- Prototypical versus contemporary Mediterranean Diet. They’re basically the same.
- Development of Oryza sativa L. by Oryza punctata Kotschy ex Steud. monosomic addition lines with high value traits by interspecific hybridization. A very distant relative finally succumbs.
- Local breeds – rural heritage or new market opportunities? Colliding views on the conservation and sustainable use of landraces. Apparently, both is not an answer. At least in Finland.
- Exploring Genetic Diversity in Plants Using High-Throughput Sequencing Techniques. No excuse now.
- Extremophyte adaptations to salt and water deficit stress. Any crop wild relatives, though?
- Seed wars and farmers’ rights: comparative perspectives from Brazil and India. Stewardship vs ownership.
- Quantifying the economic contribution of wild food harvests to rural livelihoods: A global-comparative analysis. Three quarters of rural families use wild foods, but their contribution to income averages only 4%. Must be the nutrition, I guess.
Nibbles: Wild pig, Indicators, Ethiopian agrobiodiversity, Traditional crops, Purple haze, Fraises des Bois, Chef prize, Breadfruit, Sorghum nutrition, Moringa, NWFP, Barcoding, Arnold Arboretum
- Warty pig saved by genomics.
- So apparently there’s a Biodiversity Barometer. Via the Biodiversity Indicator Partnership.
- Traditional crops survive, but under threat, in Ethiopian highlands. And a whole issue of Farming Matters on why it’s important that they do survive.
- More on that purple wheat heirloom variety coming back from the brink.
- Going back to the original European strawberry. No, I’m not going to make any jokes about that.
- There’s going to be a Nobel for chefs. If they can make use of breadfruit, they’ll deserve it.
- Yes, sorghum rotis can taste good. And they’re good for you.
- Big Moringa shill makes case for next superfood :)
- Did I already say that FAO’s Nonwood Forest Products Newsletter seems to have been resurrected? Do subscribe.
- On my work blog, I say genebanks could be a bit more like supermarkets.
- Collecting trees.
Nibbles: Bush tucker, Amazonian tea, Bolivian genebank, Global diets, Heirloom wheat, Clam gardens
- Aussie native vegetables on the menu. No Latin names, but Rhizowen Radix tell me: youlk = Platysace deflexa; kulyu = Ipomoea calobra.
- Another non-scientifically named plant is set to save the Amazon. Turns out it’s Ilex guayusa. Probably.
- World Bank to build genebank in Bolivia.
- World Coffee Research puts out nice variety catalogue.
- Our paper of a couple of years ago on globalized diets makes it to Scientific American and gets mashed up with the latest one.
- Purple patch for Purple Straw?
- Yes, you can garden clams.
Nibbles: Climate smart trifecta, Interdependence, Herbs trifecta, Rare breeds, Mexican maize, Ethiopian barley
- What the Pacific islands need to do about climate change. What, nothing about conserving and using crop diversity? My friends at CePaCT will be pissed.
- What West African farmers are doing about climate change.
- Yeah, I guess it’s not always and only about crop diversity. But would it kill them to mention it?
- And if you’re interested where the Pacific (and West Africa, and everywhere else) gets its food from…
- Peruvian black mint is a thing. But not a relative of coriander.
- Yaupon is also a thing. Though it won’t go far with that scientific name.
- Recreating a Renaissance herb garden. Because we can. Where’s the Peruvian black mint, though?
- Eat rare breeds to conserve them. Not rare advice.
- No wall can keep out landrace maize.
- Ethiopian beer gets a boost.
Brainfood: Agricultural heritage, Unique maize, B4N, Flax core evaluation, Oca conservation, Ag expansion, Rose wild relative, Quinoa evaluation, Nepal seed systems, Amazonian domestication, Analysing germplasm data
- Agricultural Heritage Systems: A Bridge between Urban and Rural Development. “…agricultural heritage systems can take full advantage of abundant funds…” Really?
- Multi cob-bearing popcorn (Puakzo) maize: a unique landrace of Mizoram, North East, India. Would be nice to know how unique globally.
- Enabled or disabled: Is the environment right for using biodiversity to improve nutrition? Maybe, in some places.
- Orbitide Composition of Flax Core Collection (FCC). In other news, Canada has a flax core collection.
- Farmer Perspectives on OCA (Oxalis tuberosa; Oxalidaceae) Diversity Conservation: Values and Threats. It’s the cultural value, stupid. And weevils.
- The expansion of modern agriculture and global biodiversity decline: an integrated assessment. Fancy maths shows that if you assume that unabated agricultural expansion is bad in a particular way, you can come up with a model which spares land at a modest cost to per capita consumption, given decent investment in research.
- Nuclear genetic variation of Rosa odorata var. gigantea (Rosaceae): population structure and conservation implications. Wild relative of domesticated rose shows lots of diversity and two distinct populations either side of a fault zone in China.
- Worldwide Evaluation of Quinoa: Preliminary Results from Post International Year of Quinoa FAO Projects in 9 Countries. 19 sites, 21 genotypes, a few winners. But the real story is how difficult it was to get hold of the material in the first place.
- Shaping Seed Regulation in Nepal: The Role of Networks, Community and Informality. The formal needs to recognize the informal. And vice versa.
- Crop domestication in the upper Madeira River basin. Nice, brief review of evidence of domestication for a number of crops along one branch of the Amazon.
- Analysing genebank collections using “R”: Making trait information widely available to users. NordGen takes genebank data analysis to the masses. And about time too.