- 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.
Brainfood: Climate in Cameroon, Payments for Conservation, Finger Millet, GWAS, Populus genome, miRNA, C4, Cadastres, Orange maize, Raised beds, Contingent valuation, Wild edibles, Sorghum genomics, Brazilian PGR, Citrus genomics
- Climate and Food Production: Understanding Vulnerability from Past Trends in Africa’s Sudan-Sahel. Investment in smallholder farmers can reduce vulnerability, it says here.
- An evaluation of the effectiveness of a direct payment for biodiversity conservation: The Bird Nest Protection Program in the Northern Plains of Cambodia. It works, if you get it right; now can we see some more for agricultural biodiversity?
- Finger millet: the contribution of vernacular names towards its prehistory. You wouldn’t believe how many different names there are, or how they illuminate its spread.
- Genome-Wide Association Studies. How to do them. You need a platform with that?
- Revisiting the sequencing of the first tree genome: Populus trichocarpa. Why to do them.
- Exogenous plant MIR168a specifically targets mammalian LDLRAP1: evidence of cross-kingdom regulation by microRNA. “…exogenous plant miRNAs in food can regulate the expression of target genes in mammals.” Nuff said. We just don’t understand how this regulation business works, do we.
- Anatomical enablers and the evolution of C4 photosynthesis in grasses. It’s the size of the vascular bundle sheath, stupid!
- Land administration for food security: A research synthesis. Administration meaning registration, basically. Can be good for smallholders, via securing tenure, at least in theory. Governments like it for other reasons, of course. However you slice it, though, the GIS jockeys need to get out more.
- Genetic Analysis of Visually Scored Orange Kernel Color in Maize. It’s better than yellow.
- Comment on “Ecological engineers ahead of their time: The functioning of pre-Columbian raised-field agriculture and its potential contributions to sustainability today” by Dephine Renard et al. Back to the future. Not.
- Environmental stratifications as the basis for national, European and global ecological monitoring. Bet it wouldn’t take much to apply it to agroecosystems for agrobiodiversity monitoring.
- Use of Contingent Valuation to Assess Farmer Preference for On-farm Conservation of Minor Millets: Case from South India. Fancy maths suggests farmers willing to receive money to grow crops.
- Wild food plant use in 21st century Europe: the disappearance of old traditions and the search for new cuisines involving wild edibles. The future is Noma.
- Population genomic and genome-wide association studies of agroclimatic traits in sorghum. Structuring by morphological race, and geography within races. Domestication genes confirmed. Promise of food for all held out.
- Response of Sorghum to Abiotic Stresses: A Review. Ok, it could be kinda bad, but now we have the above, don’t we.
- Genetic resources: the basis for sustainable and competitive plant breeding. In Brazil, that is.
- A nuclear phylogenetic analysis: SNPs, indels and SSRs deliver new insights into the relationships in the ‘true citrus fruit trees’ group (Citrinae, Rutaceae) and the origin of cultivated species. SNPs better than SSRs in telling taxa apart. Results consistent with taxonomic subdivisions and geographic origin of taxa. Some biochemical pathway and salt resistance genes showing positive selection. No doubt this will soon lead to tasty, nutritious varieties that can grow on beaches.
Nibbles: Mashua info, Veggies programme, Rice research, Genomes!, Indian malnutrition, Forest map, British agrobiodiversity hero, GMO “debate”, Lactose tolerance, Beer
- New Year Resolution No. 1: Take the mashua survey.
- New Year Resolution No. 2: Give the Food Programme a break, it can be not bad. As in the case of the recent episode featuring Irish Seed Savers and the only uniquely British veg.
- New Year Resolution No. 3: Learn to appreciate hour-plus talks by CG Centre DGs. And other publicity stunts…
- New Year Resolution No. 4: Give a damn about the next genome. Well, actually…
- New Year Resolution No. 5: Try to understand what people think may be going on with malnutrition in India. If anything.
- New Year Resolution No. 6: Marvel at new maps without fretting about how difficult to use they may be.
- New Year Resolution No. 7: Do not snigger at the British honours system.
- New Year Resolution No. 8: Disengage from the whole are-GMOs-good-or-bad? thing. It’s the wrong question, and nobody is listening anyhow.
- New Year Resolution No. 9: Ignore the next lactose tolerance evolution story. They’re all the same.
- New Year Resolution No. 10: Stop obsessing about beer. But not yet. No, not yet.
- Happy 2013!
Quinoa in Pakistan
Heralding the International Year of Quinoa, here’s an odd video of quinoa in Pakistan.
Don’t freak, as I did, if it looks a little odd if you open it in a browser; that’s just the 3D out to get you. There’s a link to get rid of that annoyance, but not to improve the rest of the production.