- Management increases genetic diversity of honey bees via admixture. No domestication bottleneck there!
- Enhancing innovation in livestock value chains through networks: Lessons from fodder innovation case studies in developing countries. Fodder innovators of the world, organize. If you don’t, you will lose your value chains.
- Introduction to special issue on agricultural biodiversity, ecosystems and environment linkages in Africa. Special issues? What special issue?
- The construction of an alternative quinoa economy: balancing solidarity, household needs, and profit in San Agustín, Bolivia. Despite the allure of fancy denominations of origin and the like, old-fashioned cooperatives, and the much-maligned intermediary, manage to hang on in there.
- Species–genetic diversity correlations in habitat fragmentation can be biased by small sample sizes. Can.
- The original features of rice (Oryza sativa L.) genetic diversity and the importance of within-variety diversity in the highlands of Madagascar build a strong case for in situ conservation. Actually the way I read it, the stronger case is for ex situ. But see what you think.
- Population structure of the primary gene pool of Oryza sativa in Thailand. In situ Strikes Back.
Nibbles: Livestock, CWR, Extremophiles, Museum exhibits
- How livestock help feed the world.
- The latest CWR newsletter from PGR Secure.
- “…humans have inadvertently been probing the environmental envelope of carbon-based life for thousands of years simply by experimenting with pickling, salting, smoking, and refrigeration.”
- A better way for museums to preserve rice plants. In other news, museums interested in preserving rice plants.
Nibbles: Kenyan blog, Beer, CGIAR squared, Horse domestication
- And Kenya’s best agriculture blog is…Tracking The Scent! Congrats Kio Wachira!
- Drinking beer as an agricultural act.
- CRP4 needs a new name.
- Meanwhile, here’s another example of CGIAR centres working together. Not clear if it’s in a CRP, though, and if so what it is called.
- Horse domesticated once, but with occasional restocking.
Nibbles: Tomatoes, CATIE, Community seed bank, Law, Dairy breeding, Indian probiotics
- Ruth deconstructs her local tomatoes.
- New Mexico State University reaches out to CATIE’s genebank.
- Montana gets a genebank.
- Long Cymie Payne UBerkeley lecture on international law and biodiversity.
- Milking the data.
- Speaking of milk, indigenous lassi probiotics isolated, sequenced and deposited in genebank.
Nibbles: Data visualization, Soil, Heirlooms, Organic, Bugs, Veggies, Rome, AnGR, Meat, Mexico, Date palm pollination
- Cool infographics on food, trade and, well, a particular sort of trade. And how to make your own.
- Soil would be a cool place to start.
- The bananas of your grandchildren and the carrots of your grandparents. Plus a funny peculiar idea about how to keep seed of such stuff for 50 years.
- Which you don’t need to do anyway because “[r]eplacing traditional seeds with commercial varieties is not an official government policy,” at least in South Africa. Unlike in the EU, I guess. Oooooh, did I just say that? Such a naughty muppet.
- Ok, let me make up for that with some thoughts on breeding for the sorts of places where those traditional seeds might be found, in Africa and in Europe.
- Of course, in such places, you have to know your aphids. Before they go and eat a bacteria and change their DNA. Tricky to breed for resistance to that, I would guess.
- Oh, but here are also the views of someone in Europe who would rather not have anything to do with traditional seeds and their accompanying aphids at all. Why can’t we just get along?
- Why, for example, can we all not get to love mboga za watu wa Pwani. You heard me. And no, residing far from the Swahili Coast is no excuse. Jeremy unavailable for comment.
- He did, however, point out that “[t]he value of male prostitutes exceeds that of farmlands.” Yep, Robigalia time again.
- Meanwhile, not far from the Swahili Coast, some people are thinking that man does not live by mboga alone… No, he must have nyama too.
- And speaking of which: giving sausages a name. On this, I am with Bismarck. No such porky nonsense from the French.
- “Nine thousand years of Mexican agriculture” online. And five hundred on the stove.
- Pollinating date palms just got a whole lot easier. And no, this doesn’t have anything to do with any of the other nibbles, but I thought it was cool.