- Blockchain for ABS touted at Davos. The Economist is there.
- But will it be at the World Potato Congress? I’m betting no.
- But for sure some Germans will be.
- Martha Stewart will be in Svalbard.
- Crops for the Future was On the Menu.
- Culinary Breeding Network is in Hawaii. Lucky them. But would it have killed them to provide a link?
- I want to be in Lebanon.
- There are a lot of pretty seeds in Paul Smith’s new book.
Jobs available
Fancy blasting plants with mutation-inducing atomic rays? Good news just in from our friend Norman Warthmann, who recently joined the Plant Breeding and Genetics Laboratory of the FAO/IAEA joint Division in Vienna, Austria. They have two fairly high-level job openings. I can’t actually find the vacancy notices on the site, but I’m sure if you email Norman, he’ll send them to you.
Good luck.
LATER: One of the jobs is as a plant breeder.
Brainfood: Desho grass, Wheat breeding, Restoration seed policies, Drought rice, Dietary quality, Passport data, Bombyx breeding, Tea domestication, Carp diversity, Abyssinian pea, Chickpea subsetting, Oat breeding, Phenointegration, Food trade
- The potential of desho grass (Pennisetum pedicellatum Trin.) for animal feed and land management practices in Ethiopia: A review. “Physiologically, desho grass has a peculiar characteristic of drought tolerance, ability to produce large biomass per unit of land.”
- Wheat genetic resources in the post-genomics era: promise and challenges. Need to go for more wide crosses, which requires more cytological expertise.
- Native seed trade of herbaceous species for restoration: a European policy perspective with global implications. Current policies are inadequate.
- Screening African Rice (Oryza glaberrima) for Tolerance to Abiotic Stresses: II. Lowland Drought. 4 out of over 2000 accessions are promising.
- Dietary species richness as a measure of food biodiversity and nutritional quality of diets. Number of species consumed is a good indicator of the quality of the diet, across seasons and countries.
- Could taxonomic misnaming threaten the ex situ conservation and the usage of plant genetic resources? Only 3% of Citrullus accessions in major genebank databases correctly named.
- Genetic breeding of silkworms: from traditional hybridization to molecular design. Brave new world.
- Domestication origin and breeding history of the tea plant (Camellia sinensis) in China and India based on nuclear microsatellites and cpDNA sequence data. 3 domestication areas, in China and India.
- Preservation of the genetic diversity of a local common carp in the agricultural heritage rice–fish system. Farmers like to select different colour types.
- Abyssinian pea (Lathyrus schaeferi Kosterin pro Pisum abyssinicum A. Br.) – a problematic taxon. May have been the result of a spontaneous interspecific cross under cultivation.
- Managing and Discovering Agronomically Beneficial Traits in Chickpea Germplasm Collections. Cores, mini-cores and reference sets facilitate use.
- Evaluation of resistance to Blumeria graminis (DC.) f. sp. avenae, in Avena murphyi and A. magna genotypes. In oats, the lower-ploidy species have better resistance.
- Editorial: Plant Phenotyping and Phenomics for Plant Breeding. The name of the game is integration.
- Trade and the equitability of global food nutrient distribution. Trade is important to nutrition.
Photographing dietary quality
People in other cultures are often portrayed as scary or exotic. This has to change. We want to show how people really live. It seemed natural to use photos as data so people can see for themselves what life looks like on different income levels.
That’s Anna Rosling Rönnlund of Gapminder on Dollar Street.
Dollar Street lets you visit many, many homes all over the world. Without travelling.
.@AnnaGapminder uses art and science to create an engaging portrait of how people live and help us make dollars and sense of a complicated world. pic.twitter.com/EeysLLpGjm
— Gates Foundation (@gatesfoundation) January 11, 2018
There are photos of everything from toilets to pets. The food items included are “grains”
“vegetables”
and “spices.”
We know from recent work from our friends at Bioversity and their partners that number of species consumed is a good proxy for the nutritional quality of diets across countries and seasons. I wonder if such photographic documentation can be used to estimate dietary richness, and thus quality?
Nibbles: Development egos, CGN, Fijian adaptation, Seedxit, Fancy coconuts, Seed dealers, Heritage rice, Rumsfeld & biodiversity, Grass-fed beef beef
- Development thinkers pithily skewered.
- CGN’s new brochure.
- Fijian farmers dealing with climate change with diverse, triple-layered systems, and small, phased, staggered planting. Or, common sense.
- Brexit will mean less choice of seeds for British farmers. Maybe.
- £3 for a coconut? Nuts.
- Dealing with seed dealers to speed up new rice variety delivery.
- How about the heirlooms, though? Maybe they can take care of themselves.
- The value of biodiversity is a known unknown.
- Forage quality is known, and decreasing.