- Plant genetic resources collections and associated information as a baseline resource for genetic diversity studies: an assessment of the IBPGR-supported collections. 35% of 200,000 accessions collected by IBPGR from 1975-95 still in a genebank somewhere.
- Genetic diversity among germplasms of Diospyros kaki based on SSR markers. Chinese non-astringent types closer to Chinese astringent types than to Japanese non-astringent types.
- Ex Post Use Restriction and Benefit-sharing Provisions for Access to Non-plant Genetic Materials for Public Research. Up-front payments can be ok.
- On Farm Conservation of Crop Genetic Resource: Declining De Facto Diversity and Optimal Funding Strategy. Fancy maths tells us to identify the landraces most likely to go extinct, and the farmers who can conserve them most cheaply.
- Current situation of wild Solanum spp. L. sect. Petota (Solanum, Solanaceae) in some Colombian regions. Not great.
- Identification of a diverse mini-core panel of Indian rice germplasm based on genotyping using micro satellite markers. Mini-core of 98 accessions based on molecular data recovers 94% of alleles in geographically-selected core of 6912 accessions from Indian collection. No word on how good the 6912 are in the first place.
- Genomic analyses reveal potential independent adaptation to high altitude in Tibetan chickens. Tibetan chickens fall into 2 groups, both with signs of selection in several genes involved in the calcium-signalling pathway implicated in adaptation to the hypoxia experienced at high altitudes.
- Antioxidant properties of lingonberry (Vaccinium vitis-idaea L.) leaves within a set of wild clones and cultivars. The wilds are better for you.
- Knowledge Sharing Strategies on Traditional vegetables for Supporting Food Security in Kilosa District, Tanzania. Farmers talk about vegetables. Well there’s a shocker.
- Variability of candidate genes, genetic structure and association with sugar accumulation and climacteric behavior in a broad germplasm collection of melon (Cucumis melo L.). 175 melons from 50 countries fall into 7 groups, fitting well with morphology and taxonomy. Ripening genes associated with diversification.
- Genetic diversity analysis of Moroccan lentil (Lens culinaris Medik.) landraces using Simple Sequence Repeat and Amplified Fragment Length Polymorphisms reveals functional adaptation towards agro-environmental origins. Evidence of combination of functional and geographic groupings.
- Genetic Diversity of Grasspea and Its Relative Species Revealed by SSR Markers. Asian landraces different to those from Africa/Europe. And all different from the wilds.
- Quinoa and the exchange of genetic resources: improving the regulation system. Quinoa for Annex 1?
Brainfood: Sustainable intensification, Shrimp IPR, Noog domestication, Nigerian leafy veggies, Basil smells, Cultural ES, Natural regeneration, Medicinal cucurbit
- What is sustainable intensification? Views from experts. Ambiguous term which may not signify a departure from current practice anyway. Ecological intensification instead?
- Intellectual Property Rights Access to Genetic Resources and Indian Shrimp Aquaculture: Evolving Policy Responses to Globalization. I kid you not.
- Patterns of Domestication in the Ethiopian Oil-seed Crop Noug (Guizotia abyssinica). Weirdness, for a domesticated crop, not due to its wild relative messing things up. What it is due to is a “mystery.” Thanks, authors.
- Bio-Banking on Neglected and Underutilized Plant Genetic Resources of Nigeria: Potential for Nutrient and Food Security. Never even heard of some of these.
- Comparison of different Ocimum basilicum L. gene bank accessions analyzed by GC–MS and sensory profile. Among 12 cultivars in the Hungarian genebank, there are 5 distinct smell profiles. That actually seems quite a lot.
- The role of cultural ecosystem services in landscape management and planning. Sometimes, they can hold you back.
- Carbon farming via assisted natural regeneration as a cost-effective mechanism for restoring biodiversity in agricultural landscapes. It can be a viable use of land in parts of Queensland, depending on the price of C.
- Ethnobotany of a threatened medicinal plant “Indravan” (Cucumis callosus) from central India. Cucumber wild relatives also medicinal.
Nibbles: Old pretzel, Wine podcast, Nordic podcast, Tea history, Pacific pests app, Eating bugs, Chicken history, African superfoods, Gender, Access to seeds, Sorghum beer, Making mead, Cumin, Bolivian school meals, MLN, Hidden hunger conference, CIP & IK, Potato Park, CIP’s Sawyer, Saving wheat, Resettlement, Sustainable cacao, Deforestation map, Language map
Again, sorry for slow blogging last week. Work, you know. Here we play catch-up.
- While we were away, we reached 6000 Twitter followers! Thanks, everyone!
- And Germans found a 250-year-old pretzel. Wait, you can get those at Kamps every day though. (Bonn inside joke.)
- Oh, and Jeremy talked to a wine expert about how to become a wine expert.
- But he has competition from the Nordic Food Lab now. What are you waiting for, subscribe to both!
- Since we’re on podcasts, Laszlo Montgomery’s monumental ten-part blockbuster on the history of tea in China recently came to a close.
- Talking of iTunes, ver. 2 of the Pacific Pest and Pathogens app is out.
- Don’t want to get into the whole eating insects thing? Feed them to your chickens instead.
- There’s even an infographic about that now.
- But what will it do to the poor old chicken?
- Cooking up some African superfoods. No insects (or chickens) were harmed in the making of this article.
- Yeah but who will be doing the cooking?
- And where to get the seeds? Maybe African Seed Access Index will help, though I somehow doubt it. At least for baobab.
- Oh well, there’s always beer I guess. (Though even that you can’t take for granted these days.)
- Or mead, at a pinch.
- I bet the Sumerians put a pinch of cumin in their beer. And mead.
- What about Latin America superfoods, though? Bolivians put them in their school meals, that’s what.
- Maize was a Latin American superfood once. Having trouble in Africa now, though.
- Wait, what, there was a 2nd International Congress on Hidden Hunger at the University of Hohenheim last week? And all I got was this t-shirt? Any superfoods on the menu there, I wonder?
- CIP on how it deals with traditional knowledge.
- For example at the Potato Park. Where I’ll be next week, incidentally. Stay tuned… But again, I rather fear that blogging will be on the light side next week.
- CIP has come a long way since its first DG, Dr Richard L. Sawyer, who sadly just passed away.
- Modelling the effects of climate change on wheat. Again. Can never have enough data. Anyway, wild relatives the answer?
- Mongolian nomads settle down. And not in a good way.
- There’s more to sustainable cacao than productivity. Fortunately, some people are on that. Meanwhile, at the other end of the poverty spectrum…
- Don’t think I’ve ever seen a nerdy interactive map like Global Forest Watch go mainstream. Hope for us all. Mash it up with this next?
Brainfood: Identifying accessions, Evaluating yeasts, Using CWR, Wild grapes, Bushmeat and nutrition, Rice evaluation, Tomato characterization, Sugarcane CWR, Nordic livestock, Conservation optimization, Moringa development, Albanian olives
- High-throughput genotyping for species identification and diversity assessment in germplasm collections.. 9% of random Brassicaceae samples from Australian Grains Genebank misidentified to species, with some interspecific hybrids.
- Methodology for enabling high-throughput simultaneous saccharification and fermentation screening of yeast using solid biomass as a substrate. Everything is now, now, now these days.
- Utilization of wild relatives of wheat, barley, maize and oat in developing abiotic and biotic stress tolerant new varieties. Useful summary table at the end.
- Patterns of SNP distribution provide a molecular basis for high genetic diversity and genetic differentiation in Vitis species. Different grape species are really different.
- Disentangling the relative effects of bushmeat availability on human nutrition in central Africa. Both rational use of some wild mammals for nutrition, and conservation of more vulnerable species, are possible, though in different places.
- Blast Resistant Genes Distribution and Resistance Reaction to Blast in Korean Landraces of Rice (Oryza sativa L.). Conventional evaluation of landraces is useless; you really need to look at the genes.
- Characterization of a collection of local varieties of tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) using conventional descriptors and the high-throughput phenomics tool Tomato Analyzer. Brave new world.
- Phylogenetic analysis of Saccharum s.l. (Poaceae; Andropogoneae), with emphasis on the circumscription of the South American species. Allopolyploid, with 2 species belonging in a different genus.
- Utilization of farm animal genetic resources in a changing agro-ecological environment in the Nordic countries. Need to phenotype and genotype everything. Now where have I heard that before?
- Multi-objective optimization for plant germplasm collection conservation of genetic resources based on molecular variability. Lots of data plus fancy maths can tell you which individuals you should add to an ex situ collection to maximize conserved diversity.
- Actual and Potential Applications of Moringa stenopetala, Underutilized Indigenous Vegetable of Southern Ethiopia: A Review. Potential as a source of drugs, but you need to learn to grow it.
- Olive in the story and art in Albania. There are old olive trees around castles.
Nibbles: Year of the Goat, Nutritional guidelines, Healthy diets, IK & conservation, Healthy orchards, Indian endemics trouble, CWR garden, NGS & food security, 3000 rice genomes at work, C4 rice, It’s economics stupid, US animal products map, Milk production history, Old Chinese cheese, Old Arabian seashells by the seashore, Gordon Bleu insects, African agriculture visions, Agroecology conference report, Smallholder diversity, Seed systems project, Supermarket farms, Toronto beer, Herbs factsheets, Ecosystems map, Contested Agronomy
Sorry about no blogging last week. Was watching sausages being made. Here’s a quick roundup of most of the stuff I would have Nibbled.
- But first of all, Happy Year of the Ram, everyone. No, wait…
- Brazil has the best nutritional guidelines.
- But Chad the best diet. Both are kinda ironic.
- Well, what can governments do about supporting healthy food preferences anyway?
- Folk knowledge vital to conservation.
- Well I never, say the East Timorese.
- Farming in a national park can be a win-win.
- Maybe even a win-win-win, if cider apples are involved.
- India’s endemic plants could be in trouble. Many crop wild relatives among them?
- Maybe they should do what the Royal Horticultural Society will be doing at the Malvern Spring Festival and make a garden with crop wild relatives. But then it won’t be the world’s first.
- Next generation genomics is this generation’s jetpack.
- No, wait, here’s that jetpack you’ve been expecting for so long… Well, more the first concept of the assembly instructions, really.
- We’ll get that jetpack before C4 rice, I expect. But we will get both.
- But of course it’s not all about production anyway.
- Squid is Rhode Island’s most lucrative animal product. Otherwise it’s mainly milk, in that part of the US.
- Maybe cheese was the Taklamakan’s. Three thousand years ago. And sea molluscs Saudi Arabia‘s. Five thousand years ago.
- When and where will insects be.
- “Large-scale investment in African agriculture and agribusiness, whether foreign, domestic, private, government-backed, or a combination of these, could pay a vital role in providing urgently needed financing, technology and markets, thereby assisting to ensure food security, contributing to poverty reduction and propelling agriculture-driven growth, with significant implications for achieving more inclusive growth.” Is that really all one sentence?
- Or maybe small-scale investment?
- How much investment in agroecology will there be, I wonder. Even after this report from last year’s FAO conference.
- Oh good, 75% of crop diversity still on small farms. Would that be 75% of the 25% remaining from the last century?
- What effect will the Integrated Seed Sector Development Project Africa have on that 75%, I wonder.
- The farm as a supermarket. Almost makes you believe in that 75%.
- The beery history of Toronto. Yes, Toronto.
- The National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) has nutritional fact sheets on herbs.
- A great new global ecosystem map has the GIS nerds all excited.
- “Contested Agronomy 2016 is a conference about the battlefields in agricultural research, past and present.” Oh to have the live-tweeting gig. Hell, I’d do it for free. Wait, don’t I already do it for free? Hasn’t this whole Nibbles been about contestation in agricultural development?
And on that note, that’s all folks. Because this was such a pain to put together after a week’s hiatus, I’m going to leave it on the front page for a day or two before sending it to the Siberia of the sidebar. Oh and BTW, people. We want to reach 6,000 followers on Twitter, preferably before that jetpack arrives, so follow us already, and tell your hipster friends.
Wait, too needy?