- How to look for stuff in Chile’s genebank.
- How colonial Americans gardened. And later built stuff out of produce.
- How Romans ate.
- How Armenians are (still) making wine.
- How to figure out where your coffee comes from.
- How the Pacific is saving its crop diversity.
- How organic agriculture delivers benefits, and how it does not.
- How GMOs deliver benefits, and how they do not. By the same person as the above.
Nibbles: Invader soup, Quinoa in the US, Petunia lawsuit, NUS for fishmeal, Craft brewing
Brainfood: IPR in breeding, Cryo costs, Undervalued spp, Biodiversity change drivers, Cassava proteins, Sorghum seed sources
- ‘Do Not Privatize the Giant’s Shoulders’: Rethinking Patents in Plant Breeding. “Toll roads, not road blocks.”
- Implementation and cost analysis of a regional farm animal cryobank: an Italian case study. 2497 semen doses from 46 donor animals from 5 breeds cost €1550 annually, 83% for liquid nitrogen.
- Opportunities for Underutilised Crops in Southern Africa’s Post–2015 Development Agenda. Good for marginal land, good for nutritional diversity. But still not properly valued.
- Agricultural Management and Climatic Change Are the Major Drivers of Biodiversity Change in the UK. The first negatively, the second with mixed results. What about CWR specifically?
- Domestication Syndrome Is Investigated by Proteomic Analysis between Cultivated Cassava (Manihot esculenta Crantz) and Its Wild Relatives. The leaf and root proteins of two cassava cultivars were different from those of one wild accession. More work needed, methinks.
- Interhousehold variability and its effects on seed circulation networks: a case study from northern Cameroon. Wealthy households have access to more diverse sorghum seed sources.
Nibbles: Chinese genebanks, Rough times at Roughwood, EU seed laws, Cacao & coffee migrations, CIMMYT pix
- China’s largest genebank just got a little bit larger. And some context.
- Small Pennsylvania genebank may get a lot smaller.
- Denmark shows the way on seed saving in Europe.
- Chocolate really got around.
- Coffee didn’t do too badly either. But home is where the heart is.
- More pix of wheat wild relatives than you can shake a stick at.
Brainfood: PVP in Africa, Tomato disease resistance, Open source seeds, Barley protein, Improving roots, Bambara groundnut, Indian kodo millet, Cacao diversity, Washington heirloom beans, Mato Grosso cassava, Balanites biotech, Intensive Europe
- Opportunities and Threats to Harmonisation of Plant Breeders’ Rights in Africa: ARIPO and SADC. While the intention of ARIPO and SADC is to create a single internal market for protected varieties in Africa, “the end result may look quite differently.”
- Evaluation of Resistance to Ralstonia solanacearum in Tomato Genetic Resources at Seedling Stage. Out of 285 varieties from 21 countries in the Korean genebank, 4 may be resistant to bacterial wilt.
- Following the Open-Source Trail Outside the Digital World: The Case of Open-Source Seeds. “…by not rejecting the idea of property, including intellectual property, but rather attempting to manage it differently, it creates its own enclosures.”
- Grain protein concentration and harvestable protein under future climate conditions. A study of 108 spring barley accessions. Higher CO2 and temperatures lead to higher protein concentrations but lower yields, so lower harvestable protein. The good news is that there’s variation in the response of varieties.
- How can we harness quantitative genetic variation in crop root systems for agricultural improvement? Apparently we still don’t have a mechanistic understanding of root growth, and we’ll need it if we’re going to improve function.
- Bambara Groundnut for Food Security in the Changing African Climate. It’s nutritious, it’s drought tolerant, and it can be intercropped. What’s not to like?
- Neutral and functional marker based genetic diversity in kodo millet (Paspalum scrobiculatum L.). Indian material falls into 4 groups, with Bihar being very diverse. African genepool and wild species should be useful in broadening base in India.
- Origin, Dispersal, and Current Global Distribution of Cacao Genetic Diversity. We’ve come to the limit of the usefulness of the Pound Collection.
- Exploring the role of local heirloom germplasm in expanding western Washington dry bean production. 24 bean varieties have been grown in the area for 20–130 years, representing a useful starting point for participatory plant breeding.
- Growing Cassava (Manihot esculenta) in Mato Grosso, Brazil: Genetic Diversity Conservation in Small–Scale Agriculture. Lots of diversity within communities, and differences among communities. Varieties with same name not necessarily genetically similar.
- Establishment of an in vitro propagation and transformation system of Balanites aegyptiaca. So?
- Mapping cropland-use intensity across Europe using MODIS NDVI time series. Four indicators show highest cropping intensity in Germany, Poland, and the eastern European Black Earth regions, and lowest in eastern Europe outside the Black Earth region. Interesting to mash this up with agricultural biodiversity? Like earthworms?