Nutrition

April 20, 2016April 20, 2016

Filling up at the Food Tank

Ok, so let me not make the same mistake again. The Food Tank Summit is on right now, and is being livestreamed. Among the forthcoming highlights, our friend Simran Sethi, author of Bread, Wine, Chocolate: The Slow Loss of Foods We Love, will be moderating a panel on Beyond Calories: The Need for Nutrient Dense Diets in a couple of hours:

Over the last 50 years, research organizations, governments, and development agencies have focused on increasing calories available per person–yet, today, nearly 1 billion people continue to go hungry and another 2.3 billion people are overweight or obese. Clearly, filling people up is not enough — we need to actually nourish them with nutrient dense crops and foods that are good for both people and the planet.

Join in using #foodtank.

April 20, 2016

Nibbles: Deforestation, Mint patent, Weed footprint, Heirloom breeds & vars, Superfood hype latest

If we eat more meat, only 15% of possible scenarios lead to a maintenance of forest area.
Oregon mint breeders ready to come to blows.
The dark side of yesterday’s sustainable ganja Nibble.
The Smithsonian does heirlooms.
Enough with the superfoods already.

April 19, 2016April 19, 2016

Have your fill of quinoa yet?

Jeremy has followed up his monumental NPR post on the effects of high quinoa prices on Andean growers ¹, and his subsequent handy round-up right here, with a podcast over at Eat this Podcast. All the key players are duly interviewed, and it’s refreshing to hear the likes of Marc Bellemare, for example, in the flesh, as it were, rather than via tweets. One thing that hasn’t featured much in the discussion of the recent rise in prices is whether it has translated in greater interest in — and resources for — breeding the stuff. Which is not to say there isn’t a certain amount of quinoa breeding already going on. Maybe some of it is even of the gender-sensitive kind, examples of which are, incidentally, being sought by our friends at CGIAR. But more would probably be good. Oh, and conservation of the existing landraces too, of course.

April 18, 2016April 18, 2016

Brainfood: Bean drought, Tree ranges, Lao rice landrace, Japanese wheat core, Japanese rice quality, Brassica diversity, Prosopis variety, Teff diversity, Agroecosystem diversity & resilience, Grassland spp adaptation

Physiological traits associated with drought resistance in Andean and Mesoamerican genotypes of common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.). Maybe more common in the Mesoamerican genepool, and associated with pod harvest index.
Estimating potential range and hence climatic adaptability in selected tree species. It’s better if you have trial results.
Genetic diversity and population structure of ‘Khao Kai Noi’, a Lao rice (Oryza sativa L.) landrace, revealed by microsatellite DNA markers. More variation between than within accessions of same landrace, three genetic groups, and a possible origin in Vietnam.
Characterization of a mini core collection of Japanese wheat varieties using single-nucleotide polymorphisms generated by genotyping-by-sequencing. Core collection of 96 accessions based on passport and pedigree data turns out to reflect geography and breeding history.
Variation in cooking and eating quality traits in Japanese rice germplasm accessions. Mainly down to one gene.
Population genomic analysis reveals differential evolutionary histories and patterns of diversity across subgenomes and subpopulations of Brassica napus L. Spring (SP), winter Europe (WE), and winter Asia (WA) groups, enriched genetic diversity within the WA group, different geographic origins for the C (WE) and A (WA) subgenomes.
Molecular markers to distinguish ‘Thar Shoba’, a variety of khejri [Prosopis cineraria (L.) Druce], from trees in natural populations. Since the thing has a great morphological marker in being spineless, I don’t really see the point of going all molecular on it, but anyway.
Assessment of the genetic relationship of tef (Eragrostis tef) genotypes using SSR markers. Molecular markers confirm distinctness of agronomically distinct varieties.
Linkage between crop diversity and agro-ecosystem resilience: Nonmonotonic agricultural response under alternate regimes. Crop diversity increases productivity during normal conditions, decreases it in adverse conditions, increases the likelihood of staving off an adverse regime.
Genetic differentiation and regional adaptation among seed origins used for grassland restoration: lessons from a multispecies transplant experiment. Local is best. At least in Germany.

April 5, 2016April 6, 2016

For royalty or for all?

You still have time to arrange to listen to the AgTalks session on “forgotten food crops,” from which I’ve borrowed the title of this post.

AgTalks presents the latest thinking, trends and research on policies and innovation in small-scale farming. This session, titled “For royalty or for all? Amaranth, teff, millet and cassava,” is intended to raise awareness about forgotten food crops that were once central to people’s diet centuries ago. These lost crops have huge nutritional value and economic potential, just waiting to be rediscovered.

The webcast is just waiting to be discovered on the IFAD website. It starts in about half an hour…

LATER: And thanks to the organizers (IFAD) for taking my question over Twitter. Fascinating to hear from Mary M. Delano Frier that when she started her work in Mexico using amaranth to improve kids’ nutrition in schools, she had to get material from the USA genebank. That’s now changed, apparently.