- Improvement in wild endangered Persian sturgeon, Acipenser persicus (Borodin, 1897) semen cryopreservation by 2-hydroxypropyl-beta-cyclodextrin (HβCD). Hey, stop sniggering, it’s good to know there’s an ex situ option.
- Biofortification of wheat grain with iron and zinc: integrating novel genomic resources and knowledge from model crops. Your jetpack is here, sir.
- Genetic Diversity and Ecological Niche Modelling of Wild Barley: Refugia, Large-Scale Post-LGM Range Expansion and Limited Mid-Future Climate Threats? As ever, the answer is yes.
- Economic and physical determinants of the global distributions of crop pests and pathogens. More crops, more pests, but not as many as there would be if more money were available for observation.
- Wild potato species (Solanum section Petota Solanaceae) in the Tunari National Park, Andean Region of Cochabamba, Bolivia. Four species, but not very morphologically variable.
- Impact of Genetic Drift on Access and Benefit Sharing Under the Nagoya Protocol: The Case of the Meishan Pig. Current Meishan pigs in the US have become differentiated from the ones originally imported from China in the 1980s.
- Investment into the future of microbial resources: culture collection funding models and BRC business plans for biological resource centres. Services must include capacity building and the promotion of links to research collections and users. That can’t be done on basis of full cost recovery from sales. Will need a combination of government, commercial and project support. Can crop collections learn anything from this?
- Gene Discovery and Molecular Marker Development, Based on High-Throughput Transcript Sequencing of Paspalum dilatatum Poir. Important forage grown in apomictic monoculture now has genomic resources that should allow better breeding. And perhaps some diversification.
- Genetic Diversity and Population Structure of the Major Peanut (Arachis hypogaea L.) Cultivars Grown in China by SSR Markers. The northern cultivars are different to the southern.
Brainfood: Turkey genome, Nigerian livestock conservation, Seed viability, Peruvian pepper marketing, Wild D wheats, Rationalizing collections, English heirloom sheep, Model potatoes, Sweet potato leaves
- Next-generation sequencing strategies for characterizing the turkey genome. It never ends, does it. Meanwhile, we patiently await our jetpacks.
- Community-Based Management of Animal Genetic Resources (AnGR): Constraints and Prospects of AnGR Conservation in the Tropics. Best thing to do is improve the local breeds through village-level schemes. In Nigeria, that is.
- Comparison of seed viability among 42 species stored in a genebank. 80% loss in melon seed viability over 10 years sounds a bit high to me.
- Market Participation and Agro-Biodiversity Loss: The Case of Native Chili Varieties in the Amazon Rainforest of Peru. Selling to local retailers good for diversity, selling to wholesalers not so much.
- Stem and leaf rust resistance in wild relatives of wheat with D genome (Aegilops spp.). They all have it.
- Assessing rice and wheat germplasm collections using similarity groups. You can go quite far in identifying possible duplicates just with. passport data.
- Genetic Distinctiveness of the Herdwick Sheep Breed and Two Other Locally Adapted Hill Breeds of the UK. Close to each other geographically and ecologically, but quite genetically distinct. No word on whether village-level improvement necessary for their continued existence.
- Managing Potato Biodiversity to Cope with Frost Risk in the High Andes: A Modeling Perspective. Fancy maths confirms better to grow mixtures. Andean farmers nonplussed.
- Sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas L.) leaves as nutritional and functional foods. But they taste like shit. Just kidding, they’re good and good for you.
Nibbles: Brazil agrobiodiversity & nutrition, Chinese mummy cheese, Grey forest literature, ICRISAT chickpea, CIAT cassava & forages, Jamaican cassava
- Brazil revises its National Biodiversity and Action Plan and wants to mainstream biodiversity and nutrition.
- That’s a really old cheese.
- Are you conducting projects testing how the presence of trees affects food production and natural resource management? CIFOR would like to hear from you.
- ICRISAT super-chickpea takes over India.
- And CIAT amylose-free starch cassava to take over Brazil. China next?
- Red Stripe to use cassava. Jamaica? No, they really did want to make cassava beer. Well, come on, things are peachy with cassava bread, why not beer?
Nibbles: Foley Heinz award, C4 rice history, Fish feeding Africa, Sustainable harvesting, Sorghum death, Carver, Improving crops, Commodity production
- Jonathan Foley, @GlobalEcoGuy, lands well deserved award for his straight-talking on food issues.
- I wonder what he’d say about C4 rice.
- Not sure he’s ever written about fish, but he probably will.
- Sustainable harvesting of Prunus africana maybe not so sustainable after all. Well, I guess that’s science.
- Encomium to the recently-deceased “Father of Sorghum.”
- Shame he missed the round-up on improving abiotic stress tolerance in crops, linked to by AoB Blog.
- Wouldn’t it have been cool if the Father of Sorghum had met the Peanut Man?
- Global production of 10 top commodities has increased 130% since 1960, population by 89%. Draw your own conclusions about world hunger and malnutrition.
Nibbles: CGIAR priorities, Drought tolerant rice, Agroecology bibliography, Amaranthus seed production video, Ethiopian genebank, Yemeni genebank
- UN Special Rapporteur on food thinks “questions of the 60s are not the questions of today.” Does he think the CGIAR is answering the questions of the 60s? One suspects so, but surely there are points of agreement, e.g. nutrition, food systems, natural resources management…
- Farmers would be willing to pay quite a premium for drought tolerant (DT) rice hybrids, but for DT varieties not so much. That’s an opportunity for public-private partnerships. Or is that a 60s answer to a 60s question?
- Mr de Schutter probably knows all about this bibliography of agroecology in action. Which all seems so much more 60s than hybrid rice somehow.
- How 60s is it to want to produce decent amaranthus seed? It’s totally unfair, but I can’t resist linking to this now.
- Ethiopian genebank, set up in response to the genetic erosion of the 60s, gets nice, long writeup in The Guardian by way of introduction to a bare-bones couple of final paragraphs on some G8 poverty reduction plan. Nice video though.
- There was no Facebook in the 60s for genebanks to strut their stuff on.