- “…for many for many smallholder farmers little has changed over the decades in terms of the methods and tools they use.” Geoff Tansey would seem to agree. Nobody has told ACIAR, though.
- Cherfas favourite spread bog butter among oldest food finds.
- Why it is silly to say that GMOs are always bad.
- The Star Trek tricorder-type DNA widget comes a step closer.
- Which will make it easier to do things like working out the evolution of palms. Before it’s too late. Because of all that nasty agriculture. Anyway, read about it on page 3 of Kew Scientist, along with lots of other stuff.
- Like the taxonomy of herbal medicine, for instance, which coincidentally also comes up in a newspaper article from Australia today. Maybe some of the plants involved will go into the Kimberly Ark, whatever that is.
- Passion fruit is the next big thing in Costa Rica.
- Colombian peasant organizations go to market. Including, I bet, with passion fruits.
- Even in the struggle between man and steer, the issue is uncertain.
- Is it time for Plant Cuttings again? Thank goodness.
- I think I’ll read it with some Danish wine at my elbow. Or maybe Vietnamese coffee.
Nibbles: SRI, Zoophagy, Dogfood, Wetlands, Peach DNA
- More than you ever needed to know about SRI. Not just rice.
- Ditto eating the zoo. In 1879.
- Ditto the diversity of dogfood. There isn’t much, beneath the palatants.
- Ditto moving agriculture into wetlands. It’s risky.
- Ditto how very useful it will be to have the peach genome. For biofuels, natch.
Nibbles: Leaflets, IFPRI and CGIAR reamed, Locusts, Whisky, Backpacks for Africa, Yield drops, Oca, Fishy rice
- Speak French? Unaware? The Platform for Agrobiodiversity Research has leaflets for you.
- Indian writer bites the hands that feeds him. Well, somebody had to.
- Israeli eaters bite the pests that plague them.
- Debunking the mystery of whisky, the bastards. A muckle more detail here.
- Backpack Farm is in the news again. We still want to know, what’s in those backpacks, and how diverse are they.
- So you’ve been growing corn (maize) continuously and your yields are dropping precipitously? Scientists: Now we know why!
- Expert tells potato centre all about oca. Fact No. 1: it isn’t a potato.
- “Rice-fish cultivation produces environmental services.” What, in addition to rice and fish? Praise be.
Nibbles: Fruit, Sheep, Cashews, Sugar
- Fruit and veg make people happier shock.
- Grazing sheep on fallow makes soils better (but not as good as ploughing).
- Zambian cashew nut farmers make plans for the future.
- US sugar support policies make no sense whatsoever.
Brainfood: Perennial wheat, Tree diversity, Fire, Dog domestication, Coffee diversity, Uganda cassava diversity, Sorghum structure, Japanese pastures, Maize diversity, Protection, Pigeonpea hybrid, Wheat nutritional composition, Pollinator diversity, Cajanus gap, Tree diversity, Resilient seed systems
- Perennial cereal crops: An initial evaluation of wheat derivatives. Early days still.
- Effects of silviculture on native tree species richness: interactions between management, landscape context and regional climate. Encourage mosaics, and don’t harvest everything.
- The global fire–productivity relationship. It’s humped, and will be changed by climate change, though for different reasons for different productivity levels. Wonder about the fire-diversity relationship, though.
- Ancient DNA Analysis Affirms the Canid from Altai as a Primitive Dog. Bit of a judgement call though.
- Genetic structure and diversity of coffee (Coffea) across Africa and the Indian Ocean islands revealed using microsatellites. Just what you would expect, given the “morpho-taxonomic species delimitations and genetic units.”
- Genetic diversity among farmer-preferred cassava landraces in Uganda. Landraces only a bit more diverse than elites overall, but half of them quite different.
- Correspondence between genetic structure and farmers’ taxonomy — a case study from dry-season sorghum landraces in northern Cameroon. Genetic units = farmer-recognized landraces.
- Plant diversity, productivity and nutritive value change following abandonment of public pastures in Japan. The best way to restore productivity (diversity doesn’t change much) in abandoned pastures is to start grazing them again.
- Genetic variability of maize stover quality and the potential for genetic improvement of fodder value. You can improve stover and grain yield simultaneously, in hybrids. In theory.
- Governance regime and location influence avoided deforestation success of protected areas in the Brazilian Amazon. Total protection better than sustainable use. Ouch. Meanwhile, in the USA…
- ICPH 2671 – the world’s first commercial food legume hybrid. Yet another milestone on the road to the complete eradication of farmers’ rights.
- Genetic improvement of grain protein content and other health-related constituents of wheat grain. Need to figure out the genetic control mechanisms, and then exploit “alien” germplasm using MAS. Oh, and GMOs too.
- Quantifying the impacts of bioenergy crops on pollinating insect abundance and diversity: a field-scale evaluation reveals taxon-specific responses. Diversity begets diversity.
- Diversity and geographical gaps in Cajanus scarabaeoides (L.) Thou. germplasm conserved at the ICRISAT genebank. Now collectors know exactly where to go.
- Tree species diversity increases fine root productivity through increased soil volume filling. Below-ground complementarity is good for everyone’s roots, presumably good for the community too.
- Making seed systems more resilient to stress. Foster informal innovation, but also information exchange (presumably including of the formal kind).