- Floral Transcriptome Sequencing for SSR Marker Development and Linkage Map Construction in the Tea Plant (Camellia sinensis). Neat, to be sure, but not entirely clear why the transcriptome of a part of a crop that is not economically exploited should be of more than academic use to anyone. But no doubt someone will set us right on this.
- Emergence of Agriculture in the Foothills of the Zagros Mountains of Iran. Eastern Fertile Crescent just as important as western.
- Analysis of main agronomic characteristics and utilization status of rice resources in Hunan Province. Hunan has a provincial genebank with more than 12,000 accession, “repetition eliminated.”
- The comparison of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture and the Nagoya Protocol. Like the above, this is in Chinese, except for the abstract, which recommends ratification of both relevant instruments. I hope someone is listening.
- Biodiversity of Arbuscular Mycorrhizal fungi in Agricultural crops of western Himalayas. Everybody’s at it. Well, almost.
- Assessment of breeding progress in sugar beet by testing old and new varieties under greenhouse and field conditions. It has been steady and is set to continue. At least in Germany.
- Why crop yields in developing countries have not kept pace with advances in agronomy. Let them eat German sugar beets. But seriously: agronomist says it’s about the agronomy.
- Molecular mechanisms involved in convergent crop domestication. It’s mutations at orthologous loci, and it can be copied.
- Differential survival and growth of wild and cultivated seedlings of columnar cacti: Consequences of domestication. Gotta wonder if mutations at orthologous loci were involved.
- NAL1 allele from a rice landrace greatly increases yield in modern indica cultivars. But it came from a tropical japonica landrace from Indonesia, and works its magic via pleiotropic effect on plant architecture.
Nibbles: Ecosystem services, EU hearing, Competition, Stagnant yields, Abandoned croplands, Ferments
We’re almost out of here, until 6 January 2014. Till then …
- Possibly the best current explanation of why ecosystem services are worth paying for. Stay with it.
- Would you like to see Roberto Papa tell the European Parliament’s Agriculture Committee what he thinks of the proposals on plant reproductive material? Thought so.
- Young agricultural blogger? CTA wants to hear from you for the YoBloCo awards.
- Nature’s on a roll lately: Crop yields are growing arithmetically, and you can stuff that in your anti-Malthusian stocking.
- What, then, to do with Eastern Europe’s abandoned croplands?
- Maybe we could ferment them.
Nibbles: Homegardens, Ancient grains, Homeless hens, Data data data, New maize, ICRISAT ambassadors, Wine microbes, India, Soil Day
- Emma Cooper blogs her ethnobotanical MSc dissertation on British homegardeners and their cool crops.
- If she’d done her work in Sweden, she’d have written about Ragnar Pettersson and his “treasure of Ardre.”
- The downside of backyard farming: homeless hens.
- International e-Conference on Germplasm Data Interoperability: Genebank Database Hell gets an e-conference. What could possibly go wrong.
- Apparently there’s a new way to search for agricultural bibliografic (sic) data.
- CIMMYT gets its maize out there.
- ICRISAT is not one to hide its light under a bushel either.
- Aussies to survey their yeasts and bacteria to improve winemaking.
- The problems of India: “It takes a particular brand of incompetence and neglect for decades of stellar growth to have no apparent impact on India’s sky-high levels of under-nutrition.” I bet Dreze and Sen didn’t include a food bubble. Hey, but that can be exported.
- Oh and happy World Soil Day! Thanks to it, and Jim Croft, I now know Australia has a sort of soil genebank.
Nibbles: Papaya relatives, Agrobiodiversity monitoring, Orange breeding, Corn mutant, Cashew processing, Pecan pie, Communications history, Wheat research video, Agroforestry, Breeding, AG research in USA, Philippines typhoon, Eating insects, Indian blog, Open data, Microbes & wine, European databases, Afro-Indian Millet Alliance
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As Jerry Seinfeld famously once said, I’m getting a little backed up here. Travel and work and, well, life, have conspired to keep me away from Nibbling for the past week and more, so apologies if what follows proves a little difficult to digest.
- The closest relative of the papaya looks nothing like a papaya. But will it be monitored, along with the rest of agrobiodiversity?
- We might have to look further afield than near relatives to save the orange. But closer to save corn.
- Cashews are bad? Say it ain’t so. And as for pecans…
- CGIAR comms guys (and it is all guys) reminisce about the good old days of agricultural research. And here’s an example, using wheat, of what they’re up to now. Nice shoutout for breeding and genebanks. Though of course it’s not just about the breeding.
- Crop improvement is one of six ways of feeding the world. Just. CGIAR comms guys probably on it. Barbara Schaal certainly is.
- IRRI maps rice areas affected by the recent typhoon. I did ask, and farmers there apparently mostly grow modern varieties. FAO provides more context.
- More insectivorous hijinks.
- Great new blog on chai wallahs.
- Big, open ag data will save us all. That sound you hear is the zeitgeist catching up. And the CGIAR is on it.
- You say terroir, I say microbes.
- Report on a descent into Genebank Database Hell, European Chapter. Ah, but it’s open.
- India reaches out to Africa, millets in hand.
Brainfood: Mixtures and productivity, Pesticides and soil biota, Andean intensification, Turkish barley, Tomato size gene, Quinoa and environment, Banana improvement, Hybrid conservation, Allozymes
- Changes in the Abundance of Grassland Species in Monocultures versus Mixtures and Their Relation to Biodiversity Effects. Monocultures are ok for productivity, but only initially.
- Agricultural soils, pesticides and microbial diversity. mRNA and high-throughput sequencing show that pesticides affect nitrification rates and soil microbe community structure. Brave new world indeed.
- Making Sense of Agrobiodiversity, Diet, and Intensification of Smallholder Family Farming in the Highland Andes of Ecuador. Want sustainable intensification? Look at the smaller enterprises.
- Genetic variation of barley germplasm from Turkey assessed by chloroplast microsatellite markers. Little genetic similarity between wild relative and landraces in same geographic area.
- A cytochrome P450 regulates a domestication trait in cultivated tomato. Single polymorphism controls fruit size.
- Blossoming Treasures of Biodiversiy. 42. Quinoa – is the United Nations’ featured crop of 2013 bad for biodiversity? It can be.
- From crossbreeding to biotechnology-facilitated improvement of banana and plantain. Quite some progress, despite few breeding programmes. Will it all go GE? Big temptation. I would have made more of the genebank collections, personally.
- Perspectives on the conservation of wild hybrids. There’s more to it than science. Tell that to the banana breeders.
- Revisiting protein heterozygosity in plants — nucleotide diversity in allozyme coding genes of conifer Pinus sylvestris. Those pre-DNA days weren’t a complete waste of time. That mean we can measure genetic erosion?