Organic agriculture

February 22, 2015February 24, 2015

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?

January 29, 2015January 30, 2015

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?

January 26, 2015January 18, 2015

Brainfood: Organic convergence, Wine yeast diversity, Cassava genome, Potato wild relatives, PREDICTS predicts, Seed cryo, Community seedbanks, Maize OPV evolution, Conservation conflict, Biofortification

Organic and Non-Organic Farming: Is Convergence Possible? Yes, but conversion is more likely.
The vintage effect overcomes the terroir effect: a three years survey on the wine yeast biodiversity in Franciacorta and Oltrepò Pavese, two Northern Italian vine-growing areas. Year more important than place as determinant of yeast diversity.
Cassava genome from a wild ancestor to cultivated varieties. The genes that have been selected are the ones you’d think. And here’s the thing actually being used.
Taxonomy and Genetic Differentiation among Wild and Cultivated Germplasm of Solanum sect. Petota. The genes that have been selected are the ones you’d think. Oh, and the taxonomy is fine.
The PREDICTS database: a global database of how local terrestrial biodiversity responds to human impacts. Could prove useful. But it doesn’t look like the data is available yet.
C-2001: Survival of short-lived desiccation tolerant seeds during long-term storage in liquid nitrogen: Implications for the management and conservation of plant germplasm collections. It’s not always great.
Ensuring food security in the small islands of Maluku: A community genebank approach. Won’t be easy.
Evaluation of Evolution and Diversity of Maize Open-Pollinated Varieties Cultivated under Contrasted Environmental and Farmers’ Selection Pressures: A Phenotypical Approach. Maize OPVs changed a bit in farmers’ fields over 3 years, but not in how they looked.
Conservation planning in agricultural landscapes: hotspots of conflict between agriculture and nature. Threatened mammals and cropland areas where yield gap is highest are, not surprisingly, mostly found together in sub-Saharan Africa. I wonder if the same could be said for threatened crop wild relatives?
Biofortification for Selecting and Developing Crop Cultivars Denser in Iron and Zinc. Current strategy is QTL detection followed by MAS, but much more downstream work on processing, extension and acceptance needed.

January 22, 2015January 22, 2015

Nibbles: Tonga, Seeds, Fusarium wilt, Fungal beer, Cover crops, Gates Foundation

Tonga joins the ITPGRFA. About time too. I started talking to them about it 10 years ago.
What exactly does it mean to be “amped” about seeds? And do they have to be organic? And do these Filipino ones qualify?
Enough with the banana scare stories already!
Go on, nominate someone for the World Food Prize.
Mushroom beer? Yeah, ok.
USDA waxes nerdy about cover crops.
Gateses’ Big Bet for African agriculture. Move along, nothing to see here.

January 19, 2015January 19, 2015

Brainfood: Safflower diversity, Afghan wheat diversity, Cassava diversity, SP drought tolerance, Olive diversity, Community genebanks, Organic yield meta-analysis, On farm success, Standardizing phenotyping, Wild collecting

Assessment of Genetic Diversity and Population Structure in a Global Reference Collection of 531 Accessions of Carthamus tinctorius L. (Safflower) Using AFLP Markers. Bayesian analysis of genetic diversity of global (43 countries) collection held in India reveals 19 geographic groups, with most diversity in the Near East and Iran–Afghanistan regions.
Molecular evaluation of orphan Afghan common wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) landraces collected by Dr. Kihara using single nucleotide polymorphic markers. Analysis (Bayesian, natch) of genetic diversity of over 400 wheat landraces collected 1950-1970 and conserved at the Kihara Institute for Biological Research, Japan reveals agroecological patterning and hotspot in Badakhshan province.
Sources of pest resistance in cassava. Analysis of 89 trials over 25 years involving the CIAT cassava collection identifies 129 landraces with high resistance to thrips, 33 to green mites and 19 to whiteflies.
Screening sweetpotato genotypes for tolerance to drought stress. Days to permanent wilting point (DPWP) points to 8 promising clones in Kenya.
Olive domestication and diversification in the Mediterranean Basin. About 400 wild and cultivated accessions divide up into W, central and E groups and show evidence of admixture among them and local domestication events.
The Multiple Functions and Services of Community Seedbanks. More than just conservation.
Diversification practices reduce organic to conventional yield gap. More data and fancier maths finds a lower organic yield gap (20%), which is halved by multi-cropping and crop rotations.
Conserving landraces and improving livelihoods: how to assess the success of on farm conservation projects? All you need is two graphs.
Finding Our Way through Phenotypes. “We urge all biologists, data managers, and clinicians to actively support the development, evaluation, refinement, and adoption of methodologies, tools, syntaxes, and standards for capturing and computing over phenotypic data and to collaborate in bringing about a coordinated approach.” Amen.
Wild food in Europe: A synthesis of knowledge and data of terrestrial wild food as an ecosystem service. 65 million people collect, and at least 100 million consume, wild food. But only 81 plants? Thought it would be more. But even so, quite an ecosystem service.