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February 8, 2012February 8, 2012

Online Biodiversity Heritage Library has agrobiodiversity too

Selected collections from the Biodiversity Heritage Library are now online and available through iTunesU. There’s some wonderful stuff. One thing of agrobiodiversity interest is “Wild Oxen, Sheep & Goats of All Lands, Living and Extinct”, by R. Ward, published in 1898. Below is one of the illustrations to whet your appetite.

And yes, we have blogged about Marco Polo sheep here, of course we have.

February 8, 2012February 8, 2012

Nibbles: PGR course, Vegetable seed kits, Maize data, Rice metabolomics, Rewilding, Sheep diversity, Llama economics, Canary flora, Cuba urban ag, Ducks, Cynara, Food sovereignty

The annual Wageningen agrobiodiversity conservation course is in India this year. Hannes says it’s really good.
AVRDC’s veggie seed kits are a hit in Orissa.
CIMMYT swimming in data. Waving, not drowning.
IRRI not doing badly either. But “quantitative train loci” is a new one on me.
Australia thinking about introducing elephants. Yeah because that sort of thing has been such a success in the past.
Well, actually, with sheep, I suppose it has, in a way. And the genetics says breeders have a lot of diversity to play with still.
Your mama is a llama.
The Island of Dogs has crop wild relatives. No, not the one in London.
Cuba goes for new urban crops. And not for the first time, Shirley. But what about the old ones?
Quick, duck! This piece has been rather a hit for me over on Facebook.
VII International Symposium on Artichoke, Cardoon and Their Wild Relatives: The (Very Expensive) Book.
Food sovereignty “started in New England”. Huh? And proponents “want to eat and sell the food they grow free from interference from state and federal regulators”. Huh?

February 7, 2012February 7, 2012

Nibbles: Musa taxonomy kerfuffle, Vouchers, Foodies, Aroid roundup, MAS is ok, Sierra Leone conservation

Banana boffins at each others’ throats over alleged new species. Great spectator sport.
What does a Musa voucher specimen look like, I wonder.
Fancy shmanzy Bangkok restaurant links up with heirloom seedbank.
Aroid network working really hard.
Marker-assisted selection: a biotechnology we can all get behind. Can’t we?
Conservation in Sierra Leone. No agrobiodiversity, natch.

February 6, 2012February 6, 2012

Consolidation in the seed industry

We’ve written before about consolidation in the seed industry making the same tired joke that I want to make again now, that a picture is worth 1000 words. It doesn’t hurt to stay up to date though, which is why I am grateful to Resources Research for finding, and colouring in, the diagram from the USDA report on Research Investments and Market Structure in the Food Processing, Agricultural Input, and Biofuel Industries Worldwide.

The USDA report is not, as far as I can tell, anything to do with the US Department of Justice’s investigation of antitrust practices in the seed industry, announced a couple of years ago. So what has become of that? Anyone know?

February 6, 2012February 6, 2012

Nibbles: Mike Jackson blog, Philippines genebank fire, Ancient garden, USA maps, Horse domestication, Gnats, Livestock training, Chocolate, Epigenetics, Indian nutritional security, Kew fund, GM bananas, Reconciling databases

Mike Jackson gets himself a pulpit. Welcome to the blogosphere, Mike!
More on the Filipino ex-genebank.
What they grew in an ancient Israelite garden. Can they really tell Citrus species apart from their pollen?
More American maps to mashup with obesity and food insecurity: land use, renewable energy sources…. I do hope someone is keeping track. Even of the more esoteric stuff, of course, like the names of softdrinks.
Yet more on horse domestication.
Another organic farming externality for your consideration. Thanks, Robert.
ILRI gets innovative on this whole training thing.
“The future of chocolate” revealed.
Boffins look at fossil bison epigenetics to investigate adaptation to climate change. What will they think of next. Well, applying it to chickens, for a start.
Other boffins move potato anti-nematode genes into bananas. No word on the epigenetics of it all.
Indian report on how to strengthen role of agriculture in nutrition.
Kew has money for fieldwork.
Cleaning messy taxonomic data. Useful in Genebank Database Hell?