- George Washington Carver‘s legacy lives on.
- Finding drought-resistant bananas: the movie.
- Mining wild wheat. Again.
- The definitive book on hot peppers in China. And I’ll save you a few clicks, here’s the video alluded to in the review.
- The definitive book on tea. Not just China either.
Nibbles: Oz wine atlas, Microbiome vault, Guerrilla breeding, Seed relief bibliography, Food archaeology, Seed producers, Marmalade
- The future of Australian wine in maps.
- A Svalbard for the human microbiome?
- Plant breeders on the edge of the mainstream.
- From FAO, a bibliography on seed systems and seed relief.
- Book review: The Archaeology of Food: Identity, Politics, and Ideology in the Prehistoric and Historic Past.
- Training seed producer groups can help their non-member neighbours too.
- There will be marmalade for tea. But, spoiler alert, it might not be what you think.
Brainfood: Food groups, Bumblebees, Wild lettuce, Bambara, Miscanthus, Wild macadamia, Sperm cryo, Fungi, Feed adoption, Bere evaluation, Lactose persistence
- Culinary Cultural Conservation and Cultural Keystone Food Groups: Concepts in Ethnobotany. Immigrants stick with viandas.
- Safeguarding the genetic integrity of native pollinators requires stronger regulations on commercial lines. About half of bumblebee specimens in SW Spain were F1 hybrids or BC1.
- Lactuca dregeana DC. (Asteraceae: Chicorieae) – A South African crop relative under threat from hybridization and climate change. That’s a hell of a disjunction.
- Exploration of Bambara Groundnut (Vigna subterranea (L.) Verdc, an Underutilized Crop, To Aid Global Food Security: Varietal Improvement, Genetic Diversity and Processing. It all starts with lots of data on 420 genebanks accessions at IITA.
- MGDB: A database for evaluating Miscanthus spp. to screen elite germplasm. Kind of amazing this crop is so far ahead of Bambara groundnut.
- Genetic Structure of Wild Germplasm of Macadamia: Species Assignment, Diversity and Phylogeographic Relationships. Genetics supports taxonomy.
- 3-D printed customizable vitrification devices for preservation of genetic resources of aquatic species. Good for species with miniscule testes.
- Threats to global food security from emerging fungal and oomycete crop pathogens. Need better fungicides, but less of them.
- Improving adoption of technologies and interventions for increasing supply of quality livestock feed in low- and middle-income countries. Look at socio-economic factors along the whole value chain, and come up with packages and solve multiple problems.
- Assessing the variation in manganese use efficiency traits in Scottish barley landrace Bere (Hordeum vulgare L.). Some heritage barleys had double the chlorophyll fluorescence readings in low Mn hydroponic than elite cultivar Scholar.
- Why and when was lactase persistence selected for? Insights from Central Asian herders and ancient DNA. Apparently not in Central Asia, because of fermentation; but then, why in Europe? Maybe they didn’t like the taste there?
Nibbles: NordGen, Wollemi backyards, Coral genebank, Food security, Cherokee chefs, Community seed bank
- Nordics upgrade genebank database.
- Crowdsourcing Wollemi pine conservation.
- Corals need a genebank too. And a database and crowdsourcing as well, no doubt.
- Though I’m not sure they’ll be able to make the food security argument.
- Or bring chefs on board.
- What would a community genebank look like for coral, I wonder. And are they hiring?
Quinoa symposium moves online
My name is Daniel Packer, I’m a quinoa breeder with the Sustainable Seed Systems Lab at Washington State University. I’d like to briefly reach out to you about the 2020 International Quinoa Research Symposium to be held on August 17-19 and hosted by the Sustainable Seed Systems Lab and the Food Systems Program at Washington State University. This event will be held entirely online, registration is free, and the material will be provided in both English and Spanish.
This Symposium will include recorded field walks, interactive poster sessions, discussion forums, and talks on topics such as Ancestral Knowledge, Genetic Resources and Wild Relatives, Market Analysis, and others by the international quinoa community.
We would love to spread the word about this Symposium as wide as possible.
Glad to help. Sounds like a hoot.