- All of BGCI’s ex situ surveys on one cool page. Have they re-modelled their website?
- Harvard’s glass flowers are totally cool.
- The world’s coolest trees.
- Rhubarb is cooler than you think.
- I’m not sure paying over a thousand pounds for a pumpkin seed is all that cool.
- Conventional breeding is cooler than genetic engineering. Cool quote of the week: “I tell my students they should drop acid before they go to the field, and just look at the plants and let them tell you what they are doing.”
- Is the coolness over for quinoa? Jeremy unavailable for comment.
- Cool Pakistani bug may help with citrus greening in the US. But don’t stop looking for resistance, y’all.
Nibbles: Invader soup, Quinoa in the US, Petunia lawsuit, NUS for fishmeal, Craft brewing
Nibbles: Fixing food, Diane Medal, Iraq Edens, Camel genetics, Disappearing horses
- UNEP video on why we have to change the food system.
- Garden Club of America honors breadfruit guru Diane Ragone.
- Paradise spared. In Iraq.
- No such thing as an isolated dromedary, DNA says.
- Horses in Kazakhstan, on the other hand…
Nibbles: Banning bars, New genomes, Pepper revolution, Participatory breeding, Organic mead, Paying for breeds, Punica breeding, Cyperus in Egypt, Adansonia in Uganda, Cyclone trees
- “Friends don’t let friends make bar plots.” Of course they don’t.
- Friend also don’t let friends hype the carrot and cassava genomes.
- “The food of the true revolutionary is the red pepper. And he who cannot endure red peppers is also unable to fight:” chili con China.
- Salvatore Ceccarelli, who should know, on the centrality of seed. And the guys from Experimental Farm Network would agree.
- Yes, you can now have organic tej.
- “In theory…the undoubted value of these natural treasures should be reflected in their price, which should rise steeply as they become scarcer… In practice, natural assets are often hard to price well, if at all.”
- A “Himalayan solution” for pomegranate breeding.
- Nutsedge definitely needs a new name.
- First formal record of the baobab in Uganda.
- Wind-resistant tree germplasm for the Pacific. Much needed.
Brainfood: Old chestnuts, Seed networks, Seed health, Soybean GWAS, Quinoa ABS, Taro breeding
- Mapping the Genetic Diversity of Castanea sativa: Exploiting Spatial Analysis for Biogeography and Conservation Studies. Mapping genetic data is both fun and instructive.
- Effects of farmer social status and plant biocultural value on seed circulation networks in Vanuatu. Big Men control Important Plants.
- Diagnostics of Seed-Borne Plant Pathogens for Safe Introduction and Healthy Conservation of Plant Genetic Resources. Genebanks need seed health labs.
- Characterization of Disease Resistance Loci in the USDA Soybean Germplasm Collection using Genome-wide Associations. Phenotypic data in GRIN meets SNP data, hilarity ensues.
- The global expansion of quinoa: trends and limits. From 8 to 75 countries in 35 years. But need new arrangements for access and benefit sharing for genetic resources.
- Evaluation of Vegetative Growth, Yield and Quality Related Traits in Taro (Colocasia esculenta [L.] Schott). A lot of the characters you want to improve are strongly heritable.