Yes, I know we’ve been off the air for way too long, and that you’ve been missing your daily dose of agrobiodiversity Nibbles. But that doesn’t mean we were totally idle for the past several weeks. And if you’re really serious about catching up on the news, your best bet is to look back through our Twitter feed. Happy hunting and gathering…
DivSeek, and more, at PAGXXXIII
Yes, we’re back. Kinda. Sorta. And the new year means PAG, XXIII of that ilk. Which you can follow on Twitter, of course, and various other ways no doubt. The meeting was preceded this year by a separate event launching the DivSeek initiative, which got a lot of media attention. Oh, and which has its own Twitter account now too.
Susan McCouch, newly elected Chair of Steering Committee addresses @DivSeek Partners' Assembly http://t.co/roZ2wG73CQ pic.twitter.com/KzmOtiZ0mR
— DivSeek (@DivSeek) January 10, 2015
Nibbles: Svalbard recruitment, Barley breeding video, Orphan crops breeding, Agroforestry double, Afghan pomegranate, Australian hazlenut, DivSeek video, Raspberry breeding video, Strawberry fungi, OFSP, Genebanks, Old chiles, Mexican cuisine, Shakesperean sallat, Dietary diversity, Seed exchange, European wild animals, Dutch AnGR, UK indicators, Millets promotion, Wheat extravaganza, Deforestation map, Chickens & turkeys, Ancient horses, Kenyan grass, Olive pests, Penang anniversary
- Sorry about the light blogging lately. I’m on leave and Jeremy is in the manure. Thankfully Robert has been picking up the slack lately, apparently because he has nothing better to do. Anyway, here’s a juicy roundup of Nibbles covering the past week and more. Starting with this stunner: Svalbard needs an adviser!
- Breeding better barley: The video. No videos, however, on breeding Africa’s orphan crops. Yet.
- Some of those are agroforestry species. Which is not confined to Africa, of course. But pomegranate is not included, alas for the Afghans. Nor the hazlenut, alas for the Australians, who will however admittedly probably sequence the thing themselves.)
- DivSeek does have a video, though.
- Even raspberry breeding has a video. But if this strawberry hack works for other plants, breeders might not be needed at all :)
- Orange-fleshed sweet potato folks meet in Ghana for annual jamboree.
- An insurance policy for agriculture? Yes, you guessed it.
- Recovering the NM chile. Hot stuff from a cold place. Yes, you guessed it. Again. (BTW, not only important in New Mexico.
- How to make a 17th century sallat. You heard me.
- CIAT on getting ahead of dietary trends. No, not from the 17th century. This being the current situation, however. And more specifically for dietary diversity among women. Yes, it’s all about diversification. Including in homegardens. Which were the great love of the great, late Olga Linares.
- The benefits would be so great to get nutrition right. And yet we haven’t. And without Olga it’s not going to be any easier. Maybe we could start by curing Indians of their pizza habit.
- The largest seed exchange in the world. It says here. There I was thinking it was the CGIAR genebanks.
- Rewilding Europe. Kinda sorta.
- The Dutch have new policies on conserving livestock genetic resources. At least yaks are not an issue.
- Meanwhile, the UK biodiversity indicators include one on crop genetic diversity.
- Maybe all it needs is better marketing, like these millets?
- Or perhaps a data portal, like wheat’s.
- Which may soon be out of date for the Punjab. Or should be, anyway, according to this IFPRI study. And also for the US, according to this maverick breeder getting a writeup in the NY Times.
- Be that as it may, help is on the way for wheat, in the form of its wild relatives. According to some people who should know.
- Interactive global deforestation map. Because we can.
- Black chicken? And why not? Not Icelandic, though, I’m willing to bet. Chickens? “…it was the forced opening of China by the West in the 1840s that made the modern [chicken] possible.” Not so the turkey, though.
- Ancient horse breeders liked spots. And then they didn’t. And then they did…
- Disease resistant Napier grass in Kenya. Must ask the mother-in-law whether she has some.
- Oh dear, Italian olives are in trouble. Again. Ah, yes, the olive, symbol of peace.
- Penang Botanic Gardens has a big birthday.
- Hope that keeps you going for a while…
Brainfood: Garden pollinators, Herbarium Analytics, Rice & nutrients, High altitude barley, Sunflower hybrids, Coconut pollen cryo, Evolution & dormancy, Evolution of C4, Maize landraces, Viruses
- Culturally valuable minority crops provide a succession of floral resources for flower visitors in traditional orchard gardens. Proper gardens better for pollinators than unmanaged plots.
- Trends in access of plant biodiversity data revealed by Google Analytics. No impact of social media on the use of plant data, and the future is mobiles.
- Worldwide Genetic Diversity for Mineral Element Concentrations in Rice Grain. Most, though not all, elements showed high heritability, which is good news for breeders.
- Agriculture facilitated permanent human occupation of the Tibetan Plateau after 3600 BP. No barley, no Tibetans.
- Seed fates in crop-wild hybrid sunflowers: crop allele and maternal effects. Having wild mothers helps wild-crop hybrids survive in the wild.
- Coconut (Cocos nucifera l.) pollen cryopreservation. Eureka!
- The evolution of seed dormancy: environmental cues, evolutionary hubs, and diversification of the seed plants. More dormancy, more speciation.
- The evolutionary ecology of C4 plants. C4 opens new niches, but it’s all a matter of contingency and you have to follow the whole evolutionary history of a group to understand its current ecological strategy.
- A Minor Role for Environmental Adaptation in Local–Scale Maize Landrace Distribution: Results from a Common Garden Experiment in Oaxaca, Mexico. It’s the social factors, stupid.
- Crop immunity against viruses: outcomes and future challenges. PAMP (pathogen-associated molecular patterns)-triggered immunity (PTI) may be the future.
Nibbles: Hunger Games, Nutritious markets, Plant secrets, Nutrition soundbites, Buckwheat panic, Olive oil panic, Cannabis breeding, Wild turkey genetics, Quinoa wars, Domestication infographics, Howard-Yana Shapiro
- Do they know it’s Christmas? Stocking-filling books for do-gooders.
- Wonder if any of them talk about using markets to deliver nutritious food.
- The surprising secrets of baobabs, among other plants. I thought we knew all there was to know about baobabs, what with all those factsheets.
- The Global Nutrition Report in 12 sound-bites. No sign of baobabs.
- Russians in a tizzy about their buckwheat. If only they’d had a factsheet.
- Everybody in a tizzy about European olive oil. Maybe they should try the American stuff?
- “When skunk was created the people doing it had no idea they were altering the ratios of CBD and THC — they just kept breeding the plants that gave the strongest high and threw the rest away.” Ouch. But fear not, help is at hand.
- Restoring wild turkey populations is screwing up its subspecific structure, pissing off taxonomists no end.
- Bolivians do not appreciate cheap Peruvian quinoa. Hipsters unavailable for comment.
- No, LA’s wild quinoa is not going to put too much of a dent in global food shortages, nor interest many hipsters, but it’s a fun story. Too bad wasn’t mashed up with the US crop wild relatives prize-winning paper.
- Cool crop domestication infographics.
- Plant geneticists are from Mars.