Information

November 9, 2016October 12, 2024

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.

screen-shot-2016-11-08-at-2-19-42-pm

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.

October 12, 2016October 12, 2016

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.

October 11, 2016

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.

September 14, 2016September 14, 2016

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?

September 12, 2016September 9, 2016

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.