Livestock

January 7, 2014

Nibbles: Cranberry, Apple, Quail

Obviously it is going to take a while to get back up to cruisin’ speed, so we’ll start slow before we accelerate back to the future and attempt to catch up.

Ready to amuse at the next Thanksgiving, a history of the cranberry.
Ready for the next apple you eat (or, in my case, run from), a history of Granny Smith.
Ready for bankruptcy? A recent history of quail farming in Kenya.

December 20, 2013

Nibbles: Wild veg, Cleome, Barberries, Alley-cropped wheat, Bison, Seed potatoes, Veg database, IPR of PGRFA

Wild veg are very much in the news today. Teresa Borelli and Danny Hunter are unlocking their potential.
Meanwhile, Eileen Omosa actually has unlocked their potential. Here’s her take on Cleome gynandra (smoked out by Luigi’s photo of same).
And then there are barberries, scourge of rust-susceptible wheat.
Some trees, though, properly deployed, can be good for wheat. My head’s spinning with all that complexity.
Saddest story you’ll read all day? Or most hopeful? A timeline of the status of the bison in North America.
Seed degeneration to be studied. And about time too. Course, they don’t mean true seed. That never degenerates, not even in the
World Vegetable Center’s spiffy genebank, whose database contains 438 species. As odd a way to advertise the database as any.
And here’s a thought to strike terror into the hearts of genebank curators everywhere: plant genetic resources may not all be public goods after all, says noted expert Michael Halewood.

December 16, 2013November 29, 2013

Brainfood: Urban diets in Cameroon, Teak diversity in Brazil, Iranian wheat taxonomy, Mexican homegardens, Australian suburban landscapes, Food sovereignty, Sturgeon identification, Malaysian fruit, Amazon deforestation, Food processing & storage

Wild Food, Prices, Diets and Development: Sustainability and Food Security in Urban Cameroon. Local wild foods are better, imported processed foods are cheaper.
Genetic diversity of teak (Tectona grandis L.F.) from different provenances using microsatellite markers. In Brazil, that is. Lower than expected, therefore future breeding programmes should make more use of the most distinct provenances. But what about bringing some new ones in? Too damn difficult?
Taxonomic identity of the Iranian diploid Triticum as evidenced by nrDNA ITS. Splitters were right.
Plant management and biodiversity conservation in Nahuatl homegardens of the Tehuacan Valley, Mexico. Most diverse homegardens located near least diverse natural forest.
Amenity enhancement and biodiversity conservation in Australian suburbia: moving towards maintaining indigenous plants on private residential land. It would need better laws.
Food sovereignty: an alternative paradigm for poverty reduction and biodiversity conservation in Latin America. Economic poverty does not necessarily lead to biodiversity loss. But biodiversity loss does often lead to economic poverty.
Species and hybrid identification of sturgeon caviar: a new molecular approach to detect illegal trade. SNPs can detect the low value, hybrid, aquacultured stuff with great accuracy. In other news, there are sturgeon hybrids.
Malaysian Species of Plants with Edible Fruits or Seeds and Their Valuation. Over 500, of which about half wild.
The impact of commodity price and conservation policy scenarios on deforestation and agricultural land use in a frontier area within the Amazon. Weak enforcement leads to more deforestation. And you need fancy maths to figure that out?
Production and processing of foods as core aspects of nutrition-sensitive agriculture and sustainable diets. It’s no good producing diverse foods if you can’t store and process them.

December 9, 2013December 9, 2013

Brainfood: Gaming landuse decisions, Natura 2000, Expressing pears, Medicinal rice, Agroforestry and conservation, Grasslands, Cotton diversity, Ancient cattle, Neolithic Balkans, Indian guar

Gaming for smallholder participation in the design of more sustainable agricultural landscapes. Board game can be used to facilitate communal decision-making in landuse planning in the buffer zone of a Man and Biosphere Reserve. What’s not to like?
Mixed effects of long-term conservation investment in Natura 2000 farmland. It has been good for some things, not so good for others. No word on how CWRs have fared.
Microarray analysis of gene expression patterns during fruit development in European pear (Pyrus communis). They’re different to those of Japanese pear (Pyrus pyrifolia).
Quantitative and molecular analyses reveal a deep genetic divergence between the ancient medicinal rice (Oryza sativa) Njavara and syntopic traditional cultivars. Njavara is a cryptic variant of traditional Kerala varieties.
Relationships between Biodiversity and Biological Control in Agroecosystems: Current Status and Future Challenges. Management should aim to suppress pests while maintaining diversity of natural enemy guilds. Easier said than done, I suspect.
Agroforestry and Biodiversity Conservation in Tropical Landscapes. Between agroforestry cause and conservation effect are a bunch of pesky assumptions. I wonder if gaming would help.
Livestock grazing and biodiversity in semi-natural grasslands. It can be good. Just one paper in the proceedings of a recent major conference on grasslands.
Genetic diversity and population structure in the US Upland cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.). Who needs wild relatives when you have diverse obsolete varieties?
Morphological and genetic evidence for early Holocene cattle management in northeastern China. Archaeology and DNA suggest parallel domestication of cattle in China.
Domesticated Animals and Biodiversity: Early Agriculture at the Gates of Europe and Long-term Ecological Consequences. For thousands of years the impact of agriculture in the Balkans was limited.
Characterization of released and elite genotypes of guar [Cyamopsis tetragonoloba (L.) Taub.] from India proves unrelated to geographical origin. And?

December 5, 2013December 5, 2013

Nibbles: Homegardens, Ancient grains, Homeless hens, Data data data, New maize, ICRISAT ambassadors, Wine microbes, India, Soil Day

Emma Cooper blogs her ethnobotanical MSc dissertation on British homegardeners and their cool crops.
If she’d done her work in Sweden, she’d have written about Ragnar Pettersson and his “treasure of Ardre.”
The downside of backyard farming: homeless hens.
International e-Conference on Germplasm Data Interoperability: Genebank Database Hell gets an e-conference. What could possibly go wrong.
Apparently there’s a new way to search for agricultural bibliografic (sic) data.
CIMMYT gets its maize out there.
ICRISAT is not one to hide its light under a bushel either.
Aussies to survey their yeasts and bacteria to improve winemaking.
The problems of India: “It takes a particular brand of incompetence and neglect for decades of stellar growth to have no apparent impact on India’s sky-high levels of under-nutrition.” I bet Dreze and Sen didn’t include a food bubble. Hey, but that can be exported.
Oh and happy World Soil Day! Thanks to it, and Jim Croft, I now know Australia has a sort of soil genebank.