- Landscape heterogeneity and farming practice alter the species composition and taxonomic breadth of pollinator communities. Pollinator species richness decreases along with landscape heterogeneity, but different taxonomic groups do different things, so you have to consider composition.
- Enhancing the sustainability of commodity supply chains in tropical forest and agricultural landscapes. You got your institutions, policies, incentives, information and technologies, and now you’ve got a framework to work out how they can combine to produce the desired outcome of less deforestation from the production of agricultural commodities like beef, cocoa, palm oil, rubber and soybean. That’s the theory done, now on with the practice. Which basically comes down to governance.
- Urban Grassland Restoration: A Neglected Opportunity for Biodiversity Conservation. Beyond green roofs. Rooves?
- A Framework to Optimize Biodiversity Restoration Efforts Based on Habitat Amount and Landscape Connectivity. I guess we should apply this to the above? It’s the lack of connectivity that’s gonna kill ya in those urban landscapes.
- Research Progress of Forage Germplasm Resources Innovation in China. Among other things, that progress came with “ion beam implantation” and “spaceship-carried”, which really makes me want to read beyond the abstract, which however would require knowledge of Chinese. If there’s anyone out there who can explain the spaceship, I’d be thrilled.
- Pasture legumes in Queensland: a new wave? Maybe, but if so very much on the cheap. No spaceships in Oz.
- Mineral composition and their genetic variability analysis in eggplant (Solanum melongena L.) germplasm. 2 out of 32 Indian genebank accessions were good for wide range of minerals.
- The Population Structure and Diversity of Eggplant from Asia and the Mediterranean Basin. An eastern and a western genepool according to SSRs, and 3 parallel morphological groups in each of these. No word on their mineral content.
- Green economy and agri-rural tourism. Marketing local eco-bio-products are the way forward for the Carpathians. Would pay money to see that.
- Genetic diversity in Swedish and Finnish heirloom apple cultivars revealed with SSR markers. The Finnish ones are weird.
- Morphological and molecular characterization of varieties and selected clones of ‘Kadarka’ grape. Formerly the widest grown red wine cultivar in Hungary, and a total nomenclatural mess.
- Using salt-tolerant sweet potato varieties in Than Hoa Province, Vietnam. Ok, maybe not peer-reviewed, but interesting as hell. From 530 genebank accessions to 2 promising cultivars, via lab and field trials.
Nibbles: Book, Sorghum, Plant breeding, Quinoa, Herbal medicines, Compensation, New varieties, Beers
Here’s a bunch of better-late-than-never links, some of which will be good this time next year.
- A new book on Plant Genetic Resources and Climate Change.
- I expect it covers sorghum, which NPR calls the “camel of crops”.
- Wonder whether they’ll cover sorghum at the Tucson Plant Breeding Institute course in January 2014. h/t Crops for the Future.
- Last week’s International Congress on Quinoa. Pretty sure our invitation got lost in the mail.
- As was our invitation to Kew’s one-day symposium on herbal medicines and food supplements.
- Annals of Botany explains how compensation may underly the benefits of genetic diversity – in Arabidopsis. (And thanks for the shout-out.)
- ICRISAT struts its stuff in Nigeria with new varieties of groundnut and millet. As ever, we ask: who’s looking after the old varieties?
- Diverse beers for Halloween – one to cut out and keep.
Nibbles: Archaeocuisine, Ag-fab, Onion shortage, Healthy sorghum, Organic soybeans, Tropaeolum, Fish in rice
- The Silk Road Gourmet talks about Reconstructing Cuisines And Recipes From The Ancient World.
- Colin Tudge splutters about The Founding Fables of Industrialised Agriculture.
- India’s ongoing onion crisis still a vale of tears.
- But India’s jowar (sorghum) still offers superficial health benefits.
- You know how all the US soybeans are being exported to China? Think again.
- How the nasturtium got its spur; not a just-so-story.
- California discovers the productive miracle of fish in rice paddies.
Stop vitamin A supplements
The editorial by Thorne-Lyman and Fawzi in 2011, (1) referring to the meta-analysis of the impact of vitamin A supplements by Mayo-Wilson, Imdad and others, (2,3) has now become more important than ever. The DEVTA results, only informally available in 2011, have now been published, (4) with extensive implications; indeed, as the editorial (1) says: ‘… the null findings have left lingering questions. Is vitamin A supplementation effective?’. These results have been the subject of conflicting comments recently in the Lancet, e.g. (5,6). But a number of inferences that should be drawn from the compilation and analysis of the evidence from trials prior to DEVTA (2,3) help answer this lingering question, and have not received adequate attention. There are three key related points, which now point to the need to seriously consider concrete steps to move beyond 6-monthly vitamin A supplementation at unphysiological levels.
OK, there’s a lot in that introduction to a recent paper in the British Medical Journal to digest, but it is worth it. I know I bang on about the colossal boondoggle that is high-dose vitamin A supplementation, but there’s a reason. It seems to be a complete waste of money based on a very limited reading of the evidence. In 2011 the BMJ published an editorial on Improving child survival through vitamin A supplementation (which is behind a paywall) that referenced a meta-analysis of supplementation. The new paper — Is vitamin A supplementation effective? — brings things up to date with a more detailed analysis of some of the research only hinted at in the original articles. Bottom line: there is no evidence for large-scale effectiveness of vitamin A supplements on child mortality.
As the authors of the rebuttal ask, why are resources still going into supplementation campaigns of the old sort? And they conclude:
Improved diets, fortified foods, and multiple micronutrient provision would surely bring broader improvements in nutrition to more people, including reproductive aged women who are now largely excluded.
Nibbles: Frogs, Spuds, Apples, Cucumbers, Tosh?
- Take that, you cheese-eating surrender monkeys. England boasts oldest eaten anuran legs.
- Ban potatoes NOW! You know it makes sense.
- As American as industrially harvested, intellectually protected apples.
- Step aside Golden Rice; the Golden Cucumber is just over the horizon. That and much more from deep re-sequencing.
- Also just over the horizon, hordes of new, public domain banana varieties, although they don’t actually own the domain the video points to. Oops. h/t Bifurcated Carrots.