- Vikings got high.
- “How can you and your garden help us find out more about the global biodiversity associated with the plants in gardens?” Here’s how.
- The oldest olive press in Anatolia.
- “The Mistake: Writing a proposal that showcased knowledge rather than addressing the audience’s needs.” Indeed.
- The Solution: cool downloads from Gapminder.
- The only surviving illustrated Old English herbal. And, from several centuries later, a medieval book on how gardens will save you.
- AramcoWorld on my favourite nut.
- Cannibalism is a choice.
- One kick-ass botanist.
- Saving Ethiopia’s coffee forests. Nah, let’s just map the genome.
- Vanilla has dark side.
- The Profit of the Earth: cool new book on seeds, dark side and all.
- Remember my little trip to the Spanish genebank? What they’re doing on brassica.
Brainfood: Hot pepper double, Tibetan chickens, Watermelon diversity, Sunflower accessions, CWR meh, E Africa early ag, Pristine myth, African deforestation
- Screening old peppers (Capsicum spp.) for disease resistance and pungency-related traits. Resistance does not correlate with geography within an Andean collection.
- Bioactive Compound Variability in a Brazilian Capsicum Pepper Collection. No accession is high in everything.
- Genetic evidence from mitochondrial DNA corroborates the origin of Tibetan chickens. That is, the surrounding regions.
- Morphological and genetic diversity analysis of Citrullus landraces from India and their genetic inter relationship with continental watermelons. Modern cultivars are homogeneous.
- Molecular diversity of sunflower populations maintained as genetic resources is affected by multiplication processes and breeding for major traits. Multiplication slightly reduces within-accession diversity. Well, in France anyway.
- Past and Future Use of Wild Relatives in Crop Breeding. Yada yada.
- Subsistence mosaics, forager-farmer interactions, and the transition to food production in eastern Africa. The transition to agriculture in E Africa was more than just the Bantu expansion.
- Persistent effects of pre-Columbian plant domestication on Amazonian forest composition. Domesticated species are more common around archaeological sites. Sounds like agriculture is not much more than the Arawakan and Tupí expansions.
- Human population growth offsets climate-driven increase in woody vegetation in sub-Saharan Africa. In some places climate change has positive effects, but these are swamped where there is high population growth.
Nibbles: Wheat rust, Coconut history, Svalbard, Cahokia, Millets, Politics, Crones & robots, Citrus history, Argan development
- Rust continues to never sleep.
- The discussion of whether there were coconuts on the Pacific coast of Panama prior to the Conquista continues on the Coconut Google Group.
- ICARDA and CIMMYT continue to love the Svalbard Global Seed Vault.
- Climate change continues to be implicated in past societal collapses.
- NPR continues to plug those millets.
- Cautionary tale of Vavilov and Lysenko continues to be told, thankfully.
- The rise and rise of the drone continues. See what I did there?
- The relentless popular culture journey of citrus continues.
- And that of argan begins.
Nibbles: Trees on farms, Biodiversity hotspots, Coconuts, Banana genebank, Fiddleheads, Hybrid wheat, Buckler prize, ITPGRFA hatchet job
- Trees are good for African farmers.
- A basic universal income for people in biodiversity hotspots. Agrobiodiversity hotspots too?
- Coconut History 101.
- 30 years of bananas in Belgium.
- Eat up all your fiddleheads.
- Hybrid wheat is coming at last.
- Ed Buckler wins big. Unclear if he’ll be allowed to tweet about it.
- Nonsense piece on the ITPGRFA.
Nibbles: Agroforestry info, Coffee genome, Citrus family tree, Physalis fossil, Conservation economics, Wild Vicia, African rice history, USDA PGR strategy, Fisheries, Evidence base
- Agroforestry Species Switchboard gets upgrade.
- Arabica sequenzzzzzzz…
- “But what is the point of collecting and preserving this genetic diversity as seed, if it should remain in perpetuity in a seed bank?”
- Citrus untangled.
- 52 million year old tomatillo fossil already had Inflated Calyx Syndrome.
- Faba bean wild relative found, kinda sorta.
- It’s the economics, stupid.
- African rice in the New World. Mash up with peanuts?
- National Program 301: Plant Genetic Resources, Genomics, and Genetic Improvement. Action Plan 2018-2022.
- Communities that catch more diverse fish species are more resilient shock.
- Database of what works in conservation. Not of crop and livestock diversity, though, alas.