- We missed the first UK fungus day yesterday.
- And the new world record pumpkin. Love that wide-angle lens, BTW.
- And a training course on plant genetic resources and genebank management.
- But not plant biodiversity to regenerate more productive pastures.
- Nor efforts to conserve navara red rice.
- Kudos to Ghana, the first country with a national yam strategy.
- And to Australia, for muddying the linguistic waters with something called a PlantBank.
- Local farmers supply the food for school meals in Africa.
- By far the strangest thing I’ve seen since a seed exploded a spliff some while ago.
Nibbles: ITK book, Golden Rice, Indian census, School meals, Camels, Fermentation, CC comms, Eel aquaculture
- The Guide for the Perplexed Entering the Maze of Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Folklore. Great title.
- IRRI DG blogs about Golden Rice on World Sight Day. In other news, there’s a World Sight Day.
- Indian farmers ever more marginal.
- If they were in Africa, they’d be producing nutritious school meals.
- Book on camel biodiversity.
- Turns out Jeremy is part of a movement that he apparently didn’t even know existed.
- Are you involved in the UNFCCC agriculture negotiations? You’ll need this handy communications tool-kit. Agricultural biodiversity is in there somewhere.
- Not sure that eels are, but maybe they should be.
Nibbles: Russian ‘rooms, CWFS, Small farmers and their systems, CABI pest maps, Aussie aid, Seed saving pod, Fiji video, CWR conference, Baobab & peanut festivals, Caribbean meets, Irish food security meet, Potty for pots, Salty microbes, Domesticated stomata, Bayer in Hyderabad
- Normal Russians hunt mushrooms.
- Committee on World Food Security meets. Not many people hurt.
- Normal Indian farmers go back to the future. So, in a different way, do Egyptian farmers. Rikin Gandhi probably knows all about it, and has made videos of it.
- I wonder if they’ve told the folks at the new, very agroecological Berkeley sustainable food institute. Though some would suggest they’re on a hiding to nothing there.
- You want past and future? Historical records used to predict spread of pests.
- When is development aid not development aid?
- Cherfas on Cavagnaro on seed saving. Trifecta.
- Cool ACIAR videos take me back to my stint in Fiji.
- International Conference on Utilization and Conservation of Crop Wild Relative (CWR) and Landrace (LR) Diversity for Crop Improvement. First order of business: think of a new name.
- Eden has a Baobab Festival. No word on the factsheet situation. But maybe you’d rather play it safe and try a peanut festival instead? OK, how about Coconuts of the Caribbean? No? Agrotourists of the Caribbean, then?
- Our Food. Our Future. Sustainability: The Bottom Line. Their presentations. Tell me if you find any agrobiodiversity in there. Well I dunno, maybe there will be some in the upcoming 2020 Policy Consultation on Building Resilience for Food and Nutrition Security, in 2014.
- Can you grow baobabs in a pot, I wonder? Or hydroponics for that matter.
- Salt-tolerant bacteria assist rooting in degraded soils. Easier than breeding, I guess.
- No consistent effect of domestication on stomata. Worth a try.
- Bayer goes to Hyderabad. To be near ICRISAT?
Brainfood: Wild maize diversity, Bacterial test, Rice diversity, Marginal biofuels, Rice roots, Farm diversification and returns, Sorghum shattering, Thinking conservation, Ethiopian peas
- Complex Patterns of Local Adaptation in Teosinte. It’s down to the inversions and the intergenic polymorphisms.
- A Stringent and Broad Screen of Solanum spp. tolerance Against Erwinia Bacteria Using a Petiole Test. The best genotypes are all in one, easily-crossed series.
- Genetic diversity, population structure and differentiation of rice species from Niger and their potential for rice genetic resources conservation and enhancement. Both cultivated species, plus hybrids. More diversity within ecogeographic areas than among them.
- Use of DArT markers as a means of better management of the diversity of olive cultivars. Some potential duplicates found. But will anything be done about it?
- “Marginal land” for energy crops: Exploring definitions and embedded assumptions. Whether it’s a good idea to relegate biofuels to marginal land to protect food crops depends on what you mean by marginal.
- Coconuts in the Americas. They came from the Philippines. Well, the ones on the Pacific coast did anyway.
- Control of root system architecture by DEEPER ROOTING 1 increases rice yield under drought conditions. And it came from a genebank accession, no less.
- Landscape diversity and the resilience of agricultural returns: a portfolio analysis of land-use patterns and economic returns from lowland agriculture. You want resilient returns? You need large(ish), diversified farms.
- Seed shattering in a wild sorghum is conferred by a locus unrelated to domestication. But close to it.
- When the future of biodiversity depends on researchers’ and stakeholders’ thought-styles. You have to agree on more than just how you do it when you’re collaborating on a multidisciplinary conservation project. You also have to agree on why you’re doing it.
- Characterization of dekoko (Pisum sativum var. abyssinicum) accessions by qualitative traits in the highlands of Southern Tigray, Ethiopia. Endemic pea diversity arranged by altitude.
Nibbles: Traditional knowledge, Digital herbarium, Digital Vavilov Centres, Rice genebank, Lentil breeding, Breeding for drought, Native American trout, Musa revision, Millet and sorghum promoted, Phenomics revolution
- Paying attention to traditional knowledge to help with climate change … in New England!
- Two million New York Botanical Gardens herbarium sheets digitized, possibly including some crop wild relatives.
- Map your recipe, an entertaining way to talk about domestication and interdependence in the matter of agricultural biodiversity.
- IRRI follows up genebank video with genebank podcast. No idea why.
- Speaking of videos, here’s one on lentil breeding in Canada.
- Which I don’t think involved drought resistance there, but it probably did elsewhere.
- Tribes (not in New England — see above) diversify from trout. Alas freshwater not included in new global fish diversity hotspot map.
- Musa taxonomists do their thing.
- Millet takes on quinoa. Taxonomists would insist on calling it Panicum miliaceum. I think. Next in the queue is sorghum?
- Phenomics in words and images.