- Genetics and Consequences of Crop Domestication. The domestication bottleneck has consequences.
- Evaluating Ecological Restoration Success: A Review of the Literature. There’s more of it going on. Evaluation, that is. Which is good. But still mainly from the USA and Australia, and not enough of the socioeconomic kind.
- Rare Species Support Vulnerable Functions in High-Diversity Ecosystems. Ecosystems are distinctive because of their rare species.
- Environmental factors driving the effectiveness of European agri-environmental measures in mitigating pollinator loss — a meta-analysis. We know how to lessen, but not how to mitigate, loss of pollinators.
- Experimental evidence that evolutionarily diverse assemblages result in higher productivity. And the more distantly related the species, the higher the productivity gain.
- A global meta-analysis of the biodiversity and ecosystem service benefits of coffee and cacao agroforestry. Agroforests better than plantations, but forests best of all.
- Coefficient of Parentage in Coffea arabica L. Cultivars Grown in Brazil. Be afraid.
- Genetically Modified Crops and Food Security. Turns out GM cotton has increased the income and thus improved the diets of adopting Indian farmers. Well, maybe.
Nibbles: Pretty, Peak soil, Wine history, Ancient foodways, Offal, Durian, Exotic plant foods, Cassava, Mozzarella, Nutrition report, Superfoods
- Jules Pretty meditates on the impermanence of things.
- Like soil. And bumblebees.
- Ah, well, let’s not get maudlin. Pass the bottle. Well looky here. The French got wine from the Italians. I feel better already.
- And Canadians had clam gardens a thousand years ago. Probably still do, actually.
- Along with offal, no doubt. Which did not, however, seem to play any role in a recent Mesolithic dinner. Though French wine did. Which is weird.
- The best fruit in the world gets the Kew treatment.
- And is included in a weird list of the 100 weirdest food plants.
- Cassava‘s pretty weird too.
- The best cheese in the world is not French either.
- All of which foods no doubt feature in FAO’s new report on nutrition. Which is really important, so don’t let the flippancy fool ya. The Lancet agrees. And you can do your bit too.
- Ah, but does quinoa feature in that FAO report? The backlash continues…
Nibbles: Kenyan water, Peruvian diets, Kazakh horse meat, Orchard diversity, Rubus ID, Baltimore
- Kenya goes gung-ho for agrobiodiversity to make better use of scarce water.
- Peru enacts Law for the Promotion of Healthy Eating by Boys, Girls, and Adolescents to a mixed reception.
- Sent to Kazakhstan, a food writer thrills to dietary diversity in Almaty (without once mentioning apples).
- Holistic orchard conversion. “Turning an orchard from a lawn with fruit & nut trees in it into a purpose-built meadow with fruit & nut trees in it.”
- “Preservation of cultivar purity is a particular challenge for plants that are self-incompatible, and have easily germinating seeds and vigorously spreading rhizomes.” Amen.
- You’ve seen The Wire? Now read about The Duncan Street Miracle Garden.
Brainfood: Wild yeast, Sorbus evolution, Taro leaf blight, Vegetable sesame, Phast phenotyping, US CWR, Risk, Citizen science, GMOs, European meadow diversity, Hedysarum diversity, Pineapple diversity
- Introducing a New Breed of Wine Yeast: Interspecific Hybridisation between a Commercial Saccharomyces cerevisiae Wine Yeast and Saccharomyces mikatae. The future of wine?
- Breeding systems, hybridization and continuing evolution in Avon Gorge Sorbus. You had me at “Avon Gorge, Bristol, UK, is a world ‘hotspot’ for Sorbus diversity.”
- Taro leaf blight — A threat to global food security. Yes, but we have the technology…
- Agromorphological characterization of Sesamum radiatum (Schum. and Thonn.), a neglected and underutilized species of traditional leafy vegetable of great importance in Benin. Yes, but we need the technology…
- Phenoscope: an automated large-scale phenotyping platform offering high spatial homogeneity. Somebody mention technology?
- An Inventory of Crop Wild Relatives of the United States. More than you’d think.
- Empirical Test of an Agricultural Landscape Model. The Importance of Farmer Preference for Risk Aversion and Crop Complexity. It’s not just about profit. At least in the UK.
- Using citizen scientists to measure an ecosystem service nationwide. Bullshit. No, really, it’s about the decomposition of cow pats.
- Intragenesis and cisgenesis as alternatives to transgenic crop development. Spingenesis.
- Managing biodiversity rich hay meadows in the EU: a comparison of Swedish and Romanian grasslands. Both need more input from local knowledge.
- Mediterranean Hedysarum phylogeny by transferable microsatellites from Medicago. Wait, Sulla? What happened to Hedysarum?
- Polymorphic microsatellite markers in pineapple (Ananas comosus (L.) Merrill). And?
Nibbles: Bamboo shoots, Cassava bread, Tomato reefer, Visionary scientists, Price volatility, Potato nutrition, Climate change & biodiversity
- After artichokes and asparagus, bamboo, obviously.
- And after bamboo? Cassava, by any of its many names.
- Botanical confusion: “Good tomatoes are a lot harder to get than good pot.” Not where I come from.
- The Union of Concerned Scientists is concerned about US agriculture.
- Per Pinstrup-Andersen is concerned about food price volatility, not high food prices.
- And Jeremy is concerned that he may not be eating enough potatoes.
- Luigi, for his part, is concerned about the two thirds of common plants that CIAT et al. say could lose 50% of their range by 2080.