- NordGen genebank information system gets a boost.
- Uji for everyone in Kenya, thanks to genebank and breeding.
- Assam’s government supports a field genebank. One of many such efforts in India.
- Will Bonsall‘s genebank needs help. Maybe should move to India.
- Video on the Italian olive plague. This is why we need genebanks.
Brainfood: Now what edition
- Image-Based Goat Breed Identification and Localization Using Deep Learning. Fancy maths can identify goat breeds from photos. Ok, cool, now what?
- AI Naturalists Might Hold the Key to Unlocking Biodiversity Data in Social Media Imagery. Fancy math can often identify common flowers on Flickr. Ok, cool, now what?
- FoodMine: Exploring Food Contents in Scientific Literature. Fancy maths can trawl the literature to pick out the chemical components of different foods. Ok, cool, I guess, now what?
- Cultural and linguistic diversities are underappreciated pillars of biodiversity. Well, yeah. But now what?
- Global priority areas for ecosystem restoration. Fancy maths says restoring 15% of converted lands in identified priority areas could avoid 60% of expected extinctions while sequestering 30% of the total CO2 increase in the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution. Cool, now what?
- An unexpectedly large count of trees in the West African Sahara and Sahel. Wait, does that mean some of the above won’t be necessary?
- Cost and affordability of nutritious diets at retail prices: Evidence from 177 countries. Fancy maths shows that nutritious diets are almost 3 times as expensive as diets supplying basic energy needs, and costs increase with remoteness. Ok, cool, now what?
- Phylogenetic inference enables reconstruction of a long-overlooked outbreak of almond leaf scorch disease (Xylella fastidiosa) in Europe. The olive plague started on almonds. Ok, now what though?
- Genome-wide association study in accessions of the mini-core collection of mungbean (Vigna radiata) from the World Vegetable Gene Bank (Taiwan). Genotyping, phenotyping and fancy maths find that mungbean could grow in temperate conditions. Ok, cool, now what?
- Enhancing the searchability, breeding utility, and efficient management of germplasm accessions in the USDA−ARS rice collection. Genotyping and fancy maths can improve genebank management. Well, yeah, but now what? No, wait, we know exactly now what: digital genebanks!
- Ok, that was a bit of fun, but the important point is that research, no matter how cool, is only the beginning.
Nibbles: Vanilla, Maize vid, CIMMYT lines, Personal genebank, Fruit diversity
- Trees help natural enemies of pests in vanilla plantations.
- Cool video by Sherry Flint-Garcia on the history of maize. And its genetics.
- CIMMYT releases a bunch of interesting maize pre-breeding products, though they don’t call them that.
- Retired Turkish teacher starts seed bank.
- Area man is really into fruits.
Nibbles: Crop loss, Soil data, CONABIO stuff, Digging dope, Ceres2030
- There’s a series of interactive workshops to gather feedback on how to measure the Global Burden of Crop Loss. I want an initiative on the Global Burden of Crop Diversity Loss though.
- Soil data makes its way to Google Maps.
- CONABIO has some really excellent agrobiodiversity posters and other resources. Calabazas and amaranth are just the start, so dig away on these orphan crops and others.
- Speaking of digging, ancient people got high. Well there’s a shocker.
- Speaking of shockers: huge literature review says researchers should get to grips with smallholders.
Nibbles: Community seedbanks, Old ag, ICRAF resources, Pests & diseases, Archaeobotany, Oz seeds, Pakistani camels
- The future is community seedbanks.
- The past was crop mixtures. Among other things: two-year-old reviews of books on 18th century agriculture re-upped.
- The future is trees. But they need help, hence these resources.
- Australia looks to native tree seeds for its future. No help needed.
- There will probably be a crop pandemic in the future. There have certainly been ones in the past. Even the recent past. Though plant pathogens do have their uses.
- Turkish government seizes seized seeds from the past.
- The future of swimming camels is uncertain.