- Community veggie gardens in Cape Town.
- BNSP? WTF?
- AoB adds botanical picture search. Will nothing stop these guys? And meanwhile… Sheesh, is there something in the air today?
- How can Pacific livestock adapt to climate change? And don’t say they should learn to swim.
- How NOT to describe a durian.
- The continuously imminent demise of the Chesapeake Bay oyster.
- Plant breeders go on the rampage in Thailand.
- Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall turns out not to be a made-up name. Pity.
- Kenya’s agriculture increasingly depends on women. MIL unavailable for comment.
- “…because our idea of “adding more” has shaped the way we treat micronutrient deficiencies through food fortification globally, trying to integrate this in China is turning out to be problematic.” I bet it is.
- Montpellier G20 meeting looking for “effective and innovative research partnerships for development and better impact of research from the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research.” I hope they brought their pyjamas.
Nibbles: Mexican avocado prices, Marijuana in Central Asia, CWR in USA, Royal garden, Iraqi dates
- Mexicans can’t afford avocados.
- “Vostok — delo tonkoe, Petrukha!“
- New blog on crop wild relatives in the US, courtesy of our friend Colin.
- Royal villa has nice garden shock.
- “Three-quarters of date palm trees in Iraq right now … are of just one variety.”
Brainfood: Millet diversity, Maize landraces and hybrids, Potato carotenoids, Wheat domestication, Value chains, Population modeling, Rhizobium diversity, Yeast diversity, Core collection, Wild Zea, Cotton geneflow, Forest fires, Forest diseases
- Identification of trait-specific germplasm and developing a mini core collection for efficient use of foxtail millet genetic resources in crop improvement. All the goodness of Setaria italica diversity in just 35 accessions.
- Farmers’ adoption of maize (Zea mays L.) hybrids and the persistence of landraces in Southwest China: implications for policy and breeding. There are pros and cons to both hybrids and landraces, and participatory plant breeding could bring together the pros and get rid of the cons.
- Carotenoid concentrations of native Andean potatoes as affected by cooking. Some carotenoids were decreased by boiling, others not so much.
- Domestication evolution, genetics and genomics in wheat. A big summary of what we know so far and what we might learn by sequencing some wild wheat relatives.
- Research Principles for Developing Country Food Value Chains. Multidimensional demands by consumers demand multidimensional research by scientists. I think.
- Range shift promotes the formation of stable range edges. Species can move for reasons other than climate change.
- Genetic diversity of rhizobia associated with indigenous legumes in different regions of Flanders (Belgium). A new genus? In Flanders?
- Assessment of yeast diversity in soils under different management regimes. Type of management and vegetation has an effect. Yeah, well, you had to be there.
- Efficiency of PowerCore in core set development using amplified fragment length polymorphic markers in mungbean. Software for making core collections seems to work.
- Three new teosintes (Zea spp., Poaceae) from México. New entities, apparently. Species? Subspecies? More study needed, natch.
- Recent long-distance transgene flow into wild populations conforms to historical patterns of gene flow in cotton (Gossypium hirsutum) at its centre of origin. Four out of eight populations have transgenes.
- Effectiveness of strict vs. multiple use protected areas in reducing tropical forest fires: A global analysis using matching methods. Indigenous areas and multiple use are best.
- The sudden emergence of pathogenicity in insect–fungus symbioses threatens naive forest ecosystems. It can happen anywhere, any time.
Nibbles: Blé tendre, Colloquium, Kenyan veg, Sharing vs Sparing, Rice, Tomatillos, Walnuts
- Attention, francophones! Quels indicateurs pour suivre la diversité génétique des plantes cultivées? Le cas du blé tendre cultivé en France depuis un siècle.
- Et un colloque on how genetic resources respond to new environmental, economic and societal issues.
- Award for Kenyan vegetable enthusiast Prof. Mary Abukutsa.
- An in-depth look at land-sharing versus land sparing.
- “The age of the ‘mega-varieties’ [of rice] may be over.” Say it isn’t so, Joe!
- What to do with tomatillos, apart from salsa, that is.
- What to do with ancient walnuts, or rather, walnut tree forests. Save them, obviously.
Nibbles: Rice biofortification, Wild walnuts, Himalayan agriculture, Eating invasives, Gissen on wine, Medicinal fungus, Soil initiative, Ag development in S Sudan, AVRDC and WorldFish, Value chains
- Boffins to rice: Pump it Up!
- Saving the nuts of Central Asia.
- Nepali women abandon hybrids for landraces and community seedbanks. Weird thing is that it’s a WWF project. But where are the extensionists? If only they had listened in Bhutan. Ok that packed a lot of links in there.
- Never saw an invasive I didn’t like.
- Architectural theorist tackles wine. Not many people hurt.
- Turns out 57 insect species can play host to that famous medicinal fungus that led to war between Tibetan communities a couple of years back. Which helps how?
- An envelope is opened at FAO.
- Seeds come to South Sudan. One hopes they are of the right kinds. And that somebody is collecting what was there before. Maybe someone should call WWF.
- You want vegetables with your fish?
- Crops for the Future says not all middlemen bad.