- The ever-dependable Roads & Kingdoms on a very special Swiss cheese.
- The ever-dependable Mongabay on Kyrgyz apple forests.
- The ever-dependable Simran Sethi on how the California pistachio industry got it’s start.
- The ever-dependable Bioversity with a global strategy for the conservation of coconut genetic diversity.
- The ever-dependable Twitter…no wait. Thread on why farmers with a bigger share in their output produce more.
- A cow wild relative in Myanmar.
- Carolina Sansaloni of CIMMYT on genotyping genebank collections.
- Are chickens “rescuing mute, passive non-Western women”?
- Blueberries are in all kinds of trouble.
Nibbles: Lathyrus project, Vegetables review, Aztec linguistics, Tree seeds, Ancient booze
- Grasspea gets some love.
- Hundreds of veggies still don’t, though.
- Deconstructing chocolate. The word, that is.
- Networking tree seeds in Rwanda.
- Drinking in Neolithic Britain.
Brainfood: NUS crackers, Genomic prediction, Chicken double, Wild German celery, Cretan sheep, Boricua papaya, Sorghum breeding, Wheat breeding, Italian carrots, Mining barley, Onion review, Fertilizers
- Development of value-added nutritious crackers with high antidiabetic properties from blends of Acha (Digitaria exilis) and blanched Pigeon pea (Cajanus cajan). Putting orphan crops to work.
- A deep convolutional neural network approach for predicting phenotypes from genotypes. Artificial intelligence applied to genomic selection. Sexy enough for you?
- Genomic diversity dynamics in conserved chicken populations are revealed by genome-wide SNPs. Gotta watch those effective population sizes.
- Chicken semen cryopreservation and use for the restoration of rare genetic resources. Maybe a way to help with the above?
- Patterns of Genetic Diversity and Implications for In Situ Conservation of Wild Celery (Apium graveolens L. ssp. graveolens). 15 Most Appropriate Wild Populations out of 78. Still seems like a lot.
- Challenges for local breed management in Mediterranean dairy sheep farming: insights from Central Greece. Conservation through cross-breeding. But how long can it last?
- Genetic Diversity of Puerto Rican Farmer-held Papaya (Carica papaya) Using SSR Markers. I wonder how many are left after Maria.
- Breeding Sorghum for Diverse End Uses: Genetic Improvement of Grain Sorghum. More germplasm could be used.
- Harnessing genetic potential of wheat germplasm banks through impact-oriented-prebreeding for future food and nutritional security. Getting impact from “exotic” germplasm is possible. To be clear, I think that just means wild stuff.
- BiodiverSO: A Case Study of Integrated Project to Preserve the Biodiversity of Vegetable Crops in Puglia (Southern Italy). Saving the Polignano carrot.
- Genomics Approaches to Mining Barley Germplasm Collections. Management, cores, history. But we knew that.
- Allium Genetic Resources. Significant progress in data availability, cryopreservation protocols, health status and levels of evaluation. Maybe acquisition and exchange could be increased?
- Review: Taking stock of Africa’s second-generation agricultural input subsidy programs. 80 studies from 7 countries show that helping smallholders obtain fertilisers gives rapid but short-term and lower-than-expected increases in production. One reason is that yields don’t respond to fertilisation as much as they should. Is it because it’s mainly landraces?
Brainfood: Social media, Wheat double, Apple diversity, Land use change theory, Land use change praxis, Intensification, Ag metrics
- How Do Young Adults Engage With Science and Research on Social Media? Some Preliminary Findings and an Agenda for Future Research. Facebook, not Twitter. So I’m doing it all wrong? Any young adults reading this and want to tell me how I’m doing?
- Genetic dissection of grain zinc concentration in spring wheat for mainstreaming biofortification in CIMMYT wheat breeding. Two interesting regions on different chromosomes.
- Harnessing genetic potential of wheat germplasm banks through impact-oriented-prebreeding for future food and nutritional security. Not just Zn.
- Genetic analysis of a major international collection of cultivated apple varieties reveals previously unknown historic heteroploid and inbred relationships. The deep history of the justly famous UK collection.
- Middle-range theories of land system change. Towards a Grand Unified Theory. But do we need one?
- Classifying drivers of global forest loss. Commodities, basically. But what’s the good of that without a theory?
- The environmental costs and benefits of high-yield farming. Theory shtheory: measure externalities.
- Beyond Calories: A Holistic Assessment of the Global Food System. Micronutrients get lost disproportionately badly along the supply chain. How’s that for a theory?
Nibbles: Farm subsidies, Pressing and naming plants, Cowpea primer, California crop maps, Caribbean mangoes, ABS meeting, Banana mapping, Sarada Krishnan, Indian millets, Apple varieties, Early modern bees
- Fun Twitter thread on zombie tropes about farm subsidies in the US. Should have been a blog post, though.
- Kew boffins on how to make an herbarium specimen. More complicated than you might think. And why it’s important. While I’m at it, this is how you use herbarium specimens etc. to name plants.
- IITA genebank manager interviewed about cowpea.
- Everything you ever wanted to know about the history of cartography. Not very relevant here, I know, but a monumental achievement that I wanted to celebrate. And here’s a wonderful example of cutting-edge online cartography that will no doubt feature in a future edition.
- The banana mapping project is progressing nicely.
- Damn, I missed the St Lucia mango festival. Next year?
- Africa discusses ABS.
- Dr Sarada Krishnan of Denver Botanic Garden profiled. She worked on the global coffee conservation strategy. Among many other things.
- Millets to the rescue in Gujarat.
- Red Delicious bumped from top apple spot.
- Amateurs have spread information about beekeeping since 16th century.