- Genetic and phytochemical analysis to evaluate the diversity and relationships of mate (Ilex paraguariensis A. St.-Hil.) elite genetic resources in a germplasm collection. Some have low caffeine, which makes them especially useless.
- Genetic factors in threatened species recovery plans on three continents. Are ignored more often than you’d think.
- Climate Change and Food Systems Research: Current Trends and Future Directions. Current research on the effects of climate change on food systems doesn’t pay enough attention to the fact that food production is indeed a system, varies regionally and depends on political structures.
- World data centre for microorganisms: an information infrastructure to explore and utilize preserved microbial strains worldwide. All you need to know about 708 culture collections from 72 countries and >368,000 strains on one website.
- Characterising root trait variability in chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) germplasm. Core collection of 270 reveals 3 main groups based on root architecture in hydroponics.
- RAINBIO: a mega-database of tropical African vascular plants distributions. Who will fillet out the CWR species?
- Genetic Variability for Yield and Nutritional Quality in Yam Bean (Pachyrhizus sp.). Can’t access the high dry matter material? No problem.
- Diversity Among a Wide Asian Collection of Bitter Gourd Landraces and their Genetic Relationships with Commercial Hybrid Cultivars. 114 accessions fall into 5 geographic groups based on SSRs. Commercial cultivars are all very similar.
- Yeast biodiversity from Vitis vinifera L., subsp. sylvestris (Gmelin) Hegi to face up the oenological consequences of climate change. Yeasts from wild grapes will save our wine. Look, I’ll take anything.
- The Potato Cryobank at the International Potato Center (CIP): A Model for Long Term Conservation of Clonal Plant Genetic Resources Collections of the Future. 70% of over 1000 accessions are considered successfully cryoconserved.
- Probabilistic viability calculations for cryopreserving vegetatively propagated collections in genebanks. Were these used in the above?
A miracle rice anniversary timeline
IRRI is celebrating the 50th anniversary of IR8, one of the more important crop varieties ever produced by plant breeders, with a neat timeline of the history of its development and impact.
I was going to include a pedigree of the thing, but, alas, the International Rice Information System seems to be down at the time of writing. Oh well.
LATER: National Geographic to the rescue with that IR8 pedigree.
Nibbles: Illicit ag, Illicit stats, Irish folk meds, Medieval farming, Zoo methods, Date collection, Apple breeding, Ancient cannabis, Old yeast
- Sorry about slow blogging lately. Life caught up with us. Slowly getting back in the saddle…
- ISIS benefitting from agricultural production as much as oil.
- Why we should drop “statistically significant.”
- Irish folk medicine being used. Again. Or still.
- Back to the future of farms, medieval edition: it’s the faldage, stupid.
- Botanical art in history.
- Applying zoo methods to plant conservation. Maybe should be the other way too?
- The future of dates is in the US?
- History of the Honeycrisp apple, for all you Red Delicious haters out there.
- Ancient stash found. Down to seeds and stems.
- Keep warm with some nice Latin American drinks.
- Or beer made from old yeast from a shipwreck.
International Agrobiodiversity Congress less than a month away
The 1st International Agrobiodiversity Congress will be taking place in New Delhi, India from November 6-9, 2016. All the usual suspects will be there, and then some. We always say this, and we never (well, rarely) get any takers, but I’ll say it again for completeness, and because the social media arrangements for this particular shindig are unclear from the website: if you’re going to be there, and would like to blog about the proceedings, let us know, and we’ll make it happen.
Nibbles: Plant blindness, Grape breeding, Mixed farming, Genebank crowdfunding, CGN collecting, Science comms
- Who needs plants anyway?
- Who needs seedless grapes anyway?
- Who needs livestock anyway?
- Who needs the CIMMYT genebank anyway?
- Who needs information on germplasm collecting missions anyway?
- Who needs science communications anyway?