Microbes

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!

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?

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.

Academics say conservation of biodiversity does not benefit the poor. Maybe they’re talking about the wrong kind of biodiversity?
Innovation of the Week: Feeding Communities by Focusing on Women. I think my irony detector may be on the fritz.
All you ever wanted to know about farm subsidies in the US. h/t Food Politics.
The Bittersweet Dreams of Uruguay’s Beekeepers. Sad.
State microbes! Really fun, and informative. Any better ideas?
More microbes: The evolution of nitrogen fixation. Absolutely fascinating.
Slideshow on genebanks in southern Africa.
Pre-Columbian, Polynesian chickens in Chile not Polynesian and probably not pre-Columbian. Blast! Why must fun theories always run up against the brick wall of facts?
NordGen’s annual report: crops, forests, livestock.

“Housed in the towering old 1926 Sonoma County Bank, it’s hard to miss the Seed Bank.” And who would want to anyway.
Of apples, leaf miners and bacteria. Great story.
Best synthesis and analysis of the Mongolian dzud story so far.
Visualize your GPS data! Not agrobiodiversity, I know, but I don’t have another blog.
Coca myths debunked. Sniff sniff.
“Crop domestication and the first plant breeders” book charpter online.
Rebranding Asian carp. Hard row to hoe. Thanks, Don.
190,000 year old clothes had lice. 190,000 year old humans had clothes?
More citizen science stuff, this one on effect of climate change on plant phenology in the US.
IFAD publishes bunch of livestock-related papers. ILRI, are you listening?
“It’s 36 percent more efficient to grow grain for food than for fuel.” Good to have a number.
Boffins do their aDNA thing on Chinese pigs, find continuity, multiple domestication, sweet and sour sauce recipe.
Soil Association begs to differ on that whole UKworld-needs-to-double-food-production thing.