- The industrial sliced loaf as racist fantasy.
- Bill Gates talks dirty. About cassava, settle down.
- Where the wild things are is where the languages are, but why? And where are they endangered?
- This new Indian wild banana is probably a bit endangered.
- The past may be a foreign country, but they got Street View there too.
- Blockbuster rice in India. (But how energy-efficient is it?)
- And potentially blockbuster livestock breeds in Kenya.
- China goes GMO. Which of these?
- Maybe they should read this vision for organic farming? You know, just for completeness?
- Have a food adventure! Just perhaps not in China.
- FAO and National Geographic have a food security adventure together. For more stuff like this, no doubt…
- Eat more plants, and ditch the junk food. Sounds easy, doesn’t it? Ok, for the more complicated, nerdy approach, there’s always fancy indicators.
- Ethiopia’s community seed banks.
- I bet there are some in Zimbabwe…
- African Development Bank makes a bet on agroforestry. Maybe health is why? There’s more that one reason…
- Gotta be strategic with your legume collecting.
- Want conservation science to translate into impact? Don’t publish behind a paywall.
- CIMMYT earns its keep.
- Build a better apple, and you won’t be able to keep the journalists away.
Brainfood: Shea diversity, Weedy rice, Old barley, Grassland diversity, Afrikaner cattle, Sudanese baobab, FGR review, Small farmers, Ecological pest management, Andean ag changes, European soil biodiversity, Durum adaptation, Agrobodiversity indicators
- Genetic diversity in shea tree (Vitellaria paradoxa subspecies nilotica) ethno-varieties in Uganda assessed with microsatellite markers. Three geographic populations revealed by SSRs, not much related to the folk classification.
- Malaysian weedy rice shows its true stripes: wild Oryza and elite rice cultivars shape agricultural weed evolution in Southeast Asia. The weed is caught in the middle and swings both ways.
- Farmers without borders—genetic structuring in century old barley (Hordeum vulgare). Nordic barley structured latitudinally, with lots more variation within landrace accessions than now, according to historical specimens.
- The Agrodiversity Experiment: three years of data from a multisite study in intensively managed grasslands. Does increasing plant diversity in intensively managed grassland communities increase their resource use efficiency? No idea, but here’s the data from a huge multi-site experiment. Go crazy.
- Genetic diversity in selected stud and commercial herds of the Afrikaner cattle breed. It’s doing just fine, genetically, despite recent declines in numbers.
- The African baobab (Adansonia digitata, Malvaceae): Genetic resources in neglected populations of the Nuba Mountains, Sudan. Maybe a little more variation in homesteads compared to the wild. Maybe.
- Seeing the trees as well as the forest: The importance of managing forest genetic resources. The first State of the World’s Forest Genetic Resources and the first Global Plan of Action for the Conservation, Sustainable Use and Development of Forest Genetic Resources summarized: exchange, test in common gardens, and be clever with genetics, in breeding, management and restoration.
- Are small family farms a societal luxury good in wealthy countries? Rich countries don’t mind inefficient farms because they look nice.
- DIVECOSYS: Bringing together researchers to design ecologically-based pest management for small-scale farming systems in West Africa. Where do I sign up?
- Ecosystem governance in a highland village in Peru: Facing the challenges of globalization and climate change. Big Dairy doing for Andean crops.
- Intensive agriculture reduces soil biodiversity across Europe. What they said.
- The climate of the zone of origin of Mediterranean durum wheat (Triticum durum Desf.) landraces affects their agronomic performance. 4 main climatic zones, accounting for up to 30% of variation in important evaluation traits. FIGS, anyone?
- Indicators for the on-farm assessment of crop cultivar and livestock breed diversity: a survey-based participatory approach. And only 5 of them too!
Brainfood: Polyculture services, Apple resistance, Clover seed storage, Oil palm diversity, Alternative foods in Italy, Oregano chemicals, Pig diversity, IPR and indigenous people
- Do polycultures promote win-wins or trade-offs in agricultural ecosystem services? A meta-analysis. Yes, at least if the services in question are per-plant yield and biocontrol.
- Susceptibility of apple genotypes from European genetic resources to fire blight (Erwinia amylovora). 3 of 40 were resistant.
- Effect of sulphuric acid scarification on seed accessions of cluster clover (Trifolium glomeratum) stored in a genebank. Potentially disastrous.
- Genetic diversity of the world’s largest oil palm (Elaeis guineensis Jacq.) field genebank accessions using microsatellite markers. 3 groups: extreme W Africa, rest of Africa, Madagascar. Choose parents based on genetic distance, though, not just genetic group.
- Introducing territorial and historical contexts and critical thresholds in the analysis of conservation of agro-biodiversity by Alternative Food Networks, in Tuscany, Italy. Alternative Food Networks can contribute to conservation, but they need context.
- Chemical diversity among different accessions of Origanum vulgare L. ssp. vulgare collected from Central Himalayan region of Uttarakhand, India. 2 chemotypes, the one with higher thymol mainly from higher altitudes.
- Merging Molecular Data for Evaluating Cross Country Genetic Diversity of Pigs. Microsatellite datasets from USA, China and Brazil successfully combined and analyzed together. Should be more of this kind of thing.
- How Are Indigenous and Local Communities’ Rights Over Their Traditional Knowledge and Genetic Resources Protected in Current Free Trade Negotiations? Highlighting the Draft Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TTPA). Indigenous people are generally not given stronger rights over their intellectual property in international instruments compared to non-indigenous people. Rights over IP are in general stronger than over genetic resources.
Nibbles: ILRI@40, CIAT cleanup, Breadfruit factsheets, Spice book, Senegalese e-goats, Natural history collections, Seed supplies, Bean breeding, Institution building, Eat This Podcast, Phenotyping, Indian eggplant, GMO Terminator
- ILRI celebrates 40 years with a major conference.
- Keeping the CIAT germplasm collection nice and clean.
- New variety information sheets from the Breadfruit Institute.
- Review of Gary Nabhan’s new book, Cumin, Camels, and Caravans: A Spice Odyssey.
- Buying goats online.
- What would you do with one billion historical biodiversity data points?
- The tools of the seed-saver‘s trade.
- How to stress your beans, and why.
- A place for conservation organizations to hang out and share. You have to register, but this looks interesting.
- Jeremy has a second Twitter home.
- All 115 plant image analysis software solutions…
- Hyderabad’s brinjal obsession.
- A GMO terminator technology?
Brainfood: Ethiopian landuse history, Linum diversity, Chinese melons, Organic cauliflower, Mexican mission citrus, Saline mungbeans, Saving the elm, Future Fusarium, Wheat biofortification, PPB and public value
- Dynamics and driving forces of agricultural landscapes in Southern Ethiopia – a case study of the Chencha and Arbaminch areas. It’s the population pressure, stupid. No word on what expansion of agriculture and decrease in holding size is doing to agricultural biodiversity. Or wild relatives, for that matter.
- The potential of pale flax as a source of useful genetic variation for cultivated flax revealed through molecular diversity and association analyses. Levels of diversity similar in wild and cultivated, but strong differentiation between the two.
- Microsatellite analysis of genetic relationships between wild and cultivated melons in Northwest and Central China. For the true wild melons, go to the NW. Others may be escapes and introgressions.
- Evaluation of cauliflower genebank accessions under organic and conventional cultivation in Southern Germany. Genotype performance differs depending on cultivation method. But if you want to breed specifically for organic conditions, here’s what to use.
- Mission and Modern Citrus Species Diversity of Baja California Peninsula Oases. Lots of unique types in the mission oases and surrounding ranches. For how long? Well, here’s the baseline. I’d like to know about the agritourism potential.
- Evaluation of mungbean genotypes for salt tolerance at early seedling growth stage. From the Indian core collection. Some good stuff found.
- Implementing the dynamic conservation of elm genetic resources in Europe: case studies and perspectives. Genebanks are not enough. But then again, nobody ever said they were.
- Future distributions of Fusarium oxysporum f. spp. in European, Middle Eastern and North African agricultural regions under climate change. Some countries are in big trouble.
- Use of wheat genetic resources to develop biofortified wheat with enhanced grain zinc and iron concentrations and desirable processing quality. CIMMYT has used a range of wild species to increase the Zn and Fe content of high-yielding, high-quality bread wheat lines.
- Expressing the public value of plant genetic resources by organising novel relationships: The contribution of selected participatory plant breeding and market-based arrangements. PPB can help smallholders manage the indirect and option value of agrobiodiversity, but it needs new types of property rights and networked governance. Whatever that is, it can take a variety of forms. All this from China, of all places.