Information – Page 2 – Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

November 22, 2018November 22, 2018

With Gabe on the trail of the wild banana

From the Facebook page of Banana Natural Biodiversity Mapping – Citizen Science, which I think we have blogged about before:

CIRAD and its partners are currently collecting Musa material in Vietnam, within the frame of the “BSV for Banana Diversity” project. As an expert to the project, Gabe Sachter-Smith has begun to post his observations to iNaturalist, including Musa balbisiana and many other endemic species. He then added the observations to our Banana Natural Diversity Mapping Project (http://bit.ly/MusaDivMapping). #BananaDivMapping #CitizenScience #iNaturalist #AddYours #ShareTheNews

Follow Gabe along as he explores banana diversity. He’s also on Instagram.

Almost like being there. Almost.

November 22, 2018

Nibbles: Protected areas, Waley dance, Edible cricket, Plant & people, Open-pollinated seed, Apple origins, Horticultural tree genomics

Protected Planet report: The Website.
In praise of cows.
New edible insect turns up.
Telling the stories of humanity’s relationship with plants.
The beauty of open pollination.
You’d have thought everyone would know where the apple comes from by now.
The avocado, on the other hand…

November 20, 2018November 20, 2018

Nibbles: Sheepish, Camel caravan, More sheep, Cheese protection, CATAN, Qat, FAO online double, Potato in NZ, NUS dossier, Ramosmania

There’s a world of coloured sheep out there, and a conference.
Not to mention camels.
Does this cute sheep qualify as coloured?
You can’t copyright a cheese in Europe. Worth a Brexit joke? No.
Like board games? You’ll LOVE this.
Speaking of games, the only thing qat is good for is to use up your Q in Scrabble. Which is why you won’t find it in the new CATAN, despite the tempting near-homophony.
Learn about the SDG 2.5 indicators from FAO.
Oh, and since you’re there, take a gander at their new biodiversity website.
Climate change affecting potato production in New Zealand.
I think I may have overlooked this CTA Dossier on underutilized crops and nutrition, which is naughty of me.
Coaxing “cafe marron” to have sex with itself.

November 19, 2018November 19, 2018

Brainfood: Makapuno, Middle Eastern dogs, Date palm origins, Speedy NUS, Red apples, Apple characterization, Phenotyping double, Assisted migration & pathology, Soya diversity, Sustainable intensification, Seed research, Cucurbita history, Potato value chains, Livestock ES

Towards the Understanding of Important Coconut Endosperm Phenotypes: Is there an Epigenetic Control? Maybe.
Dogs accompanied humans during the Neolithic expansion into Europe. All part of the Fertile Crescent package.
Genomic Insights into Date Palm Origins. Domesticated in the Gulf region, but in a more complicated way than used to be thought.
Speed breeding orphan crops. Worth the extra cost.
Malus sieversii: the origin, flavonoid synthesis mechanism, and breeding of red-skinned and red-fleshed apples. Not just good for pest and disease resistance.
Can you make morphometrics work when you know the right answer? Pick and mix approaches for apple identification. Good job they differ in colour too.
Systematic establishment of colour descriptor states through image-based phenotyping. Doesn’t work for brown, though.
High-throughput method for ear phenotyping and kernel weight estimation in maize using ear digital imaging. And the colour doesn’t matter.
Amplifying plant disease risk through assisted migration. Making AM great.
Characterization of a diverse USDA collection of wild soybean (Glycine soja Siebold & Zucc.) accessions and subsequent mapping for seed composition and agronomic traits in a RIL population. One of the parents of the RIL population was a wild accession.
Plant Responses to an Integrated Cropping System Designed to Maintain Yield Whilst Enhancing Soil Properties and Biodiversity. So far, so good.
Seed longevity phenotyping: recommendations on research methodology. Ok, now there’s no excuse. ~~Oh, well, except for the paywall~~.
Evolutionary and domestication history of Cucurbita (pumpkin and squash) species inferred from 44 nuclear loci. All 6 crop taxa in one clade, and some novel relationships with wild species.
Value Chain Development and the Agrarian Question: Actor Perspectives on Native Potato Production in the Highlands of Peru. Difficult to penetrate the socio-economic jargon, especially without access to the full text, but I think it’s saying that to understand why some value chains for native potatoes work and others don’t, you have to understand that different players want different things. Which seems kinda obvious so I probably don’t have that right.
Perception of livestock ecosystem services in grazing areas. Not all bad.

November 15, 2018November 15, 2018

DOI DIY

Remember when we told you that you could comment on the draft guidelines for the use of DOIs in plant genetic resources conservation and use? Well, I hope you did, because now they’re out, thanks to the Seed Treaty’s work on developing a Global Information System. Here’s one of the authors, in case you were wondering. And on the same website, that of the Genebank Platform, you can also find out about how his, and the other CGIAR genebanks, are implementing DOIs.