Mainstream

December 15, 2017December 15, 2017

Crafting a NY beer revival

There’s definitely something interesting going on in the New York craft brewing industry. But is it the barley, or the hops? And if the hops, is the whole thing being driven by farmers, or scientists? All of the above? Whatever. I can see no downside. Cheers!

Oh and meanwhile, in Ghana, something similar may be afoot…

December 11, 2017December 11, 2017

Brainfood: Wheat exudates, Conservation threats, Resilience, Dietary recommendations, Urban green spaces, Dog spread, Wild foods, Ethnic fish, Brazilian cattle, Nocturnal fixation, Agroforestry impacts

Evolution of the crop rhizosphere: impact of domestication on root exudates in tetraploid wheat (Triticum turgidum L.). Domestication and breeding have led to (probably adaptive) changes in root exudates.
Threats from urban expansion, agricultural transformation and forest loss on global conservation priority areas. Vertebrate Biodiversity Hotspots are most threatened by all three factors. Plants too?
Patterns and drivers of biodiversity–stability relationships under climate extremes. Species richness may not be enough to buffer ecosystems from extreme precipitations events. But a different metric would give a different result?
Evaluating the environmental impacts of dietary recommendations. Adopting nationally recommended diets would help the environment.
On the Use of Hedonic Price Indices to Understand Ecosystem Service Provision from Urban Green Space in Five Latin American Megacities. There’s an overall strong positive correlation between urban greenery and house prices, but it’s context-specific.
Disease: A Hitherto Unexplored Constraint on the Spread of Dogs (Canis lupus familiaris) in Pre-Columbian South America. Yes, why are there no dogs in the Amazon?
Children and Wild Foods in the Context of Deforestation in Rural Malawi. Fewer wild foods in more deforested sites, and fewer sold by children from better-off households. What of the nutrition outcomes, though?
Biodiversity defrosted: unveiling non-compliant fish trade in ethnic food stores. About 40% of samples in Liverpool and Manchester mislabelled.
Population viability analysis of the Crioula Lageano cattle. It’s going to be fine.
The Kalanchoë genome provides insights into convergent evolution and building blocks of crassulacean acid metabolism. Next stop, CAM rice.
Contribution of trees to the conservation of biodiversity and ecosystem services in agricultural landscapes. It depends. But what would those kids in Malawi say?

December 8, 2017December 11, 2017

Nibbles: Tamed, Avocado trifecta, Chinese art, Opuntia, Breeding book, Ari.Farm, Grand Canyon ag

Nice podcast on Prof. Alice Roberts’ book on domestication, Tamed.
Remember yesterday’s Nibble on Mexico’s avocado security problem? Wait till they start growing these seedless ones. Or this one, for that matter.
Is this jade bok choy the most famous botanically-themed work of art?
Let them eat cactus.
Plant breeding as a business: the book.
You can use Bitcoin to buy Somali goats.
Corn wasn’t king in the ancient American SW. Ruderals were.

December 5, 2017December 5, 2017

Nibbles: Orphan edition

The Economist jumps on the genomics-for-orphan-crops bandwagon.
But is phenomics more important?
And seed systems, don’t forget seed systems…
Some of those orphan crops may get an International Day, if India has anything to do with it.
Immortelle is as orphan as they come, but maybe not in Croatia any more.
Amaranthus never really went away, not in Mexico.
Persimmon, meanwhile, is being adopted by the snack industry in the US. But the Japanese are way ahead.
Some think yerba mate is not orphan enough.
Is yam an orphan. It depends on what your definition of is is.
Avocado is the opposite of orphaned in Mexico. It is spoiled rotten.
Many orphan crops are women’s crops. Case in point: enset.
Orphan is a relative term, and reversible.
Exhibit B: sweet potato.
People often take their orphan crops with them. Even in antiquity.
Coconut is fast becoming an orphan in Tanzania.
With 32 cultivars available to grow in Louisiana alone, nobody can say lettuce is an orphan.
Mexico and Brazil collaborate on crop diversity conservation. Including orphan crops?
One thing that is probably not a huge priority for orphan crops is their wild relatives. Just saying.
Anyway, we’re going to need all the orphan crops we can get if James Cameron’s titanic vegetarian utopia is to come true.

November 24, 2017November 23, 2017

Nibbles: Joanne Labate, Gebisa Ejeta, David Spooner, Strawberry 101, Mad honey, First figs, Agrobiodiversity maps, School project, Takesgiving, Private investment

USDA vegetable crop curator tells it like it is.
$5 million to find more Striga resistance genes in sorghum.
Wild potato herbarium specimens find good home.
How two New World strawberries got together in the Old World and then spread all over the world.
Hallucinogenic honey: what could possibly go wrong?
First farmers gave a fig.
The other of all agrobiodiversity map mashups.
Cool school project on crop diversity in Europe.
In other news, “Columbusing” is a thing.
Private sector investment in conservation: Turning “small and new” into “big and familiar.”