- Rice yields and yield gaps in Southeast Asia: Past trends and future outlook. If average farmers became like best-yielding farmers that would meet 2050 needs, except in the Philippines, where some more structural stuff is needed.
- Method of evaluating diversity of carrot roots using a self-organizing map and image data. The sound you hear is that of butterflies being broken on wheels.
- Bioactive compounds from Capparis spinosa subsp. rupestris. Are pretty much the same as those in subsp. spinosa.
- Constitutive Overexpression of the OsNAS Gene Family Reveals Single-Gene Strategies for Effective Iron- and Zinc-Biofortification of Rice Endosperm. So that’s a good thing, right?
- Analysis of climate paths reveals potential limitations on species range shifts. Corridors not the answer. Or not the only answer. Or not the full answer.
- An updated review of Adansonia digitata: A commercially important African tree. Do baobab scientists not sometimes long for the Time Before Reviews, when they actually, you know, did stuff?
- Genetic diversity, population structure and relationships of Tunisian Thymus algeriensis Boiss. et Reut. and Thymus capitatus Hoffm. et Link. assessed by isozymes. Dad, what’s an isozyme? Ah, son, it’s a thing people used in the Time Before DNA. The two species are different, they need to be managed in different ways.
- Potential Impact of Biotechnology on Adaption of Agriculture to Climate Change: The Case of Drought Tolerant Rice Breeding in Asia. Kinda pointless: “in severe drought both the [drought tolerant] and the conventional varieties were either not planted or, if planted, did not yield”.
Nibbles: Cow beauties, Ethnopharmacology etc
- UK High Comissioner in Namibia visits big agricultural show, discovers “hundreds of words [for] the markings on a cow“.
- CTA Wageningen has a (new?) dossier on Ethnopharmacology, food production, nutrition and biodiversity conservation: Towards a sustainable future for indigenous peoples.
Nibbles: Moringa, Fungi, Blue potatoes, GRAIN, Nutrition, Maize Day, Sorghum research
- Mexico embraces moringa against malnutrition.
- Get your mushroom spores here. (You’ll need something for the headache the page induces.)
- Scientist Gardener discovers blue potato chips at altitude.
- GRAIN gets altNobel. It’s not the winning. It’s the being nominated.
- Bioversity stuns world with nutrition strategy. While Jess does poo.
- Damn, looks like we missed National Maize Day again.
- How your United Sorghum Checkoff dollars are being spent.
Nibbles: IRRI impact, Peruvian food, Nutritional strategy, Ethnobiology, Street food forum, Mulefoot hogs, Polyculture, Cheeses, Asimina triloba, Protected areas
- Australians justify their investment in IRRI. Now that’s what I call impact!
- Peruvian cuisine takes over the world. But, as Eve points out elsewhere, “We have a thousand kinds of potatoes in Peru, thousands” is not hyperbole.
- Jess scoops the world with a nutrition strategy for the masses.
- Indians need sorghum and millets to keep healthy.
- Ethnobiology: The Book.
- Talking about street food. Hold the mayo.
- Not all pigs are cloven-hoofed. A tetrapod zoologist explains syndactyly.
- Polyculture; is it all Pollyanna? Science will answer.
- A flavour map of British cheeses. You know you need it.
- Foraging for pawpaws. Not those pawpaws.
- Bird areas apps. CWRs next?
Overlooking agricultural biodiversity again
I’m afraid I’m going to be a nay-sayer again. Here’s a quote from an otherwise very worthy piece on the Gates Foundation website trying to link what’s happening at the G20 and in the CGIAR reform process and other high-level stuff with the needs of “35 year old Oumou, who lives in Sadore village in Niger, struggling to feed her 5 children due to unpredictable harvests from her husband’s millet farm.” ((Note, by the way, that Sadore is where ICRISAT has its Sahelian Centre, and if anywhere in Niger should be benefiting from agricultural research, it is there.))
…Oumou’s group could plant hardy Apple of the Sahel (10 times the vitamin C of ordinary apples and rich in calcium, iron, and phosphorus) and Moringa trees (whose leaves contain 4 times the vitamin A in carrots, 4 times the calcium and double the protein in milk, and 3 times the potassium in bananas).
I don’t have much of a problem with the use of a vernacular name for Ziziphus in such a piece. You might ask why use Moringa then, but that seems to have become widely accepted as the common name for Moringa oleifera. What I do have a little problem with is comparing its vitamin C content with apples, a crop that is of no relevance to the Sahel. But that’s a rhetorical flourish on the part of the writer, I guess. Apple of the Sahel vs ordinary apple. Geddit? Let’s let that pass.
I personally think “10 times the vitamin C of ordinary apples” is borderline misleading, even if it were a useful comparison, though that is excusable too. Quick googling gave a range of 44-133 mg/100g pulp for a few “ber” varieties and 7-40 mg/100g pulp for a few apple varieties. So the range of ratios is about 1-20, so let’s call it 10 on average. Fine. But who cares about averages? In a piece about how research can help the Sahelian smallholder, why not grasp with both hands the opportunity of at least pointing out that Oumou could be helped to identify the most nutritious varieties? Dropping the agrobiodiversity ball — no, that’s not it: not even recognizing it as a ball — is what I find it hard to forgive.