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May 4, 2010May 4, 2010

Science for the People 28

The weekly carnival of all that’s good about science in the blogosphere is up again, and there are things of peripheral interest to us.

The world, it seems, is full of Pepper Mild Mottle Virus, and so are many people. But can a plant virus make people sick? Vincent Racaniello says “maybe”. Pass the Tabasco.
And Christie Wilcox detoxifies some of the myths around choosing to eat better. I’m not sure they apply to the people whose malnutrition we’re most concerned about, but still a useful round-up of the stories we tell ourselves about food. Pass the carrot sticks.

As ever, even though I’ve singled out the Science for the People posts that are of direct interest, there’s lots more on offer there, so go, and indulge yourself.

May 3, 2010

Farming systems atlas taking shape

Our friends at CIAT are putting together a lot of geo-referenced data on farming systems around the world. Check out in particular what they call the Generation Atlas. Below is a screen shot of a detail of the map of the distribution of aluminium toxicity in Africa.

Somebody somewhere is probably working on mashing this up with the germplasm data from SINGER or even the crop wild relatives data from GBIF, a la FIGS.

May 3, 2010May 3, 2010

Nibbles: Recognizing breeds, Cannabis in New Zealand, Farming systems data, Maize inbreds, Zinc in wheat, Markets for nature, Ramie, Milk and drought, ELBARN

Computer program recognizes cattle breeds.
NZ dope getting stronger? Maybe, and I hope so, but probably impossible to tell from this study.
Need farming systems data?
Psst, wanna know how to determine the essentially derived status of maize inbred lines?
High zinc wheat works.
Michael Jenkins of Forests Trends on using markets to save biodiversity.
The phylogeny of ramie and its wild relatives sorted out. Sort of.
Pearl millet landraces are the best under drought.
Area action plans for local breeds in Europe are out.

May 3, 2010May 3, 2010

Mango symposium

This just in, in response to Bhuwon’s wonderful report on the mother of all Dashehari mangoes.

National Seminar on Mango

Biodiversity For Livelihood, 25 to 28 June, 2005, Lucknow

Dear Sir / Madam,

I am pleased to inform you that the Central Institute for Subtropical Horticulture is organizing a four-day National Seminar “Mango Biodiversity For Livelihood” during June 25th and 28th 2010 at CISH, Rehmankhera, Lucknow. The Seminar is being organized jointly by ICAR, and Society for Advancement of Subtropical Horticulture, Lucknow under the auspicious of National Biodiversity Authority Chennai, Bioversity International, New Delhi, National Horticulture Board, Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers Rights and National Horticulture Mission. It gives me great pleasure to invite you and your colleagues to the Symposium and request you to contribute to the deliberations. I am sure with your contributions to the field of mango research and development you would be deeply interested in this Symposium.

Alas, we cannot be there. More details at the website.

May 2, 2010May 2, 2010

Carnival of Evolution

There’s a new edition of the Carnival of Evolution up at Evolution: Education and Outreach, the “official blog” of the journal of that name, and it contains three items of direct interest to agrobiodiversity fans (four if you count our submission, but you’ve already read that, right?).

Christie Wilcox reminds us that domesticated animals have smaller brains, relative to their body size, than their wild counterparts. Are they actually not as intelligent though?
Sticking with domestication, Jason Goldman reckons dogs have evolved to take advantage of the existing mechanisms that bond parents to their children. I can vouch for that.
And the author of Byte Size Biology takes on the gene transfer that sees pea-aphids making for themselves the carotenoids that colour some morphs orange. That’s a first for animal synthesis of carotenoids, essential compounds for healthy human life. Where did the pea aphids get their genes? From a fungus, by means of horizontal gene transfer. which is interesting in itself and also suggests a much simpler and perhaps more acceptable alternative to making transgenic staple crops rich in carotenoids: let’s just stick the gene into people!