- The Pear in History, Literature, Popular Culture, and Art. An oldie, but worth reading just for the analogy between the pear connoisseur and the opera aficionado.
- Effects of market integration on agricultural biodiversity in a tropical frontier. Darien, Panama. Roads are bad for crop diversity, of the interspecific kind at least.
- Conservation genetics and the persistence and translocation of small populations: bighorn sheep populations as examples. Bigger is definitely better.
- Niche breadth predicts geographical range size: a general ecological pattern. Specialist species tend to have small range sizes, making them doubly vulnerable. Trebly so if they have small populations too, I guess (see above).
- Sustainability and innovation in staple crop production in the US Midwest. …depends on on-farm diversity, and here’s three things you can do to promote it, because it ain’t getting any better: collect statistics, redirect subsidies, and think beyond peak yield. Ah but wait, you may have to change the IP system. As you were.
- Yield Trends Are Insufficient to Double Global Crop Production by 2050. For rice, wheat, maize and soybean, current rates of yield increase, if they continue, which I suppose is a big if, what with climate change and all, would mean about 50% production increases by 2050, rather than the supposedly needed 100%.
- Genome-Wide Genetic Diversity and Differentially Selected Regions among Suffolk, Rambouillet, Columbia, Polypay, and Targhee Sheep. Suffolk is different from the others, which we already knew were related. Ah, but now we know where exactly in the genome the differences are.
Nibbles: Brazil flora & urban ag, Telling species apart, Canary seed for humans, Training breeders, Solitary bees, Tajik protected area, Rennell Island, Nordic grubs, Belize TV
- Brazil’s flora moves online. And its agriculture into its favelas.
- Taxonomy 101.
- Wish the people who wrote this press release on “canary seed” had taken a taxonomy course. It’s Phalaris canariensis, it turns out.
- African breeders to be trained at UCDavis. Ok, but what about WACCI? What’s going on? Cornell-Davis smackdown?
- Further proof, if any were needed, of the importance of wild bees.
- Tajikistan gets its first World Heritage Site. Includes most of the Pamirs, so surely a whole lot of agricultural biodiversity, both wild and cultivated, plant and animal. Not that that was the prime mover for protection, probably.
- Incidentally, there’s a list of World Heritage Sites in danger, and it includes Rennell Island in the Solomons. The reason I bring it up is that it is famous for a local coconut variety. Hope that’s not endangered!
- Nordic Food Lab gets money to experiment with cooking insects.
- Belize TV looks to agrobiodiversity to cope with climate change.
Dog domestication controversy growls away
Awesome, by @ewencallaway RT @mammuthus: Nice summary of recent research into dog evolution http://t.co/sZ92QM5wt4 (h/t @paleogenomics)
— Ed Yong is not here (@edyong209) June 18, 2013
Scientists investigating the transformation of wolves into dogs are behaving a bit like the animals they study, as disputes roil among those using genetics to understand dog domestication.
Sound familiar? Remember the chicken story? It’s a genomic jungle out there.
LATER: A jungle that goes way back.
Nibbles: Indigenous conservation, Rice and conservation, Amazon medicines, Organic products, Sustainable oysters, Cherfas at Seed Savers, Calestous Juma, Cassava website, Israeli agritech, Fragaria breeding, Catacol whitebeam, Weather sensors, FAO Commission & Conference, Amartya Sen
- A toolkit to help indigenous communities do conservation. Should they need one.
- On the other hand… Half of Japan’s endangered species hotspots are found in satoyama, which are under pressure. Compare and contrast with rice farming in Thailand.
- Learn all about some medicinal plants of the Amazon, minus their scientific names. Not including runa tea. Lots of other opportunities out there, though.
- Maybe even including oysters.
- Jeremy no doubt to feast on the mollusc after spilling the beans on the EU seed regulations at the Seed Savers jamboree.
- Wonder what Calestous Juma thinks of those regulations.
- But I bet he (and his father, who introduced the crop to his region of Kenya) would like this cassava website to rule them all.
- The Volcani Institute‘s gifts to the world…
- …probably include new strawberries, but not this one.
- Scientists straining, failing to find plant to meaningfully compare to the giant panda.
- Bioversity does up its iButtons.
- And gets a namecheck in a paean to the FAO Commission on GRFA on its 30th birthday. All this FAO stuff is because its Conference is on this week. I don’t suppose any of it will be more important than Amartya Sen’s speech.
Nibbles: Public goods, Again, Tainted love, Strawberry Fare, Organic money, Organic unbuttered parsnips, Insect resistance, Cassava quakes, Gin and other botanics
- A well-briefed Olivier De Schutter, UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, reflects on biodiversity for food and agriculture as a public good. Video. Comments closed!
- UK genebanks are wonderful, says chair of British Society of Plant Breeders.
- Getting ready for a possible ban on pig castration, the Nordic Food Lab tells us how to deal with Boar Taint.
- The things you can learn from strawberries (if you can hold off eating them).
- More money for research on organic agriculture shock plea.
- HRH Prince Charles didn’t use the R-word, but you know he might just possibly agree.
- I wonder whether he realises that the evolution of resistance by insect pests is predictable.
- If cassava is such a Rambo root, how come it quivers before a fly? Even a super-fly?
- And if that isn’t enough to keep you busy over the weekend, how about celebrating World Gin Day tomorrow, with a good book (and a glass) in hand, natch.