- A new Twitter list on ex situ plant conservation. Subscribe!
- Yeah we need a new Twitter list like fish need trees. No, wait…
- “64 traditional varieties of paddy, vegetables and millets will be exhibited.”
- Junk food worse than tobacco, UN says.
- An overview of origin-linked products. No junk food there.
- New Zealand heirloom seed collection in trouble.
- Canadian heirloom seed collection takes off. Maybe these two should talk?
Brainfood: Ethiopian coffee, Kenyan climate change, Biofortification, Pasture legume adoption, Moroccan veggies, Economics of pests, Grassland diversity & fire, Seed storage, Resistant beans, Maize OPVs, Low P tolerance in NERICA, Brazilian beans
- Prospects for forest-based ecosystem services in forest-coffee mosaics as forest loss continues in southwestern Ethiopia. Coffee agroforests provide about half to two thirds of the ecosystem services of plain old forests.
- Social Process of Adaptation to Environmental Changes: How Eastern African Societies Intervene between Crops and Climate. Your seeds may not be able to cut it in the future.
- Bioavailability of iron, zinc, and provitamin A carotenoids in biofortified staple crops. Focus on breeding varieties with elevated micronutrient concentrations is justified. Phew.
- The future of warm-season, tropical and subtropical forage legumes in sustainable pastures and rangelands. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. And the past, in this case, was full of mistakes.
- Wild leafy vegetable use and knowledge across multiple sites in Morocco: a case study for transmission of local knowledge? The Rif Mts are a hotspot of weed diversity. Not that kind of weed, settle down. No, wait…
- Agricultural Trade, Biodiversity Effects and Food Price Volatility. Pests are damaging to neat economic models. Pesticides fix that but damage the environment. No word on the economics of natural enemies, integrated pest management, varietal diversity etc.
- Annual burning drives plant communities in remnant grassland ecological networks in an afforested landscape. In the southern Afromontane region, annual burning does not reduce the species diversity of grassland patches, but does make these patches look more and more alike. Add heavy cattle grazing though and that does reduce diversity.
- Responses to fire differ between South African and North American grassland communities. Decreasing fire frequency increased species diversity in Kansas, decreased it in Kwa-Zulu Natal. It’s because of the rhizomatous species in America. What does this and above mean for crop wild relatives?
- Prolonging the longevity of ex situ conserved seeds by storage under anoxia. Remove oxygen to make seeds last longer in genebanks.
- Identification of Sources of Bacterial Wilt Resistance in Common Beans (Phaseolus vulgaris L.). Only 1 resistant accession out of 500 in the USDA collection. And it’s a wild one.
- Evaluation of Evolution and Diversity of Maize Open-Pollinated Varieties Cultivated under Contrasted Environmental and Farmers’ Selection Pressures: A Phenotypical Approach. OPVs are diverse and change over time. Still no cure for cancer.
- A novel allele of the P-starvation tolerance gene OsPSTOL1 from African rice (Oryza glaberrima Steud) and its distribution in the genus Oryza. Kasalath comes to the rescue of NERICA. Must be the only sativa gene NOT in NERICA.
- Agronomic potential of genebank landrace elite accessions for common bean genetic breeding. Yeah, but are they in the Brazilian genebank? Doesn’t look like it.
Brainfood: Niche and range limits, Grassland diversity drivers, Pollinator research bias, Livestock systems, Seed longevity gene, Apple origins, Amaranthus in Mexico, Chinese medicinal orchids, Seed longevity, Fitness tradeoffs, Lentil evaluation
- Are species’ range limits simply niche limits writ large? A review of transplant experiments beyond the range. Meta-analysis shows dispersal constrains geographic distribution but extends altitudinal. Biotic interactions important at low elevations and latitudes.
- Herbivores and nutrients control grassland plant diversity via light limitation. Nutrients bad, herbivores good for grassland diversity.
- Economic and ecological implications of geographic bias in pollinator ecology in the light of pollinator declines. Half the data come from 5 countries. Nuff said.
- Integrated crop and livestock systems in Western Europe and South America: A review. Market logic has driven crops and livestock apart, but it should drive them back together again.
- ARABIDOPSIS THALIANA HOMEOBOX25 Uncovers a Role for Gibberellins in Seed Longevity. Seed longevity gene found. No word on whether giberellin treatment can prolong seed life in genebanks. Yet.
- Molecular-level and trait-level differentiation between the cultivated apple (Malus×domestica Borkh.) and its main progenitor Malus sieversii. Status of M. sieversii as main progenitor confirmed. Always good to have more data.
- Adaptation of Cultivated Amaranth (Amaranthus spp.) and Their Wild Relatives in Mexico. One of the wild species could be a source of adaptation for the cultivated under climate change.
- Eat your orchid and have it too: a potentially new conservation formula for Chinese epiphytic medicinal orchids. Nature reserves and cultivation on farms not enough. What you need is “restoration-friendly cultivation.”
- A continental-scale study of seed lifespan in experimental storage examining seed, plant, and environmental traits associated with longevity. Australian seeds are somewhat longer-lived than those from other regions. But there’s plenty of variation, some of which can be explained by different features of the seeds, plants and the specific environment where they grow.
- Inclusive fitness in agriculture. Plants and their root symbionts can get along even better together, with a little help from human selection.
- Genetic diversity analysis for quantitative traits in lentil (Lens culinaris medik.) germplasm. NBPGR seem to be on an evaluation blitz. More power to them. Hope to see the data online soon.
Nibbles: Nepal goat project, Kenyan camels, Sustainable diet metrics, Agri-informatics centre, Cassava dishes, CC & nutrients, Yield is all, African CC hotspots, AGRA seed enterprises, PlantVillage blog, Medieval weeds, French reserve, Black garlic, Australian tree tool
- Sometimes all it takes is a goat.
- Or a camel.
- I wonder how either would figure into a metric for a sustainable diet. Wonder if these people will be interested in those metrics.
- Cassava figures in lots of different ways.
- No word on whether carbon dioxide will affect its nutrient content the way it does with other crops.
- Who cares, it’s yield we’re after. Well, that’s in trouble too in some parts of Africa.
- That’s the only way those African seed start-ups are going to survive.
- Yeah, but disease resistance is important, Shirley. PlantVillage gets a blog.
- And weeds? Don’t forget the weeds. Although of course some of them you can eat. Put that in your metrics.
- Meanwhile, France starts to re-wild. Would love to see some wild relatives in the Bois du Boulogne. Livestock wild relatives, not your crazy cousin on his gap year.
- And now we can figure out what climate change might do to them. I guess this thing might work for European animals. Says here it works for Australian trees.
- Speaking of France, garlic is quintessentially French, isn’t it? Well, maybe, but it’s also very Korean, in its black, cured form.
Nibbles: Coffee rust, Wheat blast, Livestock yield gap, Livestock adaptation, Extension, Med diet, Organic < conventional, Douglas fir breeding, Best moustache in cryo, Fortifying rice
- Coffee rust is doing a number on livelihoods in Central America.
- Wheat blast could do the same in South America.
- ILRI DG on smallholder livestock producers: one-third don’t have the conditions in which to be viable, one-third can go either way and one–third can be successful. I suppose all of them are going to need adaptation options.
- Not to mention extension services.
- Meanwhile, bureaucrats busy protecting the Mediterranean diet.
- The inevitable productivity penalty of organic.”
- Douglas fir ready for its genomic closeup.
- Cryopreservation update, with video goodness.
- Lots of ways to skin the malnutrition cat: zinc and rice.