Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog
Agrobiodiversity is crops, livestock, foodways, microbes, pollinators, wild relatives …
Our cartography nut is otherwise engaged, temporarily, but I know he’d love this one. Blue shows agricultural production consumed directly by people: food. Orange-red is consumed indirectly in processed products, mostly feed for livestock but also things like cotton and coffee. Notice anything interesting about the distribution? Yeah, me too.
Hat tip to Resilience Science, which gives links to the original study.
Truckers want healthy foods. Yeah, right.
I don’t know why it should feel weird to be sitting in Kuala Lumpur International Airport, drinking a cappuccino and reading about the joys of caffeine on the free wifi. But it does. Maybe the lack of sleep. Maybe the fact that I wouldn’t be able to do it nearly so easily in an airport in the land of cappuccino.
Grapes? We don’t need no stinkin’ grapes. To make wine, that is.
Scientists at the USDA Small Grains and Potato Germplasm Research Unit at Aberdeen, Idaho, have been combing old records in their search for wheat that may be resistant to UG99 and other types of stem rust. Nearly 8500 accessions from all around the world have been tested since 1988. Those tests did not include UG99, of course, which first emerged in 1999, but they are still useful to identify likely candidates. Farmers’ varieties from Chile, Ethiopia, Turkey and Bosnia and Herzegovina are showing promise, and several are being shipped out to east Africa to be trialled in the real world where UG99 runs riot.
The article in the USDA’s magazine is just one of several that discuss cereal breeding. There’s an editorial on the need for global cooperation 1, an overview of UG99 (which we blogged earlier) and others on breeding soybeans and common beans.