Mainstream

Nibbles: FAO Commission, Alpine plants conference, Young breeders, Indian sorghum, Pastoralists in the media, Neglected genomics, More quinoa, Cape Gooseberry in Europe, Database hell, Tomayto tomahto, Maple syrup, Double cropping, Cloning trees, Belated Earth Day, UK Plant Science Week

Summary of that 14th Session of the CGRFA we were all following last week.
Conferences on “Changes in alpine and arctic flora under climate change” we’ll all be following in September. If you’re from Balkans, Caucasus, Central Asia, the organizers need you in particular. But hurry, before it’s too late!
In other news, young scientists are into beer.
India’s Directorate of Sorghum Research gets a genebank. Relationship with NBPGR unclear.
Media portrayals of pastoralists in Kenya, China and India: The Report. The Brief. The Press Release. ILRI reaction?
Neglected crops get the genomic treatment. And why that might be a good thing.
CIAT wades in on quinoa.
Call for information on Physalis peruviana cultivation in Europe.
Biodiversity databases have errors! Shock! Horror! Probe!
The nutritional difference between organic and conventional tomatoes deconstructed.
Your maple sugaring questions answered. Nice idea.
Double crop for development. I guess that’s the sustainable intensification everyone is talking so much about.
If in doubt, clone it!
Wait, wait, wait, we missed Earth Day?
And also a bunch of UK plant science conferences. (I had of course linked to the storifications here originally, but they’ve gone now of course.)

Vietnamese rice varieties get sequenced. What will IRRI think?
Well, they may be too busy cosying up to SRI to respond.
A rice farmer does feature in a nice Christensen Fund slideshow.
But no rice in these 12th century recipes.
You know what goes well with rice? Beans, that’s what.
And now, for something completely different: Ecosystem Service Valuation Toolkit.

A is for artichoke, B is for bract. A botanist in the kitchen explains.
C is for colour and color, both of which affect the nutritional value of rice.
D is for Directorate of the EU, three of which are at a standstill as an expert is apparently blocking all attempts to loosen EU seed laws.
F is for fish, which smart farmers are helping to survive low water in rice paddies.
G is for the genes tweaked by scientists to deliver seeds without sex.
H is for horseradish, whose root problems can now be solved. In other H-related news, horseradish has root problems.
I is for improvements in child nutrition and less stunting is many countries.
J is for Jeremy, who must have some time on his hands.
K is for Kenya, where clever scientists have created Striga-resistant sorghum. Again.
L is for Lodoicea, and other botanical treasures.

Texan farmers have solved the problem of open sesame – with non-shattering varieties.
They’re protected by patents, of course. No need then for handy dandy guidelines to access and benefit sharing in research projects.
But you just know that ABS will be a hot topic when they round up the usual suspects for the International Symposium on Agrobiodiversity for Sustainable Development.
As will the question of whether yields are becoming more or less sensitive to temperature.
I wonder how quickly the proceedings of that shindig will become available. It took the 2nd International Symposium on Underutilised Species less than two years! Course, they’re still not open access …
No free access to the IncrEdibles festival at Kew either. And why should there be?
I’m willing to guarantee that cat-tail pollen will not be featured at Kew.
Arepas, on the other hand…

Eat steak!
No, eat cicadas!
Farm pearls!
Get a grant!
CIAT got one, to map crop wild relatives!
Not sure if any of these drought tolerance genes in cassava are from wild relatives, but I wouldn’t be surprised.
I would likewise not be surprised if both cicadas and cassava featured in Malawian permaculture.
Punjab’s 1st investigative e-paper doesn’t allow visitors to highlight and copy text, which means that the potentially interesting book about agricultural sustainability it mentions will go ungoogled.
Which is a pity because I was really hoping for a nice segue into this conference on, ahem, agricultural sustainability, to take place in a few months in China.
Which I could then have followed with a plug for the FAO Commission on GRFA, which many of us will be attending next week here in Rome.
No, wait: Agricultural Sustainability: Progress and Prospects in Crop Research.
But of course the best argument for sustainability is the moral one, right?
That. Or beer.