- Prospects for forest-based ecosystem services in forest-coffee mosaics as forest loss continues in southwestern Ethiopia. Coffee agroforests provide about half to two thirds of the ecosystem services of plain old forests.
- Social Process of Adaptation to Environmental Changes: How Eastern African Societies Intervene between Crops and Climate. Your seeds may not be able to cut it in the future.
- Bioavailability of iron, zinc, and provitamin A carotenoids in biofortified staple crops. Focus on breeding varieties with elevated micronutrient concentrations is justified. Phew.
- The future of warm-season, tropical and subtropical forage legumes in sustainable pastures and rangelands. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. And the past, in this case, was full of mistakes.
- Wild leafy vegetable use and knowledge across multiple sites in Morocco: a case study for transmission of local knowledge? The Rif Mts are a hotspot of weed diversity. Not that kind of weed, settle down. No, wait…
- Agricultural Trade, Biodiversity Effects and Food Price Volatility. Pests are damaging to neat economic models. Pesticides fix that but damage the environment. No word on the economics of natural enemies, integrated pest management, varietal diversity etc.
- Annual burning drives plant communities in remnant grassland ecological networks in an afforested landscape. In the southern Afromontane region, annual burning does not reduce the species diversity of grassland patches, but does make these patches look more and more alike. Add heavy cattle grazing though and that does reduce diversity.
- Responses to fire differ between South African and North American grassland communities. Decreasing fire frequency increased species diversity in Kansas, decreased it in Kwa-Zulu Natal. It’s because of the rhizomatous species in America. What does this and above mean for crop wild relatives?
- Prolonging the longevity of ex situ conserved seeds by storage under anoxia. Remove oxygen to make seeds last longer in genebanks.
- Identification of Sources of Bacterial Wilt Resistance in Common Beans (Phaseolus vulgaris L.). Only 1 resistant accession out of 500 in the USDA collection. And it’s a wild one.
- Evaluation of Evolution and Diversity of Maize Open-Pollinated Varieties Cultivated under Contrasted Environmental and Farmers’ Selection Pressures: A Phenotypical Approach. OPVs are diverse and change over time. Still no cure for cancer.
- A novel allele of the P-starvation tolerance gene OsPSTOL1 from African rice (Oryza glaberrima Steud) and its distribution in the genus Oryza. Kasalath comes to the rescue of NERICA. Must be the only sativa gene NOT in NERICA.
- Agronomic potential of genebank landrace elite accessions for common bean genetic breeding. Yeah, but are they in the Brazilian genebank? Doesn’t look like it.
Nibbles: Uncommon grains, Wheat model, Yield gains, Cheese bugs, Grapes, Bee biodiversity, Pakistan seed industry, Bangladesh nutrition, Baobab juice
- Could teff or millets topple wheat, maize and rice? Anyone for unintended consequences?
- Not if superior models lead to bigger wheat harvests. ’Cos that’s all it takes.
- That and a good book: Yield Gains in Major U.S. Field Crops.
- Did somebody mention models? Vorarlberger Bergkäse is a model cheese, and “The rind is the boundary layer between a cheese and its environment”. Welcome to the cheese microbiome.
- What’s the difference between a wine grape and a table grape? Simple: Pectic-{beta}(1,4)-galactan, extensin and arabinogalactan-protein epitopes.
- Bee biodiversity results in mo’ bigger blueberries. Now to make use of that.
- Seed policy wonks – you know who you are – will thrill to IFPRI’s new report: The seed industry in Pakistan.
- So how does that square with the Financial Express of Bangladesh’s discovery that “Agro biodiversity can improve nutrition and health”?
- How to make baobab juice. Time to edit those factsheets.
Nibbles: Nepal goat project, Kenyan camels, Sustainable diet metrics, Agri-informatics centre, Cassava dishes, CC & nutrients, Yield is all, African CC hotspots, AGRA seed enterprises, PlantVillage blog, Medieval weeds, French reserve, Black garlic, Australian tree tool
- Sometimes all it takes is a goat.
- Or a camel.
- I wonder how either would figure into a metric for a sustainable diet. Wonder if these people will be interested in those metrics.
- Cassava figures in lots of different ways.
- No word on whether carbon dioxide will affect its nutrient content the way it does with other crops.
- Who cares, it’s yield we’re after. Well, that’s in trouble too in some parts of Africa.
- That’s the only way those African seed start-ups are going to survive.
- Yeah, but disease resistance is important, Shirley. PlantVillage gets a blog.
- And weeds? Don’t forget the weeds. Although of course some of them you can eat. Put that in your metrics.
- Meanwhile, France starts to re-wild. Would love to see some wild relatives in the Bois du Boulogne. Livestock wild relatives, not your crazy cousin on his gap year.
- And now we can figure out what climate change might do to them. I guess this thing might work for European animals. Says here it works for Australian trees.
- Speaking of France, garlic is quintessentially French, isn’t it? Well, maybe, but it’s also very Korean, in its black, cured form.
Nibbles: Coffee rust, Wheat blast, Livestock yield gap, Livestock adaptation, Extension, Med diet, Organic < conventional, Douglas fir breeding, Best moustache in cryo, Fortifying rice
- Coffee rust is doing a number on livelihoods in Central America.
- Wheat blast could do the same in South America.
- ILRI DG on smallholder livestock producers: one-third don’t have the conditions in which to be viable, one-third can go either way and one–third can be successful. I suppose all of them are going to need adaptation options.
- Not to mention extension services.
- Meanwhile, bureaucrats busy protecting the Mediterranean diet.
- The inevitable productivity penalty of organic.”
- Douglas fir ready for its genomic closeup.
- Cryopreservation update, with video goodness.
- Lots of ways to skin the malnutrition cat: zinc and rice.
Micronesian memories
Jonathan Gourlay’s wonderful dissection of his predictably disastrous experience as an outsider running a shop in Micronesia, One Small Store, struck a chord for a number of reasons. First, the great writing. Here’s a sample, chosen from many possibilities:
In Kitti, giant flat basalt stones are still lined up in two rows of three in the center of the feast house, each clanging with its own tone as shirtless men pound stone on stone, mashing up the thick, strong kava (called sakau) for the feast. The musical clacking and clanging of stones begins chaotically and then, as the kava turns gray and viscous, coalesces into one rhythmic song, calling the gods and people to the feast house. You can still join this song. You sit and mash the sakau root with the other sakau pounders around the ancient rock. But you cannot lead the song of the stones. The song just happens, as it has for centuries, when it happens. And when it is complete, you can still drink the sakau. If the sakau is strong, you become the stillest thing in the universe. An observer of life from outside of life. Everything, the ocean, the mango and mangrove trees, the barking dogs, the sweep of time, seems abstract and small because you also feel abstract and small. And perhaps there is a foreigner, a mehn wai, in this group of sakau drinkers. A teacher or a lawyer, someone useful but ultimately unimportant. They are welcome to stay and welcome to leave. What has remained, for hundreds of years, is the clang of the rocks. What has remained, through waves of sailors, missionaries, and invading armies, is the calm of the sakau root sinking into the drinkers, whether they bear a centuries-old title like soum or soulik or souwel or the simple title of mehn wai. They sneak into the ceremony, these interlopers, and they always sneak away again, one way or another.
Then there are the numerous references to the biodiversity of Pohnpei, including of the agricultural kind — such an important part of island life. Kava, as in the extract above, for sure; but also, say, sea cucumbers and betel nut. ((Though not breadfruit, which is strange.)) And, as well, the evocation of how the traditional foods and way of life this biodiversity represents and underpins are being eroded by “things like spam, corned beef, …rice, and something called ‘coco’—a mixture of unripe mango, sugar-free Kool-Aid, and soy sauce.” It all brought back memories of my own time in the region; although thankfully it was not as challenging as Mr Gourlay’s, I think I know how he feels.
And among those memories are many — both happy and painful — of my friend the late Lois Englberger, who worked so hard for the health and nutrition of the people of Pohnpei. For all I know, it was in Mr Gourlay’s very shop that I took this photo, when I visited the island back in 2004. You’ll have to click on it to see it properly, but it’s an example of Lois’ efforts to communicate the evidence that people on the island could improve their nutrition and well being by going back to eating Pohnpei’s unfortunately neglected — and disappearing — orange bananas (and other crop varieties high in Vitamin A precursors, for that matter). That’s ten years ago. Wow. Let me leave you with Lois’ photo of one of the billboards spreading her message on the island, and which Mr Gourlay would, I suspect, find amusing now, if he didn’t then.
