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?
Brainfood: Eurisco, Saline barley, ICRISAT sorghum, Hardy kiwi, Pepper diversity, Pakistani dates, W Africa & climate change
- EURISCO: The European search catalogue for plant genetic resources. 43 countries, 400 institutes, 1.8 million accessions, and a vital part of Genesys!
- Yield-related salinity tolerance traits identified in a nested association mapping (NAM) population of wild barley. Salinity allele found in wild barley.
- Geographical distribution of traits and diversity in the world collection of pearl millet [Pennisetum glaucum (L.) R. Br., synonym: Cenchrus americanus (L.) Morrone] landraces conserved at the ICRISAT genebank. Plant height in Burkina Faso ranges from 80 to 490cm.
- Hardy Kiwifruit Genetic Resources. They’re wild.
- Deciphering Genetic Diversity in the Origins of Pepper (Capsicum spp.) and Comparison with Worldwide Variability. Diversity is decreasing in Ecuador.
- Simple Sequence Repeat (SSR) markers show greater similarity among morphologically diverse Date palm (Phoenix dactylifera L.) cultivars grown in Pakistan. Morphologically diverse varieties show little genetic diversity.
- Assessing climate adaptation options and uncertainties for cereal systems in West Africa. About the only thing that’s going to work is increased temperature resilience during flowering.
Reports galore
It’s clearly the season for major reports. Hot on the heels of AGRA’s status report on African agriculture, and IFPRI’s look at agricultural reasearch in Africa, both of which we Nibbled recently, there’s an IDS-Oxfam study into the effects of the global food crisis and, from the Global Alliance for the Future of Food, the aptly named The Future of Food: Seeds of Resilience, A Compendium of Perspectives on Agricultural Agrobiodiversity from Around the World. I hope someone is joining up the dots.
Mansplaining genebank terminology
I’m defining genebank terms over on Twitter today. Let me know if there’s one you particularly want explained.