Livestock

Nibbles: Sorghum and rice and climate change, Pacific agrobiodiversity today and yesterday, Japanese microbiota, Wolf domestication, Organic and fungi, Crop wild relatives, Bees, Hunger, Silk

Sorghum going to need a hand in India. Rice in China? Maybe not so much.
Photos of the 6th Annual Hawaii Seed Exchange.
More Pacific stuff: 3000-year-old Lapita chickens were haplogroup E, “a geographically widespread major haplogroup consisting of European, Middle Eastern, Indian, and Chinese domestic chickens.”
More on that thing about the gut biota being adapted to ethnic diets.
Wolves may have been turned into dogs earlier than previously thought.
Organic farming good for underground mutualists. Which sounds totally appropriate somehow.
Crop wild relatives: all you ever needed to know.
Bring back bees by bringing back the boy scout bee-keeping badge.
Here’s a weird one. US to cut 1.5 trillion calories from food by 2015. And there are 1 billion hungry. You do the math.
Farmers rear endemic moths on intercropped host plants for high quality silk in Madagascar. Enough hot buttons in there for ya?

There are some African success stories, and a few even have to do with agriculture.
TILLING tef.
Some farmers’ groups in Asia don’t like hybrid rice. But some do, presumably. How come we never hear from those?
Livestock trends deconstructed.
The mother of all grapevine varieties found. Well, some varieties anyway.
One of the foremost supporters of the System of Rice Intensification interviewed.
Scientia Pro Publica, latest edition. There’s some nutrition stuff.

Breeders called on to save key Afghani crop. No, not really.
GMOs not incompatible with organic, round 2.
The Columbian Exchange. People though, not crops.
USDA chief botanist was into Cannabis shock.
Novel way of growing rice unveiled.
Two livestock pdfs: What 2010 means for farm animal genetic resources conservation. And a book on European local breeds.

Professor said meat should be properly priced to avoid disaster. Why just meat?
“The Seed Makers Who Don’t Pray for Rain.” Slick, but do they actually pray for drought?
Found the above here, but is GMO drought resistance really “very important stuff to making farming sustainable”?
Kenyan farmers grow mushrooms. Fun, guys.
Does Africa need better product branding?
Public Aid, Philanthropy, and the Privatization of African Agricultural Development. I confess, I didn’t understand most of it.
Rhizowen invents the artichon. Who says there’s no new food to be discovered?
Kew celebrates International Year of Biodiversity. Pollinators get a look-in.
Rome celebrates International Year of Biodiversity. Agriculture prominent.
IUCN celebrates Allium pskemense: edible, medicinal, a crop wild relative, and threatened.
World record plate of hummus, 10,452 kg of tasty serotonin.
Local man sends USDA a fig they didn’t have in their genebank.

Boffins trying to domesticate Allanblackia for its oil.
Phyteuma spicatum must be saved, British folklore depends on it. How about domesticating it?
Farmers replanting forest in inland Niger delta. Sort of domesticating the forest, you mean?
And here’s another domesticated forest, this time in Kerala.
Are oysters domesticated? And seaweeds? Lots of uses for seaweeds, after all.
Why plant breeding is incompatible with organic agriculture. Eh? First of a trilogy.
Management of plant genetic resources in Brazil deconstructed.
Oh dear, now boffins say avoiding bycatch may not be good after all.
CTA calls for research notes in preparation for proposal writing workshop on neglected and underutilized plants.
New Sight and Life magazine is out, with interesting discussions of Vitamin A supplementation in newborns and HIV patients.
While at Scidev.net HarvestPlus defends biofortified crops against charge of medicalizing micronutrient deficiency.