- Identification of Gaps in Pigeonpea Germplasm from East and Southern Africa Conserved at the ICRISAT Genebank. Lots of collecting work to do.
- Rice Diversity – The Genetic Resource Grid of North-East India. 10,000 cultivars?
- Diversity of Melon Accessions from Northeastern Brazil and Their Relationships with Germplasms of Diverse Origins. Have come from all over.
- Disentangling Values in the Interrelations between Cultural Ecosystem Services and Landscape Conservation—A Case Study of the Ifugao Rice Terraces in the Philippines. They may be beautiful, but they need to be profitable.
- Genetic Diversity and Population Structure of Collard Landraces and their Relationship to Other Brassica oleracea Crops. Collard can be used as a source of diversity for other brassicas.
- Climate Analogues for agricultural impact projection and adaptation – a reliability test. Fail.
- Genetic Diversity and Structure of Ruzigrass Germplasm Collected in Africa and Brazil. The move from Africa to Brazil did not too adversely affect the diversity of this important forage Brachiaria.
- Saving the gene pool for the future: Seed banks as archives. “Decisions about how to salvage the past are always, necessarily, about how we value the future.”
- Response of Cultivated and Wild Barley Germplasm to Drought Stress at Different Developmental Stages. The wild is better.
- Screening Genetic Resources of Capsicum Peppers in Their Primary Center of Diversity in Bolivia and Peru. Different entrepreneurs in different countries value local peppers differently.
Nibbles: Superfood, Superbits, Climate change, CWR, Grape names
- Make way for Dovyalis hebecarpa, aka the Ceylon gooseberry, your new favourite superfood for the week.
- US$6.5 million to breed better cucurbits. Maybe.
- Rise and fall of agrarian states influenced by climate volatility. Those who do not understand history etc.
- Bioversity urges crop wild relatives to avoid the fate of the dodo.
- Name that grape! An extraordinary online resource for Italian ampelography.
Wheat scientists descend on Sydney
The International Wheat Congress kicks off in Sydney this week, with its stellar lineup of speakers, and social media accoutrements, to remind us that, despite all the talk of gluten intolerance and the like, wheat is a big deal…
Countries where wheat provides more than 1/3 of daily calories: Braun #IWC9 pic.twitter.com/SRjCegCBkW
— CIMMYT (@CIMMYT) September 21, 2015
…it’s under threat, but CGIAR is on it:
About 70 percent of spring bread and durum wheat varieties released globally over the 20-year period between 1994 and 2014 were bred or are derived from wheat lines developed by [CGIAR]… Benefits of CGIAR wheat improvement research, conducted mainly by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), range from $2.8 billion to $3.8 billion a year…which highlights the economic benefits of international collaboration in wheat improvement research.
Women and agrobiodiversity photo competition “winners” announced
Yeah, well, in the end I didn’t win. But I’m not bitter. Not much.
Nibbles: Beautiful downtown Burbank, Oz rice weed and nuts, Teff embargo, Kew Gardens, Cherokee seeds, Vegetables semantics, MLN progress, Fishy chart, Inuit fishy diet, Bioversity photo fix, African food security, ICIPE cashes in, Root & tuber congress, Smallholders, EU agroecology, Sackville Hamilton, Kiwifruit history, USDA pathogen collection
- Luther Burbank “…was willing to cross just about anything that had leaves…”
- No, rice did not originate in northern Australia. Not in the sense those words are usually used.
- Aussies to embrace cannabis. But not in the sense those words are usually used.
- Australian exporters nuts for more than just macadamia. Ah, interdependence…
- Meanwhile, Ethiopian teff exporters licking their lips in anticipation.
- Kew is bigger than the sum of its parts.
- Cherokee Nation genebanker gets award.
- Yes, BBC, vegetables exist, let’s move on.
- Maize Lethal Necrosis on its last legs? Well, “progress is being made” at any rate.
- The Economist’s daily chart is on declining fish stocks. Why have they gone all warm and fuzzy lately? Something in the zeitgeist?
- Inuit are genetically adapted to their fishy diet.
- Damn it, I lost! Probably fixed.
- Africa sets up a new institution for food security. Which is not the same as hunger, we are told. But is it malnutrition.
- ICIPE scales up and out. More impact than any “new institution” is going to achieve.
- World Congress on Root & Tuber Crops has a new website.
- It’s the smallholders, stupid. Like the ones growing tea in Kenya, frinstance.
- The EU to discuss agroecology. Yesterday, alas.
- IRRI and Plant Treaty to share an IT-savvy genebank manager.
- How kiwifruit became kiwifruit.
- Microbes have collections too.