Nutrition

October 11, 2017October 11, 2017

Another Committee on World Food Security report

HLPE. 2017. Sustainable forestry for food security and nutrition. A report by the High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition of the Committee on World Food Security, Rome.

The webcast is live now.

Also, since I’m at it, here’s a useful blog post on the other CFS report, the one on “Nutrition and Food Systems,” from one of the authors, summarizing eight ways why the report is different. This is what resonated with me most:

Third, it is, subversively, a bit radical. Statements such as “The risks of making well intentioned but inappropriate policy choices are much smaller than the risks of using a lack of evidence as an argument for inaction” are fairly heretical for many nutrition investors guided by Lancet 2008 and 2013. For the more market based interventions within the food system the hard evidence is usually not present and one has to trust educated best guesses and calculated risks as a guide to action.

Sometimes, you just have to do it.

October 9, 2017October 10, 2017

Reports galore for the CFS

It’s the time of year for major reports, I guess. Here’s what’s on the table:

HLPE. 2017. Nutrition and food systems. A report by the High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition of the Committee on World Food Security, Rome.
FAO. 2017. The State of Food and Agriculture 2017 — Leveraging food systems for inclusive rural transformation. FAO, Rome.
IPES-Food. 2017. Unravelling the Food–Health Nexus: Addressing practices, political economy, and power relations to build healthier food systems. The Global Alliance for the Future of Food and IPES-Food.

You can follow the discussion on all these and more on the webcast of the 44th session of the Committee on World Food Security.

Maybe we should just have stayed hunters and gatherers?

October 9, 2017October 2, 2017

Brainfood: Antioxidant adzuki, Sorghum gaps, Natural rubber diversity, Non-flying geese

Phytochemical distribution and antioxidant activities of Korean adzuki bean (Vigna angularis) landraces. A cluster of about 10% of 200 Korean landraces have higher antioxidant activity, and smaller seeds. Watch them take over the world.
Sorghum germplasm from West and Central Africa maintained in the ICRISAT genebank: Status, gaps, and diversity. Lots of gaps, but Nigeria isn’t one of them.
A century of guayule: Comprehensive genetic characterization of the US national guayule (Parthenium argentatum A. Gray) germplasm collection. The future of natural rubber is in Texas.
Contribution of both positive selection and relaxation of selective constraints to degeneration of flyability during geese domestication. Wild geese chased no longer due to strong selection on mitochondrial respiratory chain genes.

October 2, 2017October 2, 2017

Brainfood: Hot seeds, Diet diversity double, Finger millet GxE, Botanical gardens, CWR prebreeding double, Pathogen spread, Dog genomics, Cryo calculations, Biodiversity & productivity double, Movies & conservation

High-temperature stress during drying improves subsequent rice (Oryza sativa L.) seed longevity. Up to 45°C, because it triggers a stress protection mechanism.
Agricultural diversification and dietary diversity: A feminist political ecology of the everyday experiences of landless and smallholder households in northern Ghana. Production diversity at the farm level is necessary for dietary diversity, but not sufficient.
Critical review of the emerging research evidence on agricultural biodiversity, diet diversity, and nutritional status in low- and middle-income countries. Production diversity at the farm level has a small but consistent positive association with dietary diversity.
Exploiting Genetic Diversity for Adaptation and Mitigation of Climate Change: A Case of Finger Millet in East Africa. Some varieties are good everywhere, others only good in some places.
Ex situ conservation of plant diversity in the world’s botanic gardens. A third of all known plants, and half of endangered ones, are to be found in botanic gardens, but the tropics are under-represented.
Prebreeding Using Wild Species for Genetic Enhancement of Grain Legumes at ICRISAT. It’s a drag, but someone has to do it.
Wide crosses of durum wheat (Triticum durum Desf.) reveal good disease resistance, yield stability, and industrial quality across Mediterranean sites. Not such a drag after all.
Quantifying airborne dispersal routes of pathogens over continents to safeguard global wheat supply. Incredibly fancy maths says Yemen is the key.
Demographic history, selection and functional diversity of the canine genome. There’s a lot here, in particular the genes that were involved in early phenotypic differentiation from wolves, and evidence of continuous geneflow with wilds canids. But the thing that really got me is that humans and dogs show parallel evolution in the ability to process complex carbohydrates, associated with agriculture.
Probabilistic viability calculations for cryopreserving vegetatively propagated collections in genebanks. One Excel spreadsheet to rule all cryo.
Biodiversity effects in the wild are common and as strong as key drivers of productivity. Meta-analysis of observations in nature supports results of experimental work.
Biodiversity promotes primary productivity and growing season lengthening at the landscape scale. “…a large species pool is important for adaption to climate change.” An example of the above.
Considering connections between Hollywood and biodiversity conservation. Conservationists need to get out more.

September 26, 2017September 26, 2017

Nibbles: Agrobiodiversity Index, PPB, Heirloom rice, CATIE genebank, Faberge potato, Val @CePaCT, Nigerian food, Ethnobotanical book, Hope Jahren quote

Bioversity DG lobbies for the Agrobiodiversity Index.
One of her staff lobbies for participatory plant breeding. And he’s not the only one.
Maybe they could tackle Indian rice next?
Protecting cacao at CATIE.
Faberge had a potato, of all things, and it’s a beaut.
Celebrating Valerie Tuia, until recently genebank manager at SPC. Faberge taro, anyone?
The Nigeria food database includes taro, but only leaves.
The Digital atlas of traditional agricultural practices and food processing weighs 10kg, but seems a stone-cold Faberge-level masterpiece. Not sure if it has much on taro, though.
“Every replete tree was first a seed that waited.”