The 10th World Potato Congress starts today in Cuzco. If you’re there and the panoply of social networking opportunities available is not enough for you, let us know and we’ll give you a platform here.
How to help plants species get their mojo back
The Species Recovery Manual is just out, thanks to Botanic Gardens Conservation International (BGCI) and the International Association of Botanic Gardens (IABG).
Species recovery involves many different disciplines and actors, and responsibility for it at a national level is often unclear, given that it cuts across different ministries and agencies. After various consultations, it was felt by BGCI and IABG that it would be valuable to produce a manual that would clarify the aims and purpose of species recovery, set out the various steps involved, and indicate good practice. This manual is aimed specifically at conservation practitioners but also includes comprehensive bibliographic references, which enable more in depth reading on the topics covered in this publication. The manual includes chapters and case studies from members of the Ecological Restoration Alliance of Botanic Gardens.
Lots of great advice on everything from planning to seed sampling strategies to community participation.
Brainfood: Czech genebank value, AnGR value, Korea rice core value, Cannabis value, Red rice diversity, Aquaculture trends, Mexican CWR, Rice male sterility, Evidence base, Siberian cheese
- Estimating the Value of Crop Diversity Conservation Services Provided by the Czech National Programme for Agrobiodiversity. Willingness-to-pay (WTP) amounts to country-wide benefits of $68 million.
- Animal genetic resources diversity and ecosystem services. Traditional breeds make a significant contribution to non-provisioning ecosystem services, but their keepers are often marginalized. Maybe somebody should calculate WTP?
- Genome-wide association study reveals candidate genes related to low temperature tolerance in rice (Oryza sativa) during germination. 100 genes on 2 chromosomes, based on data from the Korean core collection.
- The Role of Agriculture in Supplying Nutritional, Medicinal, and Recreational Cannabis Products. We need a Green Ganja Revolution, man.
- Diversity and population structure of red rice germplasm in Bangladesh. Red rices, actually.
- Comparative terrestrial feed and land use of an aquaculture-dominant world. Farming fish spares more land than farming livestock. And is better for you.
- A Crop Wild Relative Inventory for Mexico. 310 taxa, 30% endemic.
- Genetic analysis of male sterility obtained from a rice cultivar Lebed backcrossed with Taichung 65. You can get it here.
- The major barriers to evidence‐informed conservation policy and possible solutions. Convince the public, and the policy-makers will come.
- Using PacBio sequencing to investigate the bacterial microbiota of traditional Buryatian cottage cheese and comparison with Italian and Kazakhstan artisanal cheeses. Buryatia is a mountainous Russian republic in eastern Siberia, and they make really diverse cheese there, bacterially speaking.
Wheat landraces centre stage
The program for the 1st International Conference of Wheat Landraces is out and it looks fab. There are about 95,000 wheat landraces recorded in Genesys.
Lots to play around with.
So much variation in #Durum Reference Collection.. how many PhDs will take to study it all? @ICARDA_CGIAR @WheatInitiative @CropWildRelativ pic.twitter.com/SUTCVFkwZJ
— Filippo Bassi (@fillobax) May 15, 2018
Farmer’s Pride’s survey
If you are involved in conserving wild or cultivated plant genetic resources in situ or if continued access to plant genetic diversity is important to you, please take 10–15 minutes to complete our survey.
That’s from Farmer’s Pride, a new EU-funded project coordinated by, ironically, the University of Birmingham.