Policy

July 12, 2014July 12, 2014

G20 chief ag scientists eat, shoot and leave

The reaction by the Association of International Research and Development Centers for Agriculture (AIRCA) to the communiqué put out by G20 chief agricultural scientists after their latest meeting in June in Australia brings up some good points, but also reminds me that we probably didn’t give that event the space it warranted. Just a Nibble, if memory serves.

Anyway, good to see diversity highlighted in a couple of places. ¹ The participants “agreed that diverse farming systems will require a broad range of innovations and approaches,” which seems to imply that they think those diverse farming systems are a good thing, and worth striving for. And here’s another interesting excerpt from their communiqué: they

…recognised the importance of biodiversity of plants, animals and micro-organisms in an agricultural setting, and noted with interest the global and stakeholder driven DivSeek initiative. We recognised the importance of the next generation genetic resources, open access information system — that will enable the speeding up of crop improvement processes and thereby enhance resilience, food and nutritional security.

Nice enough, but am I the only one to find that comma after “genetic resources” problematic. I think they meant “next generation, open access information system on genetic resources” there. Who says punctuation is not important.

Susan McCouch, who’s been involved in DivSeek, was on youtube recently, by the way. She doesn’t mention DivSeek directly, but her talk does suggest why something like it is needed.

July 4, 2014July 3, 2014

Call for US ratification of Seed Treaty

But is Congress listening?

July 3, 2014July 4, 2014

Nibbles: Tree drought tolerance, Whisky history, Barley drought tolerance, Old veggies, Old potatoes, Llamas vs goats, Sustainable ag, Chinese herbaria

Drought tolerance? It’s the carbs.
Whisky 101.
Coincidental mashup of the above. Barley used in whisky production provides clue to drought tolerance.
Pre-hispanic veggies.
Pre-hispanic carbs.
Pre-hispanic livestock.
Sustainable agriculture deconstructed.
GBIF scores Chinese specimens.

July 1, 2014July 1, 2014

Nibbles: Dryland agroforestry, Parmigiano DOC, Killer tomatoes, Purslane salad, Breadfruit $, Community seedbanks, Kiribati under water, Landscapes

At the risk of annoying Dave Wood again, here’s something on agroforestry in Africa.
A podcast on what it takes to make parmigiano reggiano.
Speaking of Italian agricultural products, it’s not all sweetness and light.
But can you put purslane on pizza?
Funding breadfruit.
Community seed banks take off in India.
Kiribati will need some too. But in Fiji.
The Landscapes for People, Food and Nature Initiative is on Slideshare. Not much comfort for Kiribati, I suspect.

June 30, 2014June 23, 2014

Brainfood: Landrace trifecta, Cauliflower breeding, Carp hybrids, C4 evolution, Organic food, Symbionts squared, Ozark agrobiodiversity, Using genebanks, Food security vulnerability

Geopolitical Maize: Peasant Seeds, Everyday Practices, and Food Security in Mexico. Growing landraces in Mexico as a feminist act.
Resource-Use Patterns in Swidden Farming Communities: Implications for the Resilience of Cassava Diversity. In this bit of Brazil, all farmers have some cassava varieties, other varieties are more private, which means that diversity is reasonably well maintained if farms are lost at random. Ah, but what about if women farmers are lost?
Indigenous Knowledge on Landraces and Fonio-Based Food in Benin. 35 landraces, some of them even agronomically good. No word on whether those are the common or the private ones.
A Review on Genetic Improvement of Cauliflower. There’s a tension between hybrids and breeding for organic conditions even in cauliflower.
Growth Performance of Indian Major Carps and Their Hybrids in Polyculture in Bangladesh. Looks like hybrids are bad in carp, though.
Deep Evolutionary Comparison of Gene Expression Identifies Parallel Recruitment of Trans-Factors in Two Independent Origins of C4 Photosynthesis. Plants which diverged 140 million years ago have in the meantime evolved the same trans-factors (“protein that binds to specific DNA sequences, thereby controlling the flow [or transcription] of genetic information from DNA to messenger RNA”) to come up with C4 photosynthesis. You know, this C4 rice thing just might be doable.
Organic Diets Significantly Lower Children’s Dietary Exposure to Organophosphorus Pesticides. When “conventional” food was replaced by organically grown stuff, children had lower levels of nasties in the urine. No word on what it took to convince the kids to eat their veggies.
Building the crops of tomorrow: advantages of symbiont-based approaches to improving abiotic stress tolerance. Why breed, when you can inoculate.
A single evolutionary innovation drives the deep evolution of symbiotic N2-fixation in angiosperms. It all started long ago with a cryptic mutation, which was lost and gained multiple times, but some clades are unlikely to lose it when they have gained it.
Seeds of Persistence: Agrobiodiversity in the American Mountain South. “…southern/central Appalachia is the most diverse foodshed at the varietal level in the United States, Canada, and northern Mexico studied to date.”
Separating the wheat from the chaff – a strategy to utilize plant genetic resources from ex situ genebanks. Using fancy math to mine legacy phenotypic data can yield a couple extra alleles.
Sustainability and Food & Nutrition Security: A Vulnerability Assessment Framework for the Mediterranean Region. Take each vulnerability (say to climate change, or price volatility) and break it down into exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity.