Livestock

June 11, 2009June 10, 2009

Talking turkey data

So I was playing around with the agriculture data on WRI’s EarthTrends the other day. Actually it’s mainly — though not entirely — data from FAOStat, and there are the usual provisos about the methodology. ¹ But look at what has been happening to turkey numbers in developed countries lately.

Numbers doubled between 2003 and 2004! Is that real? If so, what’s been driving the trend?

June 10, 2009

Test your domestication knowledge

Kris’s Archaeology Blog at About.com:Archaeology has a challenging quiz about domestication. I got 15/20. You?

June 10, 2009June 10, 2009

Nibbles: Tameness, Grass evolution, Baobab leaves, Cloning, Svalbard

The roots of tameness.
The roots of “grain endosperm texture.”
The roots of drought tolerance in baobab.
The roots of the difference between mitosis and meiosis.
The roots of Svalbard.

June 8, 2009June 8, 2009

Livestock videos on YouTube

FAO’s Animal Genetic Resources Group has a YouTube channel. The latest addition is “Keepers of Genes — India’s pastoralists and their breeds.”

The League of Pastoral People has teamed up with award-winning documentary filmmakers, Moving Images to produce a series of films on pastoralism. Films have proved a very powerful tool for visually transporting policymakers into the situation of pastoralists. The first film in the series, Keepers of Genes, focuses on the role of pastoralists in conserving biodiversity.

June 5, 2009August 18, 2009

Nibbles: Coca to cacao, BXV, Chinese gardening, Forest conservation, Amazon, Soil bacteria, Prairie, Genetics, Wildcats, Milk product

“No a la droga, si al caucho y al cacao.”
Spotting banana Xanthomonas wilt (BXW) with biochemical tests.
The tree that owns itself. Take that, lawyers!
“The old Chinese gardener in ragged blue coat and trousers with a wispy white beard who potters around smoking one of these long pipes with a tiny bowl — and a mongol cap, periodically performing elaborate grafting techniques on the plum tree.”
Mexican coffee growers protect surrounding forest. Nepal forest community moving in similar direction?
Mapping the competition between soy and forest in Brazil.
Weird agrobiodiversity corner: pseudomonad bacteria help maize take up nutrients.
Using herbicides to help prairie establishment (including sunflower wild relative).
Stop press: “Agricultural genetics is one of the easier parts of the solution.”
“…wildcats preferred resting sites in shelter structures near forest edges.”
Video on Greek yogurt. Jeremy comments: “I’m going back to Crete.”