- Luther Burbank “…was willing to cross just about anything that had leaves…”
- No, rice did not originate in northern Australia. Not in the sense those words are usually used.
- Aussies to embrace cannabis. But not in the sense those words are usually used.
- Australian exporters nuts for more than just macadamia. Ah, interdependence…
- Meanwhile, Ethiopian teff exporters licking their lips in anticipation.
- Kew is bigger than the sum of its parts.
- Cherokee Nation genebanker gets award.
- Yes, BBC, vegetables exist, let’s move on.
- Maize Lethal Necrosis on its last legs? Well, “progress is being made” at any rate.
- The Economist’s daily chart is on declining fish stocks. Why have they gone all warm and fuzzy lately? Something in the zeitgeist?
- Inuit are genetically adapted to their fishy diet.
- Damn it, I lost! Probably fixed.
- Africa sets up a new institution for food security. Which is not the same as hunger, we are told. But is it malnutrition.
- ICIPE scales up and out. More impact than any “new institution” is going to achieve.
- World Congress on Root & Tuber Crops has a new website.
- It’s the smallholders, stupid. Like the ones growing tea in Kenya, frinstance.
- The EU to discuss agroecology. Yesterday, alas.
- IRRI and Plant Treaty to share an IT-savvy genebank manager.
- How kiwifruit became kiwifruit.
- Microbes have collections too.
Nibbles: Drought maize, Forage Man, Coffee rescue, Herbarium workflow, Nutrient decline, Hybrid vines, Forest foods, Agrobiodiversity double, Bittman moves on
- So, how well did that Drought Tolerant Maize for Africa project do, anyway? Meeting to be held to find out. In the meantime, here’s the infographic.
- My friend Bob Reid gets an award for his contribution to forage genetic resources conservation and use.
- Finally doing something about arabica’s lack of diversity.
- Digitizing herbarium collections? There’s a workflow for that.
- Remember the good old days of nutritions veggies? “[A]ny real declines [in nutrient content] are generally most easily explained by changes in cultivated varieties.”
- “…what if hybrids were farmed as carefully & conscientiously as the finest vinifera grapes in a historical vineyard?”
- Wild foods from dry forests are good for you. Wet forest not totally useless either though.
- Bats, earthworms, enough of this biodiversity, we get it already.
- Bittman puts his money where his mouth is.
Brainfood: Protein in Amazon, Ponies in UK & US, Old wheats, Resistant filberts, Buying local breeds, Chickpea roots, Beet diversity, Italian goats, Mung bean improvement
- From fish and bushmeat to chicken nuggets: the nutrition transition in a continuum from rural to urban settings in the Colombian Amazon region. More fish and bushmeat in rural areas compared to towns, where they are considered luxuries. Industrial chicken reaching rural areas, though, and that’s bad for nutrition.
- Comparative genetic diversity in a sample of pony breeds from the U.K. and North America: a case study in the conservation of global genetic resources. Mother and daughter populations of breeds in the UK and US respectively turned out to be somewhat genetically different.
- Do “ancient” wheat species differ from modern bread wheat in their contents of bioactive components? No.
- Marine reserves help preserve genetic diversity after impacts derived from climate variability: Lessons from the pink abalone in Baja California. More protection, more diversity.
- Sources of resistance to eastern filbert blight in hazelnuts from the Republic of Georgia. 79 plants from 34 seedlots out of 1374 seedlings from 50 seedlots. Hard row to hoe.
- Determinants of the intention to purchase an autochthonous local lamb breed: Spanish case study. People are lazy.
- Assessing Genetic Variability for Root Traits and Identification of Trait-Specific Germplasm in Chickpea Reference Set. 23 out of 300 accessions could be useful in breeding for better roots.
- Breeding patterns and cultivated beets origins by genetic diversity and linkage disequilibrium analyses. Fodder and sugar beets grouped together, separated from garden and sea beets, in worldwide genebank collection but not in elite lines.
- Genetic diversity of Italian goat breeds assessed with a medium-density SNP chip. As with so much else in Italy, goat diversity follows a N-S pattern.
- Genomic resources in mungbean for future breeding programs. A couple of reference genomes will make everything easier.
Nibbles: Genebank videos, Genebank QMS, Leakey vid, Oz Oryza, Plant ID app, CGIAR saga, PNG food crisis, Impressive melons, Quinoa, Asian sheep diversity, Kenyan CSA
- Nice video on the Millennium Seed Bank at Kew. Compare and contrast with Ft Collins. Or CIAT’s genebank for that matter.
- Quality video on quality management systems in genebanks. No doubt followed to the letter by the three above.
- Video of webinar by Roger Leakey explaining how trees will save us: “The Global Food Crisis: Can we Heal a Divided and Ailing World?”
- Collecting wild rice in Australia. No video, alas, but nice pics.
- App to identify plants for leaves. If ever a video was needed…
- The latest on the CGIAR re-re-structuring. Hollywood interested, I’m told.
- Meanwhile, El Niño beginning to affect PNG.
- Which doesn’t stop a watermelon going for thousands in Japan.
- Hope El Niño doesn’t affect Colombia’s plans to stuff it to poor Bolivian quinoa farmers.
- Enough plants already. Asian sheep more diverse than previously thought, thanks to both migration from Fertile Crescent and indigenous development and back-dispersal.
- Not to mention “Surprising ways Kenyans are embracing climate-smart agriculture“.
Brainfood: Endophytes, Diet data, Nutrition & agriculture, Japanese Rubus, Hybrid conservation, Iranian cattle, Fat hen complications, Himalayan agroforestry, Gathering moss
- Diazotrophic Endophytes of Poplar and Willow for Growth Promotion of Rice Plants in Nitrogen-Limited Conditions. No doubt this will be touted as The Next Big Thing.
- Assessing global dietary habits: a comparison of national estimates from the FAO and the Global Dietary Database. FAO overestimates grains and vegetables, underestimates beans and nuts.
- Nutrition-sensitive agriculture and the promotion of food and nutrition sovereignty and security in Brazil. Experience suggests that interventions need to be “intersectoral, decentralized and framed in order to allow for institutional coordination.”
- Assessment of genetic relationships among cultivated and wild Rubus accessions using AFLP markers. 15 species and some hybrids between them in Japan.
- Characteristics for evaluating the conservation value of species hybrids. And some of those hybrids may need conserving too.
- Prioritization for conservation of Iranian native cattle breeds based on genome-wide SNP data. Some of the breeds are in trouble.
- The taxonomic riddle of Chenopodium album L. complex (Amaranthaceae). Three ploidy levels and lots of variation in a wild-weedy-domesticated vegetable complex.
- Does agroforestry conserve trees? A comparison of tree species diversity between farmland and forest in mid-hills of central Himalaya. It can be a complement, but never a substitute, for protected areas.
- Sphagnum farming: the promised land for peat bog species? Yes, but do it on degraded peatland, and with long rotation cycles.