- Sexing up genebanks.
- Inventive wheat drought phenotyping. Want more?
- The Irish try out other Andean crops. Because the first one worked out so well.
- Peruvian cocoa goes up-market. Others might not get the chance.
- Latest batch of IDRC food security projects: African veggies, chickpeas, lentils… Meanwhile, back home in Canada…
- Some major coffee producers are probably in trouble. Will the International Multi-location Variety Trials help at all?
- Crop genomic data boffins say crop genomic data should be free. DivSeek unavailable for comment.
- The latest from Rodale on why organic is better. Well, it certainly affects microbial diversity.
- Smithsonian helps to preserve the Great American Garden through citizen science.
- Blimey, it takes 15 years to release a cranberry cultivar. That’s nothing, Kenyan canning bean breeders say.
- Expo Milano 2015 is coming, and Bioversity will be there in force.
- The olive is under threat. Always something.
- If you don’t want to eat insects, you can always feed them to your livestock.
- There’s a campaign to save small cider producers in the UK. which we can all get behind, I’m sure.
- Make your own garum. If you must.
- Asian countries to launch regional PGR network. What, again?
- An ode to figs.
- Gotta love
weedweeds. - FAO gives pastoralists a voice. Or a website, rather.
Nibbles: Rabbit origins, New beans and rice, New maize, Fermentation, Grape bugs, Kenya supergoats, Peruvian edible insects, Betelmania, Sustainable cacao, Making cider, Land rights, Kew funding, Avocado origins, German genebank, Oman roadshow, Chinese agriculture then and now, Underground farm, Irish potatoes, Lactase history, Nutrition report, Breeding wheat, Pulse year, Perennial cereals, Shaker agriculture, Food conference, Lupin breeding, Tanzanian ag landscapes, Coffee film, American food, Breakfast around the world, Indian wild figs, Baobab, Fragmentation, History of breeding, MARDI fruits, IARI head, Wild pig genome, Breed typology
Yeah, I know, been slacking with the blogging again of late. Lots of travel. Will try to post about it a bit now I’m back. Here’s the usual back-in-the-office game of catch-up.
- We start with something topical for Easter. The origin of the bunny: it’s not the genes, it’s the gene control control.
- CIAT’s heat-resistant beans are all over the internet. IRRI’s new rices, not so much.
- I hope they get names like Bill Tracy’s new open-pollinated maize variety.
- Bugs come in communities, and they do best when they stay that way.
- Even on grapes.
- Gotta get me one of these Kenyan supergoats.
- Are bugs next on Peru’s gastronomia menu? Probably not.
- Ban the betel!
- More on that we-need-GMO-to-save-chocolate thing. Because this?
- Some like it hard.
- Three steps to secure land rights.
- “If the seeds are never grown, they will fizzle out. Who is going to sow them and harvest them to keep them fresh?”
- The avocado shouldn’t be here. So sue me.
- The Ghana News Agency (and nobody else) says there’s a new genebank in Berlin.
- Oman’s biodiversity (including agricultural) goes on the road.
- Chinese agriculture goes sustainable. Well, in theory. Including for buckwheat, presumably.
- Maybe you can work out what this early Chinese flour was actually of: millet, barley and/or wheat?
- Meanwhile, in Japan, the opposite of sustainable farming beneath a Tokyo street.
- The Irish and the potato: in need of a reset?
- Want to develop? Learn to metabolize lactose.
- Ten research questions on nutrition.
- Well at least this gluten nonsense ((Ok, it’s not nonsense.)) is helping bring back some funky grains. And is spurring breeders. Who should perhaps be focusing on more important problems?
- Pulses will get their 15 minutes in 2016.
- The Land Institute is still at it, and still getting press.
- The United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing established one of the earliest seed companies in the US.
- No, getting to the bottom of food ain’t easy.
- Lupins better than soya in the UK, because breeding.
- A Tanzanian mash-up: Farmers need the landscape. I’m not kidding. And yet…
- There’s a film about coffee called “A film about coffee.”
- “In the future, the American dream of big cars and burgers will need to be adjusted to more active transport and sustainable, healthy eating. Better is the new bigger. The world needs a new diet. And it is waiting for the US to take the lead.” Good luck with that.
- Maybe start with breakfast?
- Indians need their wild figs.
- As much a African need baobabs, probably.
- A fragmented forest is no forest at all. Well, almost.
- BHL does domestication. As ever, great pix too.
- Malaysia protects its fruits.
- Who will head the Indian Agricultural Research Institute?
- The pygmy hog has been sequenced.
- A typology of livestock breeds.
Brainfood: Biodiversity and health, Medieval cattle, African livestock sustainability, Filipino rice, Coffee breeding, Land-sparing conundrum, Scrapie resistant goats, Ass-like equid evolution, GS in livestock breeding, Eucalypt diversity & drought, Ecosystem services of organic ag
- Relationships between agrobiodiversity, dietary diversity and nutritional status in Tanzania. It’s really complicated.
- Microsatellite genotyping of medieval cattle from central Italy suggests an old origin of Chianina and Romagnola cattle. DNA from a couple of cattle breeds from central Italy shows remarkable similarities with that from thousand-old bones from an archaeological site in the same area.
- Strategies and approaches to sustainable livestock production in Sub Saharan Africa. It will depend on women.
- Strategies and initiatives on rice genetic resources conservation and research for climate change adaptation. Among the 1506 traditional rice varieties in the Philippines genebank are 3 which could be drought tolerant and 9 collected from really saline areas. They’re being sequenced for gene discovery.
- Next generation variety development for sustainable production of arabica coffee (Coffea arabica L.): a review. Local breeding, plus international networking.
- Why biodiversity declines as protected areas increase: the effect of the power of governance regimes on sustainable landscapes. Modelling shows land-sharing may outperform land-sparing in the long run. Most interesting consequence of the insights derived is that perhaps protected areas should be placed near agricultural frontiers rather than where biodiversity or cost-effectiveness highest.
- Biodiversity and selection for scrapie resistance in goats: genetic polymorphism in “Girgentana” breed in Sicily, Italy. Resistance gene more common in this weird breed than in the one that’s usually used in breeding.
- Reassessing the evolutionary history of ass-like equids: Insights from patterns of genetic variation in contemporary extant populations. I urge you to read the abstract yourselves and marvel at the author’ success in using the word ass-like the maximum possible number of times.
- Opinion paper: emerging markets, emerging strategies under the genomic revolution. Genomic selection is an organizational revolution as much as a technological one. At least in animal breeding.
- Genetic diversity of Eucalyptus camaldulensis Dehnh. following population decline in response to drought and altered hydrological regime. It stayed the same, I guess because of gene flow.
- Significance and value of non-traded ecosystem services on farmland. Value of biological control of pests and nitrogen mineralisation provided by organic agriculture of peas, beans, barley and wheat (extrapolated from 20 fields in NZ to whole of temperate zone) was greater than global costs of insecticides and fertilizers, even if only 10% of global arable area was converted to organic.
Nibbles: Year of the Goat, Nutritional guidelines, Healthy diets, IK & conservation, Healthy orchards, Indian endemics trouble, CWR garden, NGS & food security, 3000 rice genomes at work, C4 rice, It’s economics stupid, US animal products map, Milk production history, Old Chinese cheese, Old Arabian seashells by the seashore, Gordon Bleu insects, African agriculture visions, Agroecology conference report, Smallholder diversity, Seed systems project, Supermarket farms, Toronto beer, Herbs factsheets, Ecosystems map, Contested Agronomy
Sorry about no blogging last week. Was watching sausages being made. Here’s a quick roundup of most of the stuff I would have Nibbled.
- But first of all, Happy Year of the Ram, everyone. No, wait…
- Brazil has the best nutritional guidelines.
- But Chad the best diet. Both are kinda ironic.
- Well, what can governments do about supporting healthy food preferences anyway?
- Folk knowledge vital to conservation.
- Well I never, say the East Timorese.
- Farming in a national park can be a win-win.
- Maybe even a win-win-win, if cider apples are involved.
- India’s endemic plants could be in trouble. Many crop wild relatives among them?
- Maybe they should do what the Royal Horticultural Society will be doing at the Malvern Spring Festival and make a garden with crop wild relatives. But then it won’t be the world’s first.
- Next generation genomics is this generation’s jetpack.
- No, wait, here’s that jetpack you’ve been expecting for so long… Well, more the first concept of the assembly instructions, really.
- We’ll get that jetpack before C4 rice, I expect. But we will get both.
- But of course it’s not all about production anyway.
- Squid is Rhode Island’s most lucrative animal product. Otherwise it’s mainly milk, in that part of the US.
- Maybe cheese was the Taklamakan’s. Three thousand years ago. And sea molluscs Saudi Arabia‘s. Five thousand years ago.
- When and where will insects be.
- “Large-scale investment in African agriculture and agribusiness, whether foreign, domestic, private, government-backed, or a combination of these, could pay a vital role in providing urgently needed financing, technology and markets, thereby assisting to ensure food security, contributing to poverty reduction and propelling agriculture-driven growth, with significant implications for achieving more inclusive growth.” Is that really all one sentence?
- Or maybe small-scale investment?
- How much investment in agroecology will there be, I wonder. Even after this report from last year’s FAO conference.
- Oh good, 75% of crop diversity still on small farms. Would that be 75% of the 25% remaining from the last century?
- What effect will the Integrated Seed Sector Development Project Africa have on that 75%, I wonder.
- The farm as a supermarket. Almost makes you believe in that 75%.
- The beery history of Toronto. Yes, Toronto.
- The National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) has nutritional fact sheets on herbs.
- A great new global ecosystem map has the GIS nerds all excited.
- “Contested Agronomy 2016 is a conference about the battlefields in agricultural research, past and present.” Oh to have the live-tweeting gig. Hell, I’d do it for free. Wait, don’t I already do it for free? Hasn’t this whole Nibbles been about contestation in agricultural development?
And on that note, that’s all folks. Because this was such a pain to put together after a week’s hiatus, I’m going to leave it on the front page for a day or two before sending it to the Siberia of the sidebar. Oh and BTW, people. We want to reach 6,000 followers on Twitter, preferably before that jetpack arrives, so follow us already, and tell your hipster friends.
Wait, too needy?
Nibbles: FAO Commission, Private genebank, DivSeek duo, Biofortified sorghum, African supermarkets, Enset, Health crops, Breadfruit conference, Denison podcast, Saving chocolate, Paramo app, CIMMYT genebank video, Pig milk
- FAO says genes are good for climate.
- India’s first private sector genebank established.
- Well, at least one person is really excited about DivSeek.
- And one major journal.
- DuPont video on increasing sorghum Fe and Zn levels in Africa.
- Will they sell it through local vendors or supermarkets?
- Let them eat enset. Which is not, however, on this list of today’s top healthy crops.
- Neither is breadfruit, but that shouldn’t stop you going to this conference in Trinidad.
- Ford Denison writes about his appearance on Eat This Podcast.
- Enough with the scary chocolate stories already.
- Here, go play with this app about the flora of the paramo from Missouri Botanical Garden.
- The CIMMYT genebank in the news.
- Pig milk in your tea, vicar?