- Trying to promote a “poor person’s crop”? Try the garlic trick, ennobling.
- A Reference Manual for Expedition Plant Collectors, courtesy of the The Arnold Arboretum.
- Cornell runs a MOOC on GMOs. How about one on genebanks, eh?
- Maharashtra could maybe use it.
- You can never have too many mangoes.
- Or dried chillies.
- Next generation plant breeding.
- Riverside protects its famous citrus tree.
- But not all famous California trees are so lucky.
- Making cotton sustainable. Hard row to hoe.
- Saudi farm tourism. Even harder.
Diverse takes on diversification
The time is right to make the transition from a staple grain processed agricultural system to an agricultural system that promotes diversity, nutrition, increased wealth, growth in incomes, through diversity and increase in high-value crops.
Nice to hear that, from Prabhu Pingali no less, director of the Tata-Cornell Institute for Agriculture and Nutrition at Cornell University, as part of an IFPRI special policy seminar: Tales of yield improvement and farewell to Mark Rosegrant.
Especially as a recent meta-analysis of the association between production diversity, dietary diversity and nutritional outcomes found an inconsistent picture:
but not surprising. "V effective in most situations" is high bar. Quite effective in some is more likely. Just have to find right situations
— Lawrence Haddad (@l_haddad) April 26, 2018
An example is the CCAFS study in Africa, which found that more diverse households and farming systems are more food secure, but only up to a point, and the association depends on a number of other, interacting factors.
As Lawrence Haddad so wisely says in his tweet above, you have to find the right situation. That may be complicated, but still worth doing.
Brainfood: Definitions, Atlantic goats, Sorghum photoperiod, Maize erosion, Dactylis diversity, Chickpea diversity, Social media, TR4, Diet change
- ‘Genetic resources’, an analysis of a multifaceted concept. You don’t say.
- Exploring the genetic diversity and relationships between Spanish and Moroccan goats using microsatellite markers. Different, but connected, except for the ones in the Canary Islands.
- Latitudinal Adaptation of Flowering Response to Photoperiod and Temperature in the World Collection of Sorghum Landraces. Out of 20,710: 1697 photoperiod and temperature insensitive, 18,766 photoperiod sensitive and temperature insensitive and 247 photoperiod and temperature sensitive.
- Conserving maize in gene banks: Changes in genetic diversity revealed by morphological and SSR markers. Not good ones.
- AFLP-based genetic diversity of wild orchardgrass germplasm collections from Central Asia and Western China, and the relation to environmental factors. Strongish ecogeographic structure. Good to see old school markers still in use.
- Genetic Diversity, Population Structure, and Genetic Correlation with Climatic Variation in Chickpea (Cicer arietinum) Landraces from Pakistan. Some differentiation along elevation and temperature gradients despite limited overall diversity.
- Capturing genetic variation in crop wild relatives: An evolutionary approach. Environmental data is your friend. But we knew that, right?
- New Geographical Insights of the Latest Expansion of Fusarium oxysporum f.sp. cubense Tropical Race 4 Into the Greater Mekong Subregion. Be afraid.
- The opportunity cost of animal based diets exceeds all food losses. Never happen.
- An Introduction to Social Media for Scientists. It might happen, if you tweet it.
- Tweet success? Scientific communication correlates with increased citations in Ecology and Conservation. See what I mean?
Brainfood: Rice stress maps, Saline rice, Forage millet, Diversification, Deforestation & diets, CC impacts, Elite cassava, Indian quarantine, Chinese urban ag, Squash diversity, Tomato minerals, Hidden hunger
- Mapping abiotic stresses for rice in Africa: Drought, cold, iron toxicity, salinity and sodicity. Now to mash this up with germplasm provenance information…
- Screening of rice landraces (Oryza sativa L.) for seedling stage salinity tolerance using morpho-physiological and molecular markers. …you know, so that this sort of thing could be predicted, perhaps.
- Identification of promising sources for fodder traits in the world collection of pearl millet at the ICRISAT genebank. 14 out of 326. Difficult to predict from environmental data, though, I suspect.
- Agricultural diversification as an important strategy for achieving food security in Africa. More diverse households and farming systems are more food secure, but only up to a point, and it depends on various factors. 43% of African cropland will be difficult to diversify.
- Deforestation and child diet diversity: A geospatial analysis of 15 Sub-Saharan African countries. Deforestation is bad for diet diversity. No word on overlap with the above mentioned 43%.
- Two-thirds of global cropland area impacted by climate oscillations. I bet you that includes most of the above-mentioned 43%.
- Exchanging and managing in-vitro elite germplasm to combat Cassava Brown Streak Disease (CBSD) and Cassava Mosaic Disease (CMD) in Eastern and Southern Africa. The devil is in the logistics.
- Risk of pathogens associated with plant germplasm imported into India from various countries. See what I mean?
- An exploration of the implication and feasibility of UAH (Urban Agricultural Heritages) in China. I for one really want to see the Xuanhua traditional vineyard system.
- Genetic Resources in the “Calabaza Pipiana” Squash (Cucurbita argyrosperma) in Mexico: Genetic Diversity, Genetic Differentiation and Distribution Models. Balsas-Jalisco is a potential center of domestication. Isn’t it the same for maize?
- Genetic differences in macro-element mineral concentrations among 52 historically important tomato varieties. Fairly strong and mostly independent, except for K and Mg.
- The global burden of chronic and hidden hunger: Trends and determinants. Growth not as good on hidden hunger as on chronic. Let them eat tomatoes.
Brainfood: Mesoamerican fruits, PES, Chinese vegetables, Controlled pollination, Pastoralist fodder, Taxonomy, African nightshades, Ag origins, Divortification
- Human diets drive range expansion of megafauna-dispersed fruit species. Megafauna dropped the ball (or the fruit), humans picked it up and ran with it.
- Experimental evidence on payments for forest commons conservation. Maybe we should have paid the megafauna.
- Vegetable genetic resources in China. 3 genebanks, 36,000 accessions, 120 species, about 1000 distributions per year (to research units).
- A cost-effective ground pollination system for hybridization in tall coconut palms. I have seen the future of coconut pollination.
- Determinants of pastoral and agro-pastoral households’ participation in fodder production in Makueni and Kajiado Counties, Kenya. Household heads who are female, have access to extension services, or are members of social groups are more likely to go in for fodder production.
- Taxonomy based on science is necessary for global conservation. Incredible to me that needs to be said.
- Development of next-generation sequencing (NGS)-based SSRs in African nightshades: Tools for analyzing genetic diversity for conservation and breeding. Solanum scabrum and S. villosum separate nicely, and show much diversity.
- A natural adaptive syndrome as a model for the origins of cereal agriculture. Large seed, awns and monodominance.
- Development and Examination of Sweet Potato Flour Fortified with Indigenous Underutilized Seasonal Vegetables. Ticks all the boxes, lets call it divortification.