- Predators hunt for a balanced diet. So it’s not just people?
- Seeds of High Asia. Saudi Aramco World gives respect to the seed hunters.
- Obscure crops and an obscure book. Dorian Fuller gives respect to the neglected.
- “For the time being, I genuinely believe we must maintain yield growth, but we need to ensure that we preserve the natural capital for the future.” UK Food Security Czar speaks.
- Indian PM mea culpa on malnutrition. Will he listen to the above? Would it help?
- Beer in Ireland. Not Guinness. I may be gone some time.
- Nordics discuss AnGR and climate change. Successfully, natch.
- Prosecco runs to the IPR ramparts.
- Video on growing Artemisia to fight poverty.
- Help the CGIAR with its tagline. Beyond irony.
Nibbles: Bees and climate change, Native American seeds and health, Sustainable harvesting and cultivation, Tree death, Grass and C, Vegetables, Fishmeal, Big Milk
Today: Connections Edition, in which we pick low-hanging fruit, think outside the box, and join up the dots.
- The return of a US bumblebee. Is it due to climate change?
- “These foods have meaning” for a Native American tribe (and for Africans for that matter). So will they be able to check out their seeds? And sequence the hell out of them, like rice?
- If you want to harvest palm heart sustainably in the Colombian Andes, only take 10% of any population a year. Is cultivation an option?
- Trees are dying in the Sahel. And yet boffins don’t know how to kill them. No word on what the grass is doing.
- Vegetables and nutrition: the theory and the practice. Of course, a lot of them are grown in cities.
- Why is so much fish made into fishmeal rather than eaten? Location, location, location. Of markets, that is. Kind of like for milk.
Nibbles: Cuba gardens, Dual purpose pumpkins, GRIN-Global, Wheat belly, Agroforestry, Zambian malnutrition, Libyan agriculture, Certification
- Visit Cuba with boffins of the University of Washington Botanic Gardens. Well that sounds like fun.
- You liked naked oats? Get a load of naked pumpkins. Comments disabled for Manitoba farmers.
- Psst, wanna genebank data management system? Only slightly used…
- Something else you can blame your beer belly on: wheat.
- Have your forest and eat it too.
- Solving malnutrition in Zambia. I wanna know more about those “improved seed varieties.”
- And about these too for that matter: “…ICARDA is urgently sending to Libya seeds of wheat, barley, legume and forage crops for the 2011-2012 cropping season…” Incidentally, any news about the Agricultural Research Centre in Tripoli?
- Forest certification helps nearby Heritage Sites.
Nibbles: Vigna umbellata, Afghanistan wheat catalogue, Pingali, Camptotheca, Water stress, Organic Farming for Health and Prosperity
- Crops for the Future finds a nice ricebean project.
- The wheats of Afghanistan.
- A former ICRISAT intern speaks. The world listens.
- Collecting the Happy Tree of China.
- Global water stress maps. Does CCAFS know? Or care?
- Rodale hearts organic.
Brainfood: Breeding resistance, Pastures, Wheats, Dates, Conservation, Habitats, Old olives, Spinach selection, Maize breeding
- Cytological and Molecular Characterization of Homoeologous Group-1 Chromosomes in Hybrid Derivatives of a Durum Disomic Alien Addition Line. Getting tolerance to Fusarium head blight into durum wheat ain’t easy.
- Sustainable, low-input, warm-season, grass–legume grassland mixtures: mission (nearly) impossible? Apparently really difficult to find native North America legume forage species tolerant of both freezing and high temperatures, but people are looking. Gotta wonder if it’s a problem elsewhere too. Ethiopian highlands?
- Diversity of different farmer and modern wheat varieties cultivated in contrasting organic farming conditions in western Europe and implications for European seed and variety legislation. Strong selection for uniformity (for regulation) is not reflected in uniformity assessed on farm. And farmer varieties were good outside their region of origin.
- Glycaemic index of three Indian rice varieties. All three the same, high, GI. So, “There is an urgent need to study the GI of other commonly consumed rice varieties and to develop rice of a lower GI value”. Er, right.
- Glycemic indices of five varieties of dates in healthy and diabetic subjects. All five the same, low, GI and no difference in diabetics.
- Agricultural expansion and the fate of global conservation priorities. Conservation needs to think about agriculture.
- Which habitats of European importance depend on agricultural practices? 63 of them, mainly through grazing and mowing.
- Centennial olive trees as a reservoir of genetic diversity. Only about 10% of old trees matched current cultivars.
- Phenotypic Changes in Different Spinach Varieties Grown and Selected under Organic Conditions. There were phenotypic changes after just three seasons of selection, in one case resulting in a “new” variety.
- Open-Pollinated vs. Hybrid Maize Cultivars. Hybrids are not the only way to improve maize productivity, apparently.
- Plant breeding for harmony between agriculture and the environment. “Plant breeding can be a powerful tool to bring “harmony” between agriculture and the environment, but partnerships between plant breeders, ecologists, urban planners, and policy makers are needed to make this a reality.” I was just going to ask, why can’t we all just get along.
Don’t forget the open Mendeley group for the papers we link to here. Even if you don’t use Mendeley, you can subscribe to the RSS feed from the group and get stuff that way.