- Altitudinal shifts of the native and introduced flora of California in the context of 20th-century warming. Introduced species are better at spreading upward than the native flora.
- Rewilding is the new Pandora’s box in conservation. Step away from the shiny new box.
- Threatened herbivorous insects maintained by long-term traditional management practices in semi-natural grasslands. Because they can’t compete with generalists better adapted to the new-fangled conditions.
- Agricultural landscape simplification reduces natural pest control: A quantitative synthesis. Aphid control 46% lower in simple landscapes with lots of cultivated land, compared to more diverse landscapes.
- Addressing future trade-offs between biodiversity and cropland expansion to improve food security. Expansion could really help with food security, also in importing countries, but is likely to occur in biodiversity hotspots, which means the devil will be in the spatial detail.
- Quantitative analysis of rutin content using silkworm genetic resources. Wait, silkworm powder?
- Genetic Diversity, Population Structure, and Formation of a Core Collection of 1197 Citrullus Accessions. Microsatellites detect differences between American and E. Asian ecotypes and select diverse subset of 130 accessions from Chinese collection.
- Open Source Foodways: Agricultural Commons and Participatory Art. Seeds as art.
- Implications of the Nagoya Protocol for Genome Resource Banks Composed of Biomaterials from Rare and Endangered Species. There are many, some of them unforeseen.
- Functional Resilience against Climate-Driven Extinctions – Comparing the Functional Diversity of European and North American Tree Floras. Loss of species diversity may be decoupled from loss of functional diversity.
Nibbles: Wild tomatoes, Wild Allium, Early burials, Organic carrots
- “By fitting gold wires to the back of individual whitefly and measuring the electro-chemical signals as they fed on the plant sap, the team found the insects spent more time ‘roaming’ and less time feeding on the wild varieties than those which settled on the commercial plants.”
- New Iraqi plants includes onion wild relative.
- Early farmers couldn’t stop fiddling with the bones of their dead.
- “That message has come through clearly. Flavor is a priority because if people don’t want to eat carrots, they’re not going to buy them.”
Nibbles: Poleward migration, Pulse infographic, Vodka, Ancient horse DNA, Old fish, Certified cacao, On farm book, Coarse millets, Banana diversity, Pearl millet demo
- Species flying poleward.
- FAO unveils pulse infographic. No word on whether any are harvestable by machine.
- Potato farmer adds value the old-fashioned way.
- Talking of old, here’s a really old horse.
- And the oldest evidence of fermentation for food preservation. But you’ll need a strong stomach.
- KitKat is certified crap.
- How (and Why) Farmers Maintain Crop Diversity: The Book. Some reviews.
- And here’s a specific example from India.
- And here, courtesy of Bioversity’s Ann Tutwiler, is why farmers need some help sometimes.
- Oh and here’s another one. People visit ICRISAT genebank in Niger, see stuff they like.
Varietal diversity in pulse nutritional quality to be documented, maybe even used
Good to see FAO taking the lead in pulling together nutritional data on pulses, in celebration of the International Year of Pulses. Especially since variety-level information will be sought, according to FAO Nutrition Officer Ruth Charrondière .
…if a micronutrient deficiency is identified within a certain region or population, governments and nutritionists can pinpoint the varieties of pulses that contain the highest levels of the micronutrients, and encourage their production on farms and home gardens in these areas. Governments can also use the data to enrich food based dietary guidelines and national food composition tables. Furthermore, researchers and the private sector can use the food composition data to develop new, nutrient-rich varieties of pulses through cross-breeding and selective breeding, and include these improved varieties in mass production programmes.
There is demand for that sort of thing.
Nibbles: Meta-organic, Wild ginseng, Ancient Australia, Insect nutrition, King Corn, Early nutrition, Funny olives, CWR control, Damn dams
- The latest meta-analysis of organic agriculture says it can feed the world.
- The latest update on saving the wild ginseng adds pretty much nothing to previous updates.
- The latest look at Aboriginal land burning says it did no damage.
- The latest study of insects as feed says they’re good for you. Still no word on whether they’re good.
- Not sure whether I’ve ever seen a study linking biotech corn for biofuels with the abandonment of rotation, but it makes sense. And more.
- The latest investigation of early childhood nutrition still says it’s important.
- The latest Italian food scam involves painting olives.
- The latest pean to crop wild relatives says it’s still about control, man.
- The latest report on dams again says you have to be careful.