- Maya nut blogs.
- And then there are the ARTCs. What do you mean, you don’t need another acronym?
- Pedal powered grain cleaning – with a link to a video of the thing in action. Could it be adapted for poorer places?
- A new research project on cacao in the Dominican Republic, and how it could support more biodiversity.
- Because we all know that crops compete with conservation, right?
- Cash, food or vouchers? In one study, vouchers result in greater dietary diversity.
- Speaking of which, maybe you can use varietal diversification to manage climate risk in East Africa.
- Or perhaps you can leave it all to ecosystem services.
- Speaking of which, someone actually asked Kenyan farmers how they perceive and respond to climate change.
- Speaking of which, the University of Nairobi has embraced open access.
- Speaking of which, in March there’ll be International Training Course Plant Conservation Biology: Science and Practice, which you can find here, with a little effort.
- The executive summary of a Union of Concerned Scientists report on drought-resistant crops.
- At a loose end? Listen to an hour of economics podcast on organic farming from that link.
Nibbles: Genome assembly, Congo livelihoods, Tilman, Peak farmland, Lima bean project, Cotton award, Translocation, Sudanese seed, Pachyrhizus, Conference, Agro-ecology, SEAVEG, Indigenous foodways,
- The latest genomic whiz-bangery.
- CIFOR’s Congo slideshow makes The Guardian. About as far from genomic whiz-bangery as you can get.
- Speaking of which… Very long talk by David Tilman. Almost certainly worth watching in its entirety. Eventually. It all depends on trade-offs. See what I did there?
- Agriculture stops expanding. Is it all that genomic whiz-bangery?
- U. of Delaware gets big Lima bean grant. Yes, Delaware. They got whiz-bangery in Delaware too.
- Meanwhile, Texan cotton breeder gets award. For a certain amount of whiz-bangery.
- Translocation and restoration: cool, but a last resort, whiz-bangery says.
- Support for the seed sector in S. Sudan. Any landraces? No whiz-bangery in sight.
- And likewise for the yam bean in Africa.
- Wonder whether that’ll be on the agenda at the First Food Security Futures Conference in April. Probably not.
- Nor, probably, will anyone be thinking too hard about agro-ecology; but you could be, with this handy-dandy introduction to holistic management.
- SEAVEG; no, not nori etc, but veg in SE Asia.
- Different animals need different kinds of fodder, ILRI shows how.
- Wishing success to the Indigenous Food and Agriculture Initiative launched at the University of Arkansas today.
Brainfood: Barley phylogeny, Strawberry smell, C4, European tree sap, Conservation anthropology, Seed systems, Profitability of diversity, Wheat breeding, Rice breeding, Forest conservation, Neolithic transition, Forest ecosystem services, Diversity and area
- Phylogenetic analysis in some Hordeum species (Triticeae; Poaceae) based on two single-copy nuclear genes encoding acetyl-CoA carboxylase. Divides up the Africa/Asia and American clades, but not perfectly.
- Journeys through aroma space: a novel approach towards the selection of aroma-enriched strawberry cultivars in breeding programmes. Breed a better smelling strawberry in this way, and the world will beat a path to your door.
- Strategies for engineering C4 photosynthesis. More than one way to skin a cat. But is it worth doing if you don’t eat cats?
- Uses of tree saps in northern and eastern parts of Europe. Not what it used to be.
- Resequencing rice genomes: an emerging new era of rice genomics. Maybe. But it would have been better if they had sequenced something other than Nipponbare originally.
- Toward conservational anthropology: addressing anthropocentric bias in anthropology. “Traditional practices” not always all that great.
- Seed exchange networks for agrobiodiversity conservation. A review. Farmers have to be “well connected” for conservation to work. But nobody really knows what that means.
- Landscape diversity and the resilience of agricultural returns: a portfolio analysis of land-use patterns and economic returns from lowland agriculture. Higher gross margin related positively to greater variance, negatively to diversity, in lowland UK, up to 12000 ha.
- Marker-assisted development and characterization of a set of Triticum aestivum lines carrying different introgressions from the T. timopheevii genome. Getting resistance out of wild relatives and into crops.
- Physical localization of a novel blue-grained gene derived from Thinopyrum bessarabicum. Getting blue pigments out of a wild relative and into wheat.
- Improvement of two traditional Basmati rice varieties for bacterial blight resistance and plant stature through morphological and marker-assisted selection. Getting blight resistance out of an improved variety to improve traditional ones.
- Maintaining or Abandoning African Rice: Lessons for Understanding Processes of Seed Innovation. Farmers play an important role in adopting and developing new varieties shock.
- Dynamic Conservation of Forest Genetic Resources in 33 European Countries. It happens.
- The impact of the Neolithic agricultural transition in Britain: a comparison of pollen-based land-cover and archaeological 14C date-inferred population change. Pollen and archaeology agree on dates, the rest is history.
- Higher levels of multiple ecosystem services are found in forests with more tree species. Swedish production forests, anyway. And more. And more.
Nibbles: Potatoes, Quinoa, Biofuels, Raisins, Cherokee heirlooms
- If you have diverse potatoes, you need diverse potato recipes.
- In 2013, knock ‘em dead with your profound knowledge of quinoa.
- Biofuel news 1: they may exacerbate global warming.
- Biofuel news 2: “Powerful enzymes create ethanol from agricultural harvest waste”. Could I just remind everyone, this isn’t “waste”.
- Raisins from Kandahar prompt diplomatic dreams of developing Afghan agriculture.
- Does heirloom corn prompt similar dreams for the Cherokee Nation?
Nibbles: Disasters, Quinoa, Filipino fruit, Cape Verde nutrition, ICARDA lentils, Ecosystem services
- Sweet potato cuttings to the rescue in Fiji. Hope there’s a nice mix of varieties.
- Quinoa: and so it begins.
- Filipinos not eating their fruits. Bad for Filipino health, no doubt bad for Filipino agrobiodiversity too.
- Maybe they should look to Cape Verde?
- ICARDA waxes poetic about lentils.
- Ecosystem services mapping projects go online. Or they will do, eventually. Just a survey for now. Should that include in situ CWR conservation projects? Now’s your chance to have your say.