Medicinal plants

November 2, 2013

Nibbles: Book, Sorghum, Plant breeding, Quinoa, Herbal medicines, Compensation, New varieties, Beers

Here’s a bunch of better-late-than-never links, some of which will be good this time next year.

A new book on Plant Genetic Resources and Climate Change.
I expect it covers sorghum, which NPR calls the “camel of crops”.
Wonder whether they’ll cover sorghum at the Tucson Plant Breeding Institute course in January 2014. h/t Crops for the Future.
Last week’s International Congress on Quinoa. Pretty sure our invitation got lost in the mail.
As was our invitation to Kew’s one-day symposium on herbal medicines and food supplements.
Annals of Botany explains how compensation may underly the benefits of genetic diversity – in Arabidopsis. (And thanks for the shout-out.)
ICRISAT struts its stuff in Nigeria with new varieties of groundnut and millet. As ever, we ask: who’s looking after the old varieties?
Diverse beers for Halloween – one to cut out and keep.

September 14, 2013September 14, 2013

Nibbles: Lathyrism, Ancient maize, Sustainable cacao, Bioversity on agrobiodiversity, Weird fruits, Carrot seed, Palm wine, Buckwheat, Halophytes issue, Weird(ish) crops, Urban malnutrition, Old oranges, Molasses, Indian tree institute

An ODAP detective story.
Ancient maize gets a map.
Diversity is the key to sustainable cacao.
New Bioversity DG answers the tough questions.
Be the first on your block with an unusual fruit tree.
How to grow awesome carrot seed.
The hard life of Nigerian wine tappers.
Bringing back buckwheat in Bhutan.
Annals of Botany to do halophytes.
Come down to earth with the realization that most people have never heard of cowpea and cassava. Would they have heard of black-eyed peas and tapioca, though?
Big report on urban malnutrition. Maybe cassava (see above) can help?
The last orange grove in the San Fernando Valley. No word on what the variety might be.
All about molasses.
Indian tree breeding institute, and accompanying genebank, get a write-up.
Yes, I know that I could have done a better job of pointing out the connections among some of these things, but it’s been a long week.

September 10, 2013September 10, 2013

Nibbles: Coca, Rice breeding, Artisanal cheese, Win win, Microbes, Potato dyes, Beans, Agroforestry & conservation, Sweet potato marketing

Bolivia ramps up coca production. Sniff.
Tamil Nadu ramps up rice breeding.
Bulgaria ramps up artisanal cheese production.
Collaboration between organic and biotech ramped up. In other news, pigs fly.
Ramp up use of microbes, microbiologist says. Nobody surprised.
Americans ramp up production of purple potatoes.
Everyone ramps up bean production. To save the planet, no less.
Can agroforestry be used to ramp up tree conservation? Well, maybe?
Need to ramp up sweet potato marketing.

September 2, 2013September 2, 2013

Brainfood: Pests & CC, Germplasm pix, Latvian legume rescue, Estonian potatoes, NZ genebanks, Yam polyploids, Tree evaluation, Ethiopian veggie, European seed law, Zulu sheep, Celosia management

Crop pests and pathogens move polewards in a warming world. At 3 km/year.
Systems for making NIAS Core Collections, single-seed-derived germplasm, and plant photo images available to the research community. The next level in genetic resources documentation?
Recovering Genetic Resources of Some Legume Species of Latvian Origin by Plant Tissue Culture. You have to work at it.
Overview of in vitro Preservation of Potato and Use of the Gene Bank Material in Estonia. They like coloured potatoes in Estonia.
The key roles of seed banks in plant biodiversity management in New Zealand. Are many and varied.
Microsatellite and flow cytometry analysis to help understand the origin of Dioscorea alata polyploids. Unreduced gametes did it.
Genetic variation in progenies of Jacaranda cuspidifolia Mart using the fan systematic design. Yon can measure genetic variation and evaluate performance under different spacings at the same time, which is important in a tree.
Diversity analysis in Plectranthus edulis (Vatke) Agnew collection in Ethiopia. As ever, a considerable amount of variability was found. Oh hum.
The European seed legislation on conservation varieties: focus, implementation, present and future impact on landrace on farm conservation. There should be more landraces in the Common Catalogue.
Characterization of Zulu sheep production system: Implications for conservation and improvement. If they’re so drought tolerant, why is drought threatening them? Well, there’s drought, and then there’s drought.
Effects of paraquat on genetic diversity and protein profiles of six varieties of Celosia in South-Western Nigeria. That would be a tasty and diverse local leafy green. Well, before the paraquat anyway.

August 30, 2013August 30, 2013

One more cup of coffee

For some reason, there’s been a sackful of coffee stories lately. Here’s a quick summary:

“Pistols for two, and coffee for one.”

“[Coffee] is of excellent Use in the time of Pestilence, and contributes greatly to prevent the spreading of Infection.”

“We just had to try at least a cup in every village we stopped at, and as they were small cups, sometimes more than one… The irony is that I am a ‘tea-only girl’.”

“Yes, Starbucks has announced it’s taking up shop in Bogota, Colombia. It says it wants to celebrate Colombian coffee.”

“Here, we do not work hard for survival, but we work hard to live a better life; that is what I’ve learned from working on this plantation.”

“In order to create these pre-breeding populations with enough genetic diversity for these economically important traits, WCR ((World Coffee Research.)) will utilize genetic material from the current germplasm collections as well as new material coming from wild populations from the WCR GERMPLASM Project.”