- The Borlaug 100 conference programme now has links to many of the presentations.
- Including a link to Rachel Laudan’s history of Wheat: the grain at the center of civilization.
- Oh boy. A new edition of FAO’s Plant Breeding & Genetics Newdsletter.
- Video on “Reviving Nepal with hybrid tomatoes“. So many questions, so few answers.
Brainfood: By-the-numbers Indian edition, with a touch of Bangladesh
- SGDB: A Sugarcane Germplasm Database. Cool, but only 131 accessions? One would have thought there’d be more.
- Essential Oil Composition of Bothriochloa bladhii (Retz.) S.T. Blake: An Introduction from Tropical Region of Western Ghats of India. It’s a widespread neotropical grass. There are about 200 accessions in the world’s genebanks. I wonder if this lot will end up there too.
- Conservation of agricultural biodiversity – an experience in the Chotonagpur plateau region. By the Indian Statistical Institute, Giridih. 40 horsegrams collected, among other things. Does NBPGR know? Is there a database?
- Genome Classification of Musa cultivars from Northeast India as Revealed by ITS and IRAP Markers. 36 out of 38 cultivars had been correctly identified on morphology. Relationship to the national banana collection unclear.
- Correlation and Path Coefficient Analysis of Quantitative Characters in Spine Gourd (Momordica dioica Roxb.). Now we know what to select for. 50 accessions used.
- Population structure and genetic diversity analysis of Indian and exotic rice (Oryza sativa L.) accessions using SSR markers. Microsat study of 82 Asian genotypes, including some from India, identifies a few markers of use in breeding. Wheel successfully re-invented.
- Livelihood and Revenue: Role of rattans among Mongoloid tribes and settlers of Andaman and Nicobar Islands, India. Sources of food, building materials and money (via export trade), but only if harvesting is sustainable, which it doesn’t look like it is. Need a plan, including better silviculture and rotational harvesting. Oh, and get rid of the middlemen.
- Bioprospecting, biopiracy and food security in India: The emerging sides of neoliberalism. All of the above are potential neoliberal stooges.
- Comparative karyomorphological studies of three edible locally important species of Allium from India. A chive is not a chive is not a chive. But it’s hard work to tell them apart.
- Crop diversification, crop and energy productivity under raised and sunken beds: results from a seven-year study in a high rainfall organic production system. Rotations including vegetables all round better than rice monocropping. Nothing neoliberal about that. But who does nothing but rice monocropping? I guess these guys could tell you…
Nibbles: Globalized diets edition
- Another one of those fun photoessays on diets around the world. Don’t look too globalized to me.
- Sometimes it’s not such a bad idea for a food to quietly slip away. Take kimchi. Please. The upside of globalization?
- Indian street food is totally immune to globalization, far as I can tell.
- Speaking of globalization, the rise in meat consumption in China is having an effect all over. But the answers are out there… Though some are cooler than others.
- Want to document globalization? You’ll need this incredible resource on the history of the trade in commodities.
- If we all ever eat more seaweed, Zanzibar will make a killing.
- Kew in trouble? One of the great engines of globalization of plant commodities, of course. Surely too big to fail.
- The health effects of diet globalization, you ask? Biofortification conference gearing up in Kigali. Will they listen to alternatives? Any of our readers going, and willing to tell us?
- Is kale making a comeback? Great picture of leaf variation. Among other things.
- I think all these drones could be used to map all those minor, neglected crops, don’t you?
Nibbles: Fiji lab, World Economic Plants, USDA garlic, Breeding conference, Borlaug Summit, Alex Morrell, Hayden Flour
- Fiji commissions tissue culture lab to get clean planting materials out to farmers.
- World Economic Plants: A Standard Reference finally out. But farmers probably knew all about them already.
- Speaking of USDA, here’s what they do to conserve garlic.
- Big conference in the UK on Breeding Plants for the Future. Seems like there’s one of these every week these days.
- Like at CIMMYT, for example, in remembrance of Dr Norman Borlaug.
- “Our germplasm – our genetic base here – is the best in the world. We dominate genetics in the industry.” I’d like to meet a seed industry guy who didn’t say that.
- Meanwhile, in Arizona: “We’re not trying to go back in time, but capturing an authentic time.” I’d like to meet this guy. And put him together with the guy above.
Nibbles: Agavins, Women in Ag, Teacup shattered, Quinoa, Rice, PGR course, Seeds for Africa, Tomato, Global cookbook, Cover crops, Sheep
- Tequila plant is possible sweetener for diabetics. Talk about a waste of raw material.
- Would you Adam and Eve it? Women do not own 2% of the land. What next for the killer factcheck?
- In related news, teacup pigs are a fraud.
- Quinoa to feed the world, in Spanish.
- The rice warrior! Isn’t that overegging the pudding just a smidgen?
- Learn about plant genetic resources and seeds at Wageningen University.
- African Agriculture Technology Foundation “to avail adequate quality seeds at the right time and affordable price”. You might think some of the folks at the AATF should avail themselves of Wageningen’s course.
- Tough, flavoursome and bug resistant. Not Richard Markham, but a tomato bred specially for the Solomon Islands he’s talking about.
- Kew’s new global kitchen cookbook narrowly avoids being crushed by bandwagon trundling by.
- Cover crops are even more valuable than previously thought shock.
- Indigenous sheep breeds even more valuable than previously thought shock.