
  9. However, the Amazon’s wild-extracted fruits (including cacao and a wild relative) could be in trouble. Hope they’re in genebanks, just in case.
  10. How the date came to the US. Including its genebanks.
  11. India had a precursor of the Green Wall of Africa but nobody remembers it. Glad it wasn’t used as a genebank of sorts.
  12. Conservation genetics (i.e., most of the above) explained in 48 slides.

Brainfood: Extreme events, Hot livestock, Decentralized breeding, Rice evaluation, Maize relatives double, Peanut hybrids, Tanzanian cassava, Microbiome, Brassica pests, Hop terroir, Beer taste

Nibbles: Eat This Newsletter, Basmati, DSI, NBPGR collecting, Ganja page

  1. Jeremy’s latest newsletter covers in more depth things we just Nibbled here, including perry and ancient bananas, plus much other stuff. We talked about “wild rice” here a couple of times.
  2. As for actual rice, the controversy between India and Pakistan about the origin of Basmati just got a bit more complicated. Could it in fact have come from Afghanistan?
  3. Maybe everyone should listen to Dr Amber Scholz’s ideas about ABS.
  4. Meanwhile, India’s National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources regional centre in Kumaon has been busy collecting germplasm. No word on whether that includes rice, Basmati or otherwise.
  5. Pretty cool way of presenting accession data, courtesy of Mystery Haze. I wonder where that’s from originally.

Nibbles: Apple diversity, Quinoa diversity, Potato diversity, Indian coconut, Mead recipe

  1. The need to diversify apple breeding.
  2. Unlikely pean to the world quinoa core collection. I believe we may have blogged about it.
  3. And the Commonwealth Potato Collection rounds off today’s trifecta of cool genebanks.
  4. Kerala’s coconut problems only start with root wilt. Aren’t there coconut collections that could be used to solve them? Well of course there are.
  5. Recreating bochet, a medieval mead, sounds really hard, but worth it. Someone want to start a mead collection?

Brainfood: Diversification, Diverse diet, Urban forests, Local seed systems, Heterosis, Oil palm core, Black Sigatoka resistance, Pearl millet diversity, Alfalfa diversity, Barley evaluation x2, Ganja origins, Apple origins, Millet diversity, Pepper diversity, Grapevine domestication, Vanilla diversity