Neglected species

Brainfood: Brassica breeding, NUS breeding, Soybean domestication, Bambara groundnut, Jatropha chain, Setaria drought tolerance

Developing genetic resources for pre-breeding in Brassica oleracea L.: an overview of the UK perspective. Genebanks will set you free.
Competitive underutilized crops will depend on the state funding of breeding programmes: an opinion on the example of Europe. Divert some subsidies paid directly to farmers to a Europe-wide breeding programme devoted to NUS.
Analysis of average standardized SSR allele size supports domestication of soybean along the Yellow River. The middle part, to be precise, where it loops north.
Bambara nut: A review of utlisation, market potential and crop improvement. Need some functioning value chains, for pity’s sake. That’s why previous promotion efforts failed miserably. Not because they’re, well, not that great a crop? In fact they’re drought-tolerant, tasty, nutritious; but difficult to process, prepare. So do market research to inform breeding.
State-of-the-art of the Jatropha curcas productive chain: From sowing to biodiesel and by-products. Value chains? You want value chains? I’ve got a state-of-the-art one right here.
Validation of an allele-specific marker associated with dehydration stress tolerance in a core set of foxtail millet accessions. The marker explains about 27% of total variation in dehydration tolerance in a core collection, which is apparently pretty good.

C4 rice: it’s really very, very complicated. And Ford Denison on the reason. Kinda.
Speaking of tradeoffs, this tomato taste vs colour story is everywhere. What is it about the (lack of) taste of tomatoes that gets people so riled up? And I wonder what the ones grown in Alaska taste like.
I International Symposium on Wild Relatives of Subtropical and Temperate Fruit and Nut Crops: the abstracts are online. Does it include the tomato. Nope, not getting into that one.
There are several subtropical and temperate fruit involved in Peruvian cuisine. Right? Come on, help me out with these segues.

How to do impact evaluation. Required reading.
Podcast on the history of coffee from Linn. Soc. Required listening.
How to intensify agriculture sustainably. Meah.
It may well involve patient capital though.
This thing will look for all the species names in a piece of text or website. Bound to come in useful one of these days.
How to use Google properly. And a vaguely agricultural quiz to see if you’ve been listening in class.
Protecting ancient irrigation system on the West Bank.
And finding the oldest agricultural site in East Asia.
The good and bad side of Prosopis in Africa.
CIMMYT in China.
The banana as a weapon.
Touring UK plant science sites.
Mapping breadfruit to save the world.
“Over 78 million Europeans (15–64 years) have tried cannabis…” Purely medicinal purposes, man.
“We wanted to see how farmers are reacting to this global climate change…” Bean farmers, not cannabis farmers.
If you’re at the Noosa Botanic Gardens, Cooroy, you can see rare macadamias. Yeah but can you smoke ’em?
Organic seed systems in California. No, not cannabis, settle down.

My friend Zac bags a well-deserved award.
Agricultural diversity in the Middle Ages: squirrels and cotton. And there’s probably more where those came from…
Keeping score on agricultural research spending.
Fermentables interview.
What does this climate-smart agriculture look like anyway?
And do they ever need it in the American midwest.
And what in blazes is candlenut?
A tool for documenting endangered languages. Maybe endangered landraces or crops one day too…
Documented: One Sri Lankan farmer’s thoughts on sustainable agriculture.
Not to mention the plusses and minuses of livestock — straight from the horse’s mouth.
And the myth that will not die: King Tut’s peas alive and thriving. Kudos to Jackson Holtz, a properly skeptical reporter.

Slate puts a fork in, well, the fork.
Gotta love the Prairies.
Mysterious Cattle Deaths Caused by GMO Grass: not GMO, not particularly mysterious.
Gotta love the Spice Islands.
How scientists can extract impact from their ~~navel-gazing~~ research.
Gotta love online mapping platforms.
Another journal starts a blog.
Horses in agriculture, and history.
Gotta love za’tar. It’s about thyme.
Sweeter than sugar. Mauritius goes for fair trade and diversification.
Dying for batik.