Nutrition

November 22, 2014November 23, 2014

Action for Nutrition at last, maybe

The Second International Conference on Nutrition (ICN2) drew to a close yesterday, having promulgated the Rome Declaration on Nutrition and endorsed a Framework for Action. From the latter, let us all applaud Recommendation 10 (of sixty):

Promote the diversification of crops including underutilized traditional crops, more production of fruits and vegetables, and appropriate production of animal-source products as needed, applying sustainable food production and natural resource management practices.

FAO is putting its (donors’) money where its mouth is by establishing an Action for Nutrition Trust Fund.

Twice per year the PCU will make a Call for Proposals based on the size of the Fund at the time. The SC will decide which proposals will be funded based on the recommendations from the PCU.

With sixty recommendations to choose from the Programme Coordinating Unit (PCU) will have its work cut out for it.

November 18, 2014

Global Nutrition Report calls for better integration with agriculture sector

The share of nutrition-sensitive investments in agriculture, social protection, water, sanitation and hygiene, education, and women’s empowerment programs needs to expand. The success of these sectors is important for nutrition improvement but they could do much more for nutrition while furthering their own goals. From the available evidence, the authors suggest that nutrition-sensitive expenditures are currently a small percentage of expenditures in these sectors. Partly this is because nutrition allies in the different sectors may not know what to do to make their nutrition programs more nutrition sensitive or why it is in their interests to do so…

That’s from the synopsis of the just-released Global Nutrition Report, the first of its kind. Their point is perhaps illustrated by another just-released report, this one on diabetes. When you finally manage to click through to the bit on prevention, there’s very little on diet, let alone the role of the food system as a whole.

November 17, 2014November 18, 2014

Brainfood: Pea spectroscopy, Phaseolus diversity, More beans, Brazilian rice, Trees in landscapes, German cherries, Appalachian apples, Sicilian sheep, Diverse livestock systems, Barley seed longevity, African wild veggies

Using Fourier Transform Near-Infrared Spectroscopy For the Evaluation and Regional Analysis of Pea (Pisum sativum L.). Fancy maths reveals a low-protein content group, a high total polyphenol group and a high protein, starch and oil group in Chinese pea germplasm.
Total phenolics, flavonoids, tannins and antioxidant activity of lima beans conserved in a Brazilian Genebank. No fancy maths used to figure out that they vary among accessions, but not necessarily only due to genetics. Actually, that goes for the previous one too.
Potencial de uso de cultivares crioulas de feijoeiro no sistema de cultivo orgânico. Bean landraces do no worse than cultivars under organic conditions in Brazil.
Evaluation of rice genotypes for sugarcane borer resistance using phenotypic methods and molecular markers. Resistant materials (a couple out of 34 tested) are genetically similar, and will now be used as parents in Brazilian improvement programme. No word on whether the results will be any good under organic conditions.
Functional and phylogenetic diversity of scattered trees in an agricultural landscape: Implications for conservation. Brazil again. Scattered trees may not look as nice as closed forest, but they represent decent proportions of both its functional and taxonomic diversity.
Physicochemical characterization of fruit quality traits in a German sour cherry collection. Some accessions are not only better, but more consistent, than commercial varieties. No word on to what extent they can be found scattered across the German countryside.
Climate Change and Apple Diversity: Local Perceptions from Appalachian North Carolina. Heirloom apple growers are largely climate change deniers. That doesn’t make their orchards (no scattered trees for them) any less cool.
Genome wide linkage disequilibrium and genetic structure in Sicilian dairy sheep breeds. Valle del Belice, Comisana and Pinzirita dairy sheep breeds are variable, though some more than others, yet they don’t overlap.
Agricultural diversity to increase adaptive capacity and reduce vulnerability of livestock systems against weather variability – A farm-scale simulation study. Fancy maths show that more diverse livestock systems are better for ya. In France anyway. And that diversity doesn’t seem to include livestock diversity.
Genome-wide association mapping and biochemical markers reveal that seed ageing and longevity are intricately affected by genetic background, developmental and environmental conditions in barley. Title pretty much says it all.
Dietary contribution of Wild Edible Plants to women’s diets in the buffer zone around the Lama forest, Benin — an underutilized potential. Important sources of Cu and Fe, but even so not enough.

November 16, 2014November 23, 2014

Nibbles: Chocolate, MAS, Cash crops, Medicinal plants, Rice domestication, Cat genome, Banana research, Artichoke history, Root vegetables, Diabetes data, eMonocot, Paris herbarium, Appleseed, Seed saving, Potato safety duplication, Seed atlas, Botanical Jurassic Park, Mapping urban fruit, Midwest road trip, Iraqi marshes, World Digital Library, World Parks Congress, Plant demography

Ok here goes, there’s a week’s work of Nibbles we’ve got to catch up on.
World running out of chocolate! Tell that to Cologne.
Yeah well I prefer tea to cocoa.
Greenpeace: “Smart breeding” will save us, not GMOs. Breeders: All breeding is smart.
Guess the world’s biggest cash crop. Yeah, that one.
Alas, it’s not included in the recent strategy for conserving medicinal plants. Not that it would need conserving.
The domestication of the world’s biggest crop, period. Deconstructed. And if you want to drill down.
And of the world’s biggest fruit.
And of the world’s biggest pet.
And of the world’s most difficult to eat vegetable.
Root “vegetables” made simple. Because winter.
And why you must eat your veggies, including the difficult ones.
Videos on Kew’s monocot database and on the renovation of another famous herbarium.
The real Johnny Appleseed.
But you too can save seeds, just like Johnny.
But don’t forget to safety duplicate, like CIP has done, at Embrapa.
And this shows you what those seeds can look like.
You don’t necessarily need seeds to save plants, though.
Mapping fallen fruit. Because we can.
Road trip!
Boat trip!
Selected Techniques in the Art of Agriculture. From French to Turkish to Arabic. One of many nifty agriculture-related resources in the World Digital Library.
Oh yeah, the IUCN World Parks Congress has been on and its all over the intertubes. Including with neat visualizations, natch.
How many of the species in the COMPADRE database of plant demography information are in protected areas? How many are crop wild relatives? I need an intern.

November 5, 2014November 5, 2014

Nibbles: Prof Brian Cox is cool, GRAIN vs Gates, Fragaria law suit, Central Asian fruits, Ecoagriculture, Forage breeding risk, WPC 2014, Nutrition trifecta, MSB funding, European seedsters support IT

Final Human Universe episode features Svalbard Global seed Vault.
GRAIN objects to where Gates Foundation spends its money. Nobody much cares.
Latest on that UC Davis strawberry breeding programme debacle.
Yes, bears do shit (apple seeds) in the woods. And some context.
A conference for the hippy in all of us.
The dark side of pasture breeding. Super-weed, I am your father!
World Parks Congress on soon too.
No access to healthy food? Use your mobile! Watch a video! Grow traditional crops!
Toyota funds the Millennium Seed Bank.
ESA supports the ITPGRFA. Speak Up For Seed!