I just can’t resist following up yesterday’s Nibble on the history of citrus fruits in the Mediterranean with a couple of recent news stories about unconventional uses for orange peels. To wit, making clothes and environmental restoration. What would those Romans who first introduced the citron and lemon have thought? Let’s just hope we’re able to enjoy this multi-use genus a little while longer.
Nibbles: Jumping genes, Lebanese winemaking, Ag data, Ag & soil C, Citrus routes, Breeding peas, Heritage cattle
- Pinning down transposable elements across the whole maize genome.
- Wine and weed in Lebanon. Not as mellow as it sounds.
- Yields and Land Use in Agriculture: The Website.
- The effect of all those yields times 12,000 years on C sequestration is about as much as that of deforestation.
- Ancient Roman 1% responsible for introducing the citron and lemon to the Mediterranean.
- Flowering duration and pod numbers are they keys to heat tolerance in peas.
- 94% of US dairy cows are Holsteins. How boring is that?
Brainfood: Kolli Hills diversity, Fergana diversity, Chinese rice terraces, ICRISAT prebreeding, Spanish CWR collecting, Edible flowers, Diversification, Prices vs volatility
- An ethnographic exploration of perceptions of changes in dietary variety in the Kolli Hills, India. Cassava cash cropping has had unforeseen effects on dietary diversity.
- Mapping and assessing crop diversity in the irrigated Fergana Valley, Uzbekistan. More crops on the edges.
- An Analysis on Crops Choice and Its Driving Factors in Agricultural Heritage Systems—A Case of Honghe Hani Rice Terraces System. Established for “red rice”, but that’s not enough.
- Prebreeding Using Wild Species for Genetic Enhancement of Grain Legumes at ICRISAT. It’s not easy, but it’s been worth it.
- A Multispecies Collecting Strategy for Crop Wild Relatives Based on Complementary Areas with a High Density of Ecogeographical Gaps. Collecting in Spain in “…top 10 selected complementary areas would allow the capture of 59 of the 88 targeted taxa and 31% of the 683 different taxa-ELC category combinations identified in the ecogeographical gaps.”
- Antioxidant power, anthocyanin content and organoleptic performance of edible flowers. Tycoon Blue will be quite the marketing challenge.
- Diversifying Food Systems in the Pursuit of Sustainable Food Production and Healthy Diets. And nary an edible flower mentioned.
- Cereal price shocks and volatility in sub-Saharan Africa: what really matters for farmers’ welfare? Prices.
Nibbles: Dwarf rice, Ricestoration, Tarostoration, Biorepositories, Sustainable coffee, Cactus wars, Goaty portraits, Spandrels, Potato genebank, Forests and nutrition
- The long and short of Green Revolution rice.
- Restoring historical slave-worked rice fields in North Carolina.
- Kinda similar, but taro in Hawaii.
- There’s a bank for milk diversity.
- Nice review of sustainable coffee production.
- Opuntia: tasty but deadly (to some).
- Handsome goat pix.
- Festoons of fruits at the Farnesina: Jeremy is incensed.
- Great new webpages for the CIP genebank.
- Another report on a report that living close to forests is good for nutritional security, up to a point. But bushmeat?
Brainfood: Wild foods, Maize in Guatemala, Wild lentils, Sorghum gaps, Ethiopian erosion, Chikanda barcoding, Brazil nut systems, Wild carrots, Ancient wild potato use, Wild wheat grains
- The role of wild fruits and vegetables in delivering a balanced and healthy diet. Not great, until they’re domesticated.
- Maize Diversity, Market Access, and Poverty Reduction in the Western Highlands of Guatemala. Forget maize.
- Evaluation of Wild Lentil Species as Genetic Resources to Improve Drought Tolerance in Cultivated Lentil. Environment explained drought response in wild lentils better than molecular classification.
- Geographical distribution, diversity and gap analysis of East African sorghum collection conserved at the ICRISAT genebank. Both Sudans.
- Explaining the Ethiopian farmers’ perceptions on potential loss of traditional crop varieties: A principal components regression analysis. Poor farmers know more, and care more, about loss of traditional landraces.
- High-throughput sequencing of African chikanda cake highlights conservation challenges in orchids. Those are very biodiverse cakes, but not in a good way.
- Revisiting the ‘cornerstone of Amazonian conservation’: a socioecological assessment of Brazil nut exploitation. It’s actually in pretty good shape, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be improved.
- Phylogenetic Prediction of Alternaria Leaf Blight Resistance in Wild and Cultivated Species of Carrots. Look for taller material in clade A.
- Starch granule evidence for the earliest potato use in North America. S. jamesii may have been used for 10,000 years in Utah.
- Genome-Wide Association Study of Grain Architecture in Wild Wheat Aegilops tauschii. Two genetic lineages, with big differences in grain width and weight.