It’s probably best not to dig too deeply or dwell too long on the details of fecal transplantation, as Carl Zimmer does in an otherwise fascinating NY Times piece, but it does serve to remind us of the extent to which we depend on the incredible diversity of microbes, and not just for things like nitrogen fixation and fermentation.
Why diversity is good, microbes edition
Soil agrobiodiversity helps plants deal with stress? And fungal diversity can do the same too? Sort of, anyway. ((Oh, there was something else on mycotoxins today.)) So many more things in heaven and earth, Horatio…
Nibbles: Sugarcane breeding, Caterpillar mushroom, Saharan honeybees, Vodka taste, Cotton genetic resources, African savannah ag, Organic videos
- Fiji looking for better sugarcane. Not a moment too soon, with the EU subsidies going and all.
- Collecting the very valuable caterpillar mushroom in China’s protected areas. Illegal, but whachagonnado?
- The honeybees of the Saharan oases are isolated. Well, actually, not all of them, which I guess qualifies as a surprise.
- Can you tell different vodka brands apart? Here’s why. Maybe. Sounds a bit flaky to me.
- A global review of cotton genetic resources.
- Ploughing up the African savannah is gonna solve all our problems, apparently.
- Organic Seed Alliance launches a youtube channel. Oh goody, there’s how to breed organic carrots!
Nibbles: Sorghum and rice and climate change, Pacific agrobiodiversity today and yesterday, Japanese microbiota, Wolf domestication, Organic and fungi, Crop wild relatives, Bees, Hunger, Silk
- Sorghum going to need a hand in India. Rice in China? Maybe not so much.
- Photos of the 6th Annual Hawaii Seed Exchange.
- More Pacific stuff: 3000-year-old Lapita chickens were haplogroup E, “a geographically widespread major haplogroup consisting of European, Middle Eastern, Indian, and Chinese domestic chickens.”
- More on that thing about the gut biota being adapted to ethnic diets.
- Wolves may have been turned into dogs earlier than previously thought.
- Organic farming good for underground mutualists. Which sounds totally appropriate somehow.
- Crop wild relatives: all you ever needed to know.
- Bring back bees by bringing back the boy scout bee-keeping badge.
- Here’s a weird one. US to cut 1.5 trillion calories from food by 2015. And there are 1 billion hungry. You do the math.
- Farmers rear endemic moths on intercropped host plants for high quality silk in Madagascar. Enough hot buttons in there for ya?
Nibbles: Bees, IFPRI, Undernutrition policy, Haiti earthquake, Yeast
- Latest news on the bee front ain’t good. Except on Isle of Man.
- IFPRI accused of being industry shills. But where’s the evidence?
- Commentary on Hilary Clinton’s undernutrition speech.
- Monsanto did not donate GMO seed to Haiti. But it was hybrids, so basically a one-off. Better than nothing? Adding insult to injury? I dunno, you decide.
- So apparently we have the unstable margins of chromosomes to thank for beer. I’ll drink to that.