Livestock

October 17, 2011October 16, 2011

Brainfood: Ectomycorrhiza, Synthetic peanuts, Ancient Greek amphorae, European bison, Pea breeding, Animal domestication

Ectomycorrhizas and climate change. One more damn thing to worry about.
Meiotic analysis of the hybrids between cultivated and synthetic tetraploid groundnuts. It’s normal. The meiosis I mean. Why isn’t this sort of thing done with more crops?
Aspects of Ancient Greek trade re-evaluated with amphora DNA evidence. More than just wine and olive oil.
Reconstructing range dynamics and range fragmentation of European bison for the last 8000 years. More eastern and northern than thought, and more affected by the spread of farming than climate change in the Holocene.
Resistance to downy mildew (Peronospora viciae) in Australian field pea germplasm (Pisum sativum). It comes from Afghanistan.
Deciphering the genetic basis of animal domestication. Despite all that selection and all those bottlenecks, they really are diverse.

Don’t forget the open Mendeley group for the papers we link to here.

October 17, 2011October 17, 2011

Women with Cows #BAD11

Thanks Miss Haworth for the tip-off. This does look like a documentary worth seeking out.

October 13, 2011October 26, 2011

Nibbles: Livestock films, Sea cucumbers, Plant collecting, Nutritional composition, Intensification, Mongolian pastoralists, Low resource tolerance

More livestock films than you can shake a stick at.
The Consortium all at sea.
Road trip! Herbarium specimen collecting in Nepal.
Call for nutritional composition data on the staples of Papua New Guinea.
Wanna intensify agriculture in the highlands of East Africa? Here comes the PowerPoint.
The Tragedy of the Commons averted in Mongolia through collective action.
A new approach to functional traits? I don’t see the difference myself, but I’ll take their word for it.

October 10, 2011October 10, 2011

Nibbles: Food insecurity, Resilience, AnGR

Someone else has looked at Food Insecurity in the World 2011 … so we don’t have to.
That Kenyan meeting on Knowledge exploration agricultural biodiversity, resilience and transformation starts this week.
17th meeting of the Assembly of European National Coordinators for Animal Genetic Resources. 17th? Wow.

October 5, 2011February 20, 2014

How to implement the Global Plan of Action for Animal Genetic Resources

A very useful message on DAD-Net brings us all up to date “on progress in the development of the set of guidelines that FAO is developing to support policy-makers and technical experts in the implementation of the Global Plan of Action for Animal Genetic Resources…” Here’s the state of play:

Preparation of national strategies and action plans for animal genetic resources in English/French/Russian/Spanish
Breeding strategies for sustainable management of animal genetic resources in English/French/Spanish
Developing the institutional framework for the management of animal genetic resources in English
Surveying and monitoring of animal genetic resources in English

Two observations. The first is that I wish we plant people were so organized. And the second is that surely a place could be found on the FAO or DAD-IS website for such a list.