- The Coffee Science Foundation is the science foundation we all need.
- In search of Bob’s ganja.
- Vox vid on saving crop diversity. Pretty good, except for that thorn apple thing.
- GIZ support for the CIP genebank.
- Ex-CIP breeder works with VIR to bring wild potatoes to Cornell.
- Or friend Lex Thomson on why Fiji is a hibiscus hotspot.
- Celebrate European cereal diversity.
- Dan Barber on freeing the seed. The polarisation continues.
- The first British farmers walked there.
- CIMMYT rebuttal of a paper saying European wheat varieties are decreasing in their climate resilience.
- Celery was once a luxury.
Would curing agricultural plant blindness have any effect?
From Jeremy’s latest newsletter. We included the paper he discusses in Brainfood recently.
There’s a pretty fascinating paper in Plants, People, Planet. Resetting the table for people and plants: Botanic gardens and research organizations collaborate to address food and agricultural plant blindness wants to enlist botanic gardens in a broad effort to restore our ability to see plants. There’s a good long list of previous exhibits and displays mounted by botanic gardens and demonstration farms around the world, and to me they all sound absolutely fascinating.
But, as my friends will tell you, I’m weird. I’m very happy lingering among the multiplier onions and dye plants at the botanic gardens here in Rome, or tut-tutting at the labels, lack of, on the potatoes at the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh, my two most recent forays. And let me share a tip; if you’re looking for peace and quiet in a botanic garden, useful plants is the place to be, because most visitors are not weird like me.
The authors of the paper, of course, are weird like me. They’re the kind of people I’d like alongside at any of the exhibits they talk about and others they don’t. But although they cite one set of visitor numbers – 600,000 people saw the Amber Waves of Grain exhibit at the United States Botanic Garden in Washington DC in 2015 – there’s precious little evidence it had any impact on any of them. I’m sure, too, that many directors of botanic gardens would love to put on the sort of exhibits being called for, if they but had the cash.
It may be a shame, but people are generally blind to the plants that sustain them. And yet, they still manage to eat. Would it make any difference to food policy if people at large had clearer vision?
Nibbles: Ancient drugs, Potato genebank people, Hot potato, IPBES report, Iowa State doc, Vanilla banana, Indian rice lady, ITPGRFA
- The deep history of inhaling.
- CIP genebank scientists honoured.
- But do they know about the most expensive potato in the world?
- The thinking behind that IPBES 1 million threatened species number.
- Seed documentary wins awards.
- Tasty blue bananas.
- One-woman genebank in India.
- Meanwhile, in Rome, negotiations to improve the Plant Treaty continue… Fingers crossed.
Brainfood: Plant blindness, African goats, Tissue culture, Phenotyping databases, Mekong transformation, African Fertile Crescent, Salty tomatoes, Pigeonpea domestication, Pharaonic watermelon, Apple domestication, Social media and PAs, Messaging, De novo domestication
- Resetting the table for people and plants: Botanic gardens and research organizations collaborate to address food and agricultural plant blindness. There are so many ways to get people interested in plants.
- A review on goats in southern Africa: an untapped genetic resource. 500-600 years of natural selection must count for something.
- Agromorphologic, genetic and methylation profiling of Dioscorea and Musa species multiplied under three micropropagation systems. Methylation at some loci, but no phenotypic differences.
- Modelling Crop Genetic Resources Phenotyping Information Systems. Field to figures.
- Agricultural and food systems in the Mekong region: Drivers of transformation and pathways of change. Corn everywhere.
- Yam genomics supports West Africa as a major cradle of crop domestication. The Niger River Basin, to be precise. How long before corn takes over?
- A diversity of traits contributes to salinity tolerance of wild Galapagos tomatoes seedlings. 3 out of 67 accessions of 2 wild endemic species showed particularly high salinity tolerance.
- Cajanus cajan (L.) Millsp. origins and domestication: the South and Southeast Asian archaeobotanical evidence. Here’s ground zero for domestication starting about 5000 years ago: 19.397833, 80.813132.
- A 3500-year-old leaf from a Pharaonic tomb reveals that New Kingdom Egyptians were cultivating domesticated watermelon. A Nile Valley origin?
- Origins of the Apple: The Role of Megafaunal Mutualism in the Domestication of Malus and Rosaceous Trees. Large fruits originally evolved to attract wild horses, deer and bears, which spread them far and wide; populations isolated by the Ice Age were brought back together by humans.
- Assessing global popularity and threats to Important Bird and Biodiversity Areas using social media data. Accessibility and infrastructure more important than biodiversity.
- Messaging matters: A systematic review of the conservation messaging literature. Communications professionals think that more input from communications professionals is needed for conservation professionals to communicate professionally.
- De Novo Domestication: An Alternative Route toward New Crops for the Future. Lots to play with, that’s for sure.
Bah, humbug!
I don’t like the International Day for Biological Diversity much…
Find out why on the work blog.