- First off — a pretty big deal. Taylor & Francis have made a bunch of papers related to sustainable agriculture freely available, but only until the end of December. Happy whatever holiday won’t offend you.
- Twentieth-century changes in the genetic composition of Swedish field pea metapopulations. Metapopulations have become isolated populations. In genebanks.
- Effects of different irrigation systems on the biodiversity of species-rich hay meadows. Change from the traditional irrigation system has affected biodiversity levels, but not a huge amount.
- Research regarding the use of wheat biodiversity for obtaining some cereal-based fermented mashes. Let’s go straight to what we need to know here: the best mash come from spelt wheat. Oh, to be the one doing the organoleptic characterization.
- Cultivation and high capitalization of medicinal and aromatic plants in the Romanian-Bulgarian cross-border region. If you’re really interested, there’s a database that brings it all together.
- Crop biodiversity, productivity and production risk: Panel data micro-evidence from Ethiopia. More crops = more production. But the devil is in the details, I suspect.
- Identification of gaps in pearl millet germplasm from East and Southern Africa conserved at the ICRISAT genebank. We used to do this sort of thing by hand in my day.
- At3g08030 transcript: a molecular marker of seed ageing. This mRNA could predict germination performance of a dry seed lot across species. Good for genebanks?
- Assembling a core collection from the flax world collection maintained by Plant Gene Resources of Canada. You don’t hear much about core collections these days, why is that?
Nibbles: Agriculture and climate change and GM and nutrition
- Farmers are “the canaries in the mine when it comes to climate change,” says The Financial Times. Get the whole report as a PDF.
- Bioversity says it has climate change covered with a new Seeds for Needs project. Is there an echo in here?
- Farming First covers climate change in an infographic.
- Avenue of the Baobabs in Madagascar burnt down. Better edit those factsheets.
- Heirloom maize farmers talk sense on GM corn shock …
- … but Punjab doesn’t care. Invites Monsanto “To put agriculture diversification on the fast track”.
- Jessica Fanzo wins the Carasso Prize for her great research on nutrition. Proud to call her a friend.
- There was a roundtable associated with the Carasso Prize. Lawrence Haddad blogs about it.
- Pity that roundtable clashed with Workshop: ‘Adding Value to Local Foods for Food and Nutrition Security: Myth or Strategic Option’ in the Caribbean.
- Will the Caribbean warm to finger millet? Zester Daily just wants to share the gluten-free goodness.
- Bere whisky. No, you read that right. Bere as in barley, not as in beer. But then, barley is in beer. Where’s an etymologist when you need one?
And we’ve got nutrition in spades:
The whole food nexus in under 12 minutes
OK, so it isn’t strictly about agricultural biodiversity, and there are some statements one might cavil at, but you gotta hand it to David McWilliams: everything that ails global food in one groovy animated presentation.
Solutions? Not so much.
Nibbles: Polymotu, Korean genebank, Arizona fruits, B4N, Rice song, Medieval food
- A “grand, almost surreal vision” of coconut conservation.
- A grandish vision of ex situ crop conservation in Korea.
- A very down-to-earth vision of fruit conservation in Arizona.
- An extremely wacky vision of the post-agricultural world.
- A workmanlike vision of biodiversity for nutrition project.
- A musical vision of rice husking.
- A historical vision of food in the Middle Ages.
Nibbles: Vegetables, UK funding, Oz funding, Oz genebank, Jefferson, Hawaiian food, Markets, Tree seeds, NUS journal, Geographic targeting, ITPGRFA, Arabica and climate, Protected areas, European farmland biodiversity, Sustainable use, Ethiopian seed video
- Palestinian rooftop gardens. Including crucifers, no doubt.
- Brits support work with rice and wheat wild relatives. Among other things. They’ll probably use some of these genomics things.
- Aussies support sweet potatoes. HarvestPlus rejoices.
- That new Australian genebank. Will it have any sweet potatoes?
- The agricultural legacy of Thomas Jefferson. It doesn’t say here, but I bet he was into sweet potato.
- Hawaiian menus. What, no sweet potato?
- Forget biotech, the road to sexy agriculture is via the supermarket. Where you can buy sweet potato. Maybe even of the organic persuasion.
- Or maybe better tree seeds. Even in the Nordic countries. Or the US. Is cacao a tree?
- Plans for special edition of Sustainability on neglected crops. Like amaranth?
- Geographic targeting reaches roots/tubers. Using this newfangled atlas? Or no?
- Treaty and Consortium love-in filmed. Thanks for sharing. It’s all part of this CGIAR perestroika thing, no doubt.
- What that Kew coffee extinction paper really said.
- Protected areas need work. Especially for coffee (see above).
- Yeah but protected areas is not the only way to go, and Europe now has a bunch of biodiversity indicators for farmland. I guess it’s all part of some big plan.
- Policy brief on sustainable use of PGR. Or, as we used to call it, on farm conservation.
- Which you can kind of see happening here.