Neglected species

Nibbles: Using genebanks, Fonio collecting, Bean breeding, Caribbean PGR networking, Cotton breeding, Conflict prevention, Beer foam characterization, Soil microbes, 7ITS

IRRI DG on the Kasalath story and its wider implications.
French collect fonio. Glad someone is.
CIAT bean breeder complains about having too much diversity to play with.
Caribbean needs a regional genebank, catalogue of germplasm. What, still?
Improving cotton in Texas one (or two) chromosomes at the time.
Managing livestock-predator conflicts. The name of the game is prevention.
Candidate gene for improved beer foam identified. I knew all that genomics stuff would come in useful eventually.
Diverse root biome helps plants survive drought.
Gear up for the 7th International Triticeae Symposium, or 7ITS as it is widely, if unfortunately, known.

World Bank goes inside ICRISAT seed bank and finds in vitro plantlets.
“Did mongrel grains serendipitously meld together and sprout from the sewage dumps of sedentary fishing tribes (a current theory), or was the domestication of wheat grasses, pomegranates, and fig trees a willful act of genius?” Scientific American excerpts a bit of purple prose from from Frederick Kaufman’s “Bet the Farm: How Food Stopped Being Food.”
And a book on how (some) food (i.e. weeds) started being food.
ICRISAT legume breeder bags award.
One of the more interesting symposium titles I’ve come across: International Symposium on Fruit Culture and its Traditional Knowledge along Silk Road Countries.
Plant Cuttings.
And plant seeds. Of the open-pollinated sort.
Donald Danforth Plant Science Center establishes Institute for International Crop Improvement (IICI). CGIAR unavailable for comment.
CABI gets to grips with ash dieback.
Perennial grains in practice.
Recovered rare strawberries as art: Marshall Duchamp.
Intrepid journo discovers secrets of Neanderthal cuisine.
Crimson clover cover crop protects aubergines as well as insecticide against Colorado beetles.

So apparently field genebanks are “monotonous orchards packed with tropical trees spanning as far as the eye can see.”
Any ash genebanks, I wonder, field or otherwise?
EUCARPIA pre-breeding pre-meeting.
FAO moans about progress in conserving livestock.
The Green Revolution deconstructed.
Good news for procrastinators: the deadline for Vavilov-Frankel Fellowship applications has been extended to 18 November. Ignore the date of 11 November.
Saving the endangered Canadienne cow. In other news, there’s a Canadienne cow.
Friends of the Earth doesn’t think much of “sustainable intensification“.

Reminiscing at ICRAF about the history of (some of) the intellectual underpinnings of land sharing.
The latest agrobiodiversity musings from Hyderabad.
More reminiscing, this time from a GCARD2 social reporter.
Dogs, the first domesticates?
India links up its biodiversity databases. Including NBPGR’s?
Iron-rich beans hit Rwanda. Rwanda reels from the impact. How long before someone thinks of dumping them into the ocean?
“There will be no nice wine from Sweden this year.” Oh, dear.
Documenting agricultural biodiversity. In Italian. Maybe Italy will now follow India (see above)?

Today’s genome is cowpea, yesterday’s was barley.
Maybe tomorrow’s will be sorghum?
More on that guerrilla food atlas thing.
So there’s an annual okra festival, and there’s a podcast about it.
Archaeobotanist says recent big rice genomics study changes nothing, is misleading. Why don’t you tell us what you really think, Dorian?