- Maharashtra to set up a genebank, but definitely NOT the nation’s first.
- Meanwhile, in Kashmir…
- Let them eat cassava cake.
- Minor roots and tubers not so minor in Malawi. Cassava unavailable for comment.
- Area man shares heirloom tomatoes. Not many people hurt.
- How to make the most, sustainably, of 12 wild-harvested plant species. According to FAO.
- Indigenous peoples have been harvesting oysters sustainably for millennia.
- The wonderful Plant Humanities Initiative does recipes.
Brainfood: Finger millet diversity, US wheat diversity, Enset diversity, Anglo Saxon diets, Agrobiodiversity index, Rangeland management, Butia groves, Cryotherapy, Bogia Syndrome, Niche models, Merino ancestors
- Scientific Selection – A Century of Increasing Crop Varietal Diversity in US Wheat. Whether you take into account the genetic relationship among varieties or not, breeding has been driving up wheat diversity in American fields. But anyone else think this is a bit of a straw man?
- Novel GBS-Based SNP Markers for Finger Millet and Their Use in Genetic Diversity Analyses. The Zimbabwean and Ethiopian landraces are different and should be crossed more to inject some diversity into improved varieties. You mean like they did for wheat in the US?
- On-Farm Diversity of Enset (Ensete ventricosum (Welw.) Cheesman) Landraces, Use, and the Associated Indigenous Knowledge in Adola Rede District, Guji Zone, Oromia, Ethiopia. No problem with diversity in enset, at least morphologically speaking.
- Food and Power in Early Medieval England: a lack of (isotopic) enrichment. Elite “Anglo-Saxon” males did not have a diet that was consistently higher in meat than anyone else at the time, so there. I wonder if any ever ate enset.
- Assessment of agrobiodiversity in the intensive agriculture: a case study of the Indo-Gangetic Plains of India. Could do with some more legumes.
- Community-based rangeland management in Namibia improves resource governance but not environmental and economic outcomes. Market incentives do not always work the way you think.
- The palm trees choose the places – Popular knowledge associated with the use and conservation of butiá (Butia spp.). No word on market incentives.
- Shoot tip cryotherapy for plant pathogen eradication. Especially good if combined with thermotherapy or chemotherapy. May even work on enset, for all I know.
- The phytoplasma associated with Bogia coconut syndrome in Papua New Guinea is a new phytoplasma in the group of the lethal yellowing syndromes (LYTS) of coconut and other palms. Yeah but will cryotherapy work?
- Implementation of species distribution models in Google Earth Engine. Shhh, or everyone will want to do it, and then where will we be.
- Genetic Diversity and Population Structure of Moroccan Beni Ahsen: Is This Endangered Ovine Breed One of the Ancestors of Merino? Maybe? Partly? Does it matter?
Nibbles: Jordanian seeds, Indian tubers, Himalayan fungi, American bees
- Jordan’s genebank in the news.
- Tuber Man of Kerala’s genebank in the news.
- Pricy Himalayan mushroom in the news, should probably be in a genebank.
- Bee breeders in the news. Probably a first.
Brainfood: Digitizing collections, Bean core, Livestock diversity, Maya & maize, Fish stocks & CC, Save the weed, Flax CWR, Italian agrobiodiversity
- Cross-validation of a semantic segmentation network for natural history collection specimens. Computers can distinguish the herbarium label from the actual specimen and other stuff on the sheet, helping with the whole automatic digitization thing, but it takes some really fancy math.
- The landscapes of livestock diversity: grazing local breeds as a proxy for domesticated species adaptation to the environment. Medium fancy math used to map breed diversity in the Iberian Peninsula for different livestock species and relate it to environmental factors.
- South-to-north migration preceded the advent of intensive farming in the Maya region. Sort of like tomato, but in the other direction. Plenty of math involved, but behind the scenes, thankfully.
- Timing and magnitude of climate-driven range shifts in transboundary fish stocks challenge their management. Huge amount of data and very fancy math shows fish are in trouble.
- A Core Set of Snap Bean Genotypes Established by Phenotyping a Large Panel Collected in Europe. Ok, even I can follow the math on this one.
- Assessment of biogeographic variation in traits of Lewis flax (Linum lewisii) for use in restoration and agriculture. Very approachable math shows which populations of a CWR can best be used for restoration, and where; and also for domestication and breeding.
- An updated checklist of plant agrobiodiversity of northern Italy. Very useful use of very basic maths. Key number: only 43% of the PGR on the list are conserved ex situ.
- Cannabis, the multibillion dollar plant that no genebank wanted. No math needed to figure out weed needs a genebank.
An apple story a day…
Well, that’s odd. The rush of stories about apples usually happens in the autumn. And yet, just in the past couple of days, quite apart from the tweet about Korbinian Aigner, I have come across:
- An excellent roundup from the Apples & People newsletter.
- A pointer to a webpage on the history of American apples.
- News of newly-bred hypoallergenic varieties.
Oh, and since I have you here, might as well also say that there’s been an update from GRIN-U. No new resources specifically on apples lately, but there’s been a few in the past.