- In praise of pulses.
- In praise of taro.
- In praise of a podcast on bananas.
- In praise of Hellen Mirren’s work on behalf of Xylella awareness.
Nibbles: Ottoman food, Georgian cheese, Livestock data, Welsh oats, Spices, Global apples, Cape gooseberry, In vitro
- From börek to burricche.
- The mother of Georgian cheese. I’m sure they have their version of börek there too. If not, there’s always bread.
- Fancy StoryMap of global livestock production. No wonder there’s lots of cheese in Georgia.
- Bringing back rare Welsh oats. Well, someone has to…
- A short history of cinnamon. Does it go with börek?
- Beautiful apples. And some so ugly they are beautiful.
- Crowd-sourcing Physalis improvement. Very tempting.
- How to conserve in vitro and in cryo. Useful for the three things above, for example.
Visualizing broccoli
Zachary Stansell, who seems like a very interesting guy, had the top post on all of Reddit late last year with — wait for it — a picture of broccoli diversity. And rightly so. It is beautiful.
The coloured bars? They are based on ~10K SNPs, with varieties that share a given colour sharing more of these markers, and being more closely related genetically.
Nibbles: USDA maize genebank, Apple breeding, Seed conservation, Soil map, Scoring supermarkets, DNA barcoding, Stone Age Hypoxis, Hybrid wine, Lost crops, Boswellia, Leucokaso, Species mixtures
- Nice student video on the genebank and breeding programmes at Iowa State.
- Speaking of breeding programmes and videos, here’s Sean Myles on his work on apples in Canada.
- Seed conservation legend Richard Ellis on what climate change is doing to seed quality.
- An amazing new global soil properties map is open for business.
- Scoring supermarkets for the human suffering they represent.
- The future of DNA barcoding…is here.
- Cotton 101.
- Strong evidence of Middle Stone Age tuber cooking in southern Africa.
- French wine growers dip a cautious toe into the grapewine interspecific genepool.
- Yields of mixtures of now “lost” native American crops comparable to those of maize.
- The canonical yearly frankincense story in honour of Epiphany.
- Biblical white olive makes a comeback in Italy.
- Useful update of mixture studies.
Brainfood: Diversification, Chefs, African rice breeding, Sustainable livestock, Miscanthus origin, Sweetpotato diversity, Wild banana seeds, Olive diversity, Tilapia diversity, Half Earth, Food access, Speedy pigeonpea, Peanut allergy, Colombian seed saving
- Modelling crop diversification and association effects in agricultural systems. Intercrop, people!
- Cooking up Diverse Diets: Advancing Biodiversity in Food and Agriculture through Collaborations with Chefs. Yeah, yeah, chefs are great. Now show me the data.
- Multivariate analysis and selection criteria for identification of African rice (Oryza glaberrima) for genetic improvement of indica rice cultivars. Go for high number of productive tillers and early maturity.
- Strategies for Sustainable Use of Indigenous Cattle Genetic Resources in Southern Africa. Not just genetic improvement: also need better nutrition, healthcare, marketing, and infrastructure; integration and empowerment of women and youth; and capacity building, regulatory, and policy frameworks. Not unlike crops, really.
- Population structure of Miscanthus sacchariflorus reveals two major polyploidization events, tetraploid-mediated unidirectional introgression from diploid M. sinensis, and diversity centred around the Yellow Sea. The centre of origin in under water.
- Remote sensing for agricultural applications: A meta-review. Yeah, yeah. Call me when you have a way of distinguishing landraces from modern varieties.
- Genetic Diversity of Sweet Potato (Ipomoea batatas L. Lam) Germplasms Collected Worldwide Using Chloroplast SSR Markers. 500 is not enough.
- Seed germination and storage studies in seed-fertile Musa indandamanensis and its conservation. Intermediate.
- Cultivated olive diversification at local and regional scales: evidence from the genetic characterization of French genetic resources. Areas with unexpected frosts have been, paradoxically, good for olive diversity.
- Genetic diversity of Nile tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus) throughout West Africa. Corresponds to river basins. Well there’s a shocker.
- Protecting half of the planet could directly affect over one billion people. Add lowest-footprint pixels to PAs until you get to 50% coverage of each ecoregion, then count how many people live in PAs, for good or ill.
- Food Access Deficiencies in Sub-saharan Africa: Prevalence and Implications for Agricultural Interventions. Livestock helps, higher income not necessarily.
- Can a speed breeding approach accelerate genetic gain in pigeonpea? I’m going to guess yes.
- Hypoallergen Peanut Lines Identified Through Large-Scale Phenotyping of Global Diversity Panel: Providing Hope Toward Addressing One of the Major Global Food Safety Concerns. Lots of diversity to play with.
- Revolturas: resisting multinational seed corporations and legal seed regimes through seed-saving practices and activism in Colombia. Everybody’s at it.