- How to tell your prosciutto cotto from your crudo.
- How cotton got to be cotton. Or cottons, actually.
- How to grow skirret.
- How to save bananas and potatoes.
- How to bring back the aurochs.
Nibbles: Craft beer, Citizen breeding, Botanical e-book, Horticultural bio-piracy, Pollinator reports, Rainforest Alliance map, Italian phytotron, YAP portfolio
- Peak hops? Say it ain’t so.
- Day-long plant-breeding-for-the-masses course at Oxford in April.
- Botanists of the twenty-first century: Roles, challenges and opportunities. An e-book for the ages.
- Genes to beans: polyploidy on a plate. A Royal Society lecture by Kathy Willis.
- Some naughty people have been collecting plants in India without permits.
- IPBES tells it like it is on pollinators. In a press release. You try to find the actual report online. Oh and here’s FAO getting in on the act. Though at least for this the report is easy to find.
- Great interactive map of the work of the Rainforest Alliance. Check out the agriculture tab.
- Italian researchers build a time machine. A phytotron, really, but let them have their little fun.
- Speaking of fun, GCARD3 Youth Agripreneurs Projects on “Climate Resilient Indian Cattle” and “fake seeds.” Lots more too, all interesting.
Nibbles: Indian agrobiodiversity, High throughput phenotyping, Diet history, Barley and health, Fish biodiversity, Earthworm diversity, Livestock disasters, Irvingia domestication, Caffeine extraction
- BBC Food Programme on crop diversity in India, with a little help from Bioversity’s Stefano Padulosi (whose name manages to be pronounced in three different ways in 20 minutes.
- How to measure photosynthesis on a grand scale.
- The origins of our diet. It’s the interactions, stupid.
- Barley as superfood. No, not the fermented kind.
- More diverse freshwaters give higher fish yields.
- European earthworm diversity mapped. No word on relationship with yields. Surprisingly difficult to see any correlation with agricultural intensification.
- It’s been a bad time for livestock (and therefore people) in Mongolia and in Ethiopia.
- Domesticating the wild mango that is not a mango but is almost as tasty.
- The weird world of the pure caffeine trade.
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?
Brainfood: Phleum breeding, Rice resources, US corn breeding, Ecuadorian trad foods, Mixed systems, Musaceae history, Berry nutrition, Alaskan cattle
- A Molecular Phylogenetic Framework for Timothy (Phleum pratense L.) Improvement. We have the tools, and the instruction manual, but lack the raw materials.
- Open access resources for genome-wide association mapping in rice. Tools, manual AND raw materials, all on one handy platform.
- Why do US Corn Yields Increase? The Contributions of Genetics, Agronomy, and Policy Instruments. Pioneer “era” hybrids released 2000-2009 were more diverse than landraces cultivated in central Iowa during the late 19th century.
- Barriers to Eating Traditional Foods Vary by Age Group in Ecuador With Biodiversity Loss as a Key Issue. Young people liked traditional foods for their health benefits and good taste; adults for the money they brought in.
- Do Smallholder, Mixed Crop-Livestock Livelihoods Encourage Sustainable Agricultural Practices? A Meta-Analysis. Size doesn’t matter.
- Evolutionary dynamics and biogeography of Musaceae reveal a correlation between the diversification of the banana family and the geological and climatic history of Southeast Asia. We have geology and climate to thank for bananas.
- High variability in flavonoid contents and composition between different North-European currant (Ribes spp.) varieties. Smaller is better in redcurrants, but not in blackcurrants.
- Origins of cattle on Chirikof Island, Alaska, elucidated from genome-wide SNP genotypes. A unique mixture of East Asian and European breeds, plus strong selection.