- The world’s best museum gets a little better.
- Really expensive ham.
- Indian university sets up rice genebank.
- Pre-breeding alfalfa in China to prepare it for climate change.
- “We can spare 50 percent and share the rest.”
- Marker assisted selection explained by someone who should know.
Nibbles: Jackson on Vavilov, ICRAF genebank, #Imaginenopotatoes, Eye in the sky, Food system, Brazilian fruit singer, Fruit pix, Livestock data
- Mike Jackson reminisces about 50 years in plant genetic resources.
- Cracking story about taking a crack at cracking the problem of tree seeds.
- CIP asks you to imagine a world without potatoes.
- Satellites on the lookout for pests.
- The food system is broken. Or maybe it’s working just fine, to the wrong end.
- Singing about açaí.
- Pomology, illustrated.
- Livestock data, deconstructed.
Brainfood: Global taro, Gender gap, Eschatology, Cacao domestication double, Soybean epigenetics, Rice domestication, Domestication space, Botanic gardens, Agrarian care, Open seeds, Sustainable nutrition, Broadbean breeding, Resistant beans, Yam environments, Trade networks
- Conserving and Sharing Taro Genetic Resources for the Benefit of Global Taro Cultivation: A Core Contribution of the Centre for Pacific Crops and Trees. The first line of defence against Taro Leaf Blight, among other things.
- Female access to fertile land and other inputs in Zambia: why women get lower yields. Because they’re stuck with the poorer soils. I’m assuming there was some control for maize variety, but the damn thing is behind a paywall. LATER: Yeah, they controlled for hybrid vs open pollinated variety.
- Towards a dialogue of sustainable agriculture and end-times theology in the United States: insights from the historical ecology of nineteenth century millennial communes. In other news, it has become necessary to reconcile the apocalypse with sustainability.
- Population genomic analyses of the chocolate tree, Theobroma cacao L., provide insights into its domestication process. Domestication was both good and bad.
- The use and domestication of Theobroma cacao during the mid-Holocene in the upper Amazon. Archaeology says domestication in western Amazon in line with above (somewhere in Ecuador?), but earlier than thought.
- DNA methylation footprints during soybean domestication and improvement. Differentially methylated regions are particularly genetically diverse.
- Major domestication-related phenotypes in indica rice are due to loss of miRNA-mediated laccase silencing. Not so much the genes, as their regulation.
- Phylogenetic patterns and phenotypic profiles of the species of plants and mammals farmed for food. Plants and animals are different.
- Botanic Gardens Complement Agricultural Gene Bank in Collecting and Conserving Plant Genetic Diversity. 6000 taxa in 68 crop genera are in botanic gardens. Check out the rest of the special edition of Biopreservation and Biobanking on agricultural genebanks.
- Plants: Crop diversity pre‐breeding technologies as agrarian care co‐opted? Pre-breeding ignores farmers’ knowledge.
- The Open Source Seed Licence: A novel approach to safeguarding access to plant germplasm. Seeds will find a way.
- When too much isn’t enough: Does current food production meet global nutritional needs? No: grow more food and vegetables.
- Breeding and genomics status in faba bean (Vicia faba). Plenty of diversity to be still used. Pass the chianti.
- QTL Mapping of Resistance to Bean Weevil in Common Bean. Based on a cross between the susceptible Zambian landrace Solwezi and the resistant breeding line AO-1012-29-3-3A. But which Solwezi? I hope there’s a DOI in the actual paper for those who get through the paywall.
- Spatial Multivariate Cluster Analysis for Defining Target Population of Environments in West Africa for Yam Breeding. 7 mega-environments identified, but what I want to know is if any are under-represented in terms of material in the genebank.
- Economic shifts in agricultural production and trade due to climate change. Under mitigation scenarios trade networks for agricultural commodities get more distributed, and possibly therefore more stable. So that’s another reason to mitigate C emissions, you know, apart from saving the planet.
Nibbles: Protected areas, Waley dance, Edible cricket, Plant & people, Open-pollinated seed, Apple origins, Horticultural tree genomics
- Protected Planet report: The Website.
- In praise of cows.
- New edible insect turns up.
- Telling the stories of humanity’s relationship with plants.
- The beauty of open pollination.
- You’d have thought everyone would know where the apple comes from by now.
- The avocado, on the other hand…
Nibbles: Sheepish, Camel caravan, More sheep, Cheese protection, CATAN, Qat, FAO online double, Potato in NZ, NUS dossier, Ramosmania
- There’s a world of coloured sheep out there, and a conference.
- Not to mention camels.
- Does this cute sheep qualify as coloured?
- You can’t copyright a cheese in Europe. Worth a Brexit joke? No.
- Like board games? You’ll LOVE this.
- Speaking of games, the only thing qat is good for is to use up your Q in Scrabble. Which is why you won’t find it in the new CATAN, despite the tempting near-homophony.
- Learn about the SDG 2.5 indicators from FAO.
- Oh, and since you’re there, take a gander at their new biodiversity website.
- Climate change affecting potato production in New Zealand.
- I think I may have overlooked this CTA Dossier on underutilized crops and nutrition, which is naughty of me.
- Coaxing “cafe marron” to have sex with itself.