- Uncovering cover crops, the NY Times way.
- Uncovering coconut cultivation in Vietnam, the Roland Bourdeix way.
- Where to expect water shortages, and irrigation. Crying for a mashup.
- When a mango is not just a mango.
- Bread, and much else, according to the Tudors.
- A Belgian plantsman is revolutionizing gardening. No, really.
- How genomics will revolutionize rice breeding. No, really.
- How to get deeper barley roots for drought tolerance? Look to sorghum.
- And today’s miniature livestock is…a donkey.
Nibbles: Meta-organic, Wild ginseng, Ancient Australia, Insect nutrition, King Corn, Early nutrition, Funny olives, CWR control, Damn dams
- The latest meta-analysis of organic agriculture says it can feed the world.
- The latest update on saving the wild ginseng adds pretty much nothing to previous updates.
- The latest look at Aboriginal land burning says it did no damage.
- The latest study of insects as feed says they’re good for you. Still no word on whether they’re good.
- Not sure whether I’ve ever seen a study linking biotech corn for biofuels with the abandonment of rotation, but it makes sense. And more.
- The latest investigation of early childhood nutrition still says it’s important.
- The latest Italian food scam involves painting olives.
- The latest pean to crop wild relatives says it’s still about control, man.
- The latest report on dams again says you have to be careful.
Nibbles: Solutions edition
- No new salinity tolerance in cereals? You need to look at the right thing.
- No new crops? Focus on plants’ sex lives.
- No hope for drylands? Look to biodiversity.
- No new agricultural land? No problem.
- No data on neglected Himalayan crops? Got you covered.
- No way you’re drinking coffee from civet droppings? Chemistry to the rescue.
- No place for the offspring of F1 hybrids in your agriculture? Go apomictic.
- No new fruits left to try? Hang in there.
- No diversity in your Aragonese homegarden? There’s a genebank for that.
- No impact for your agricultural research. Try clusters.
- No agroecological patterning to your crop’s genetic diversity? It’s the culture, stupid.
Brainfood: Animal genomics, Konjac diversity, New wild cassava, New wild cowpeas, Saline breeding, Land sparing, Sorghum diversity
- The impact of whole genome sequence data to prioritise animals for genetic diversity conservation. Relationships from whole genome sequence data were better than SNPs at preserving rare variants when selecting individuals for inclusion in a genebank.
- Genetic variation in wild populations of the tuber crop Amorphophallus konjac (Araceae) in central China as revealed by AFLP markers. Diverse, endangered, somewhat isolated populations, with some geographic structuring.
- Manihot allemii sp. nov. (Euphorbiaceae s.s.) with entire and unlobed leaves from northern Brazil, with notes about foliar anatomy. It never ends.
- Novel Genetic Resources in the Genus Vigna Unveiled from Gene Bank Accessions. Japan sorts out its genebank. It really does never end.
- Uncoupling of sodium and chloride to assist breeding for salinity tolerance in crops. We’ve been breeding for exclusion of Na+, but we should be breeding for tolerance to it.
- How can higher-yield farming help to spare nature? By making sure that lower prices and/or higher profits don’t encourage agricultural expansion.
- Seed exchange networks, ethnicity, and sorghum diversity. Culture drives diversity.
Scylla, meet Charybdis
It is much more expensive to produce many diverse locally adapted varieties, and more time-consuming. So big seed companies generally narrow their focus to reduce costs. The more the seed and breeding industries and communities become concentrated in a few mega-companies, the more these harmful trends will be exacerbated. But we’re reducing our adaptability just at the moment when we will need it the most.
Yeah, well, ok, sure. But then there’s foundations. Right? Well…
For the foundations, it appears, the profitability of small farms remains more important than the amount of food they produce.
Ok, but how about public research sector?
Another global organisation over which the BMGF appears to exert strong influence is the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), a consortium of 15 research centres which is the world’s most influential network for agricultural research in developing countries.
What’s a poor farmer to do?