- Remembering Robin Graham, prophet of biofortification.
- Honouring plant breeder supreme Fred Blisss.
- Need to produce seed of all those new varieties that breeders come up with.
- And save the stuff they will replace: The Economist does the potatoes of Chiloé.
- Hey, it’s not just about the crops: conserving goats on farm in India.
- The experimental archaeology of bread thrives under corona. And if you were intrigued by the potato detoxification reference, find the details on Bill Schindler’s website. And not only bread and potatoes, also beer…
- Like Mozart’s oat beer? Which was apparently killed off by lager back in Austria but is now available in Denver.
- Food shouldn’t be cheap, it should be affordable, and not only for those who consume it. Ancient Egyptian bread will be exempted.
- No way Kenyan coffee can be described as cheap. h/t Jeremy’s newsletter: have you subscribed yet?
- I don’t know how cheap mungbean is in Myanmar, but it seems to be very valuable.
- The PNG singing dog is not extinct in the wild after all? Priceless.
- Combination of key and photo guide to the identification of European fungi. Worth its weight in truffles. Source.
Nibbles: Quinoa, Another quinoa, Old Apple Tree, “Anglo-Saxon” ag, SADC landraces, Record whisky, “Shipped but Not Sold”
- The results of the 2nd International Quinoa Research Symposium are up on YouTube.
- I was today years old when I learned there’s a quinoa in Taiwan.
- REALLY old English Greening apple tree dies. Sad: “When you reach your new home in the wilderness, should you ever think of me, plant these seeds.” Not all gloom, though, so do read the whole thing.
- Coming conference on the medieval agricultural revolution.
- Results of a dialogue on the registration of farmer varieties in SADC. Long way to go, alas.
- Talk about adding value to agricultural products! But were weird local barley landraces harmed in the making of this whisky?
- High value agricultural products, among other things, were used as gifts by 18th century merchants in Yemen. Not whisky, though, right? Well, actually…
Nibbles: Canary collections, Integrating fish, Indigenous seeds, Dan Charles articles, Stats, FAO booklet
- Collections of banana and mangoes in the Canary Islands.
- No word about catfish with those bananas.
- Interview with the wonderful Rowen White, Seedkeeper from the Mohawk community of Akwesasne.
- NPR series on agricultural land, courtesy of the no less, though differently, wonderful Dan Charles.
- Harvard lectures on statistical analysis of social sciences data.
- FAO tells us “How the world’s food security depends on biodiversity“.
Brainfood: Niche modelling, Post-2020 double, CC & productivity, Wild cacao, Popcorn data, Regulations, Duplicates, Oz ag, Kenya diversity, Stressed wheat, DUS, Connectivity, Population differentiation
- ntbox: an R package with graphical user interface for modeling and evaluating multidimensional ecological niches. Yes, another one, deal with it.
- Global targets that reveal the social–ecological interdependencies of sustainable development. The post-2020 framework should not have separate targets for social and ecological outcomes.
- Integrating agroecological production in a robust post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework. Case in point?
- The Historical Impact of Anthropogenic Climate Change on Global Agricultural Productivity. We’ve lost a decade of productivity growth since 1961.
- Exploring the diversity and distribution of crop wild relatives of cacao (Theobroma cacao L.) in Colombia. Habitat protection needed.
- The Global Popcorn Project. Here comes the data! And more.
- Editorial: Leeway to Operate With Plant Genetic Resources. Research Topic on ABS, biosafety and IPR regulations and how they affect use of PGR.
- SNP Markers and Evaluation of Duplicate Holdings of Brassica oleracea in Two European Genebanks. Out of 10 pairs of accessions with similar names in the Russian and Nordic genebanks, 5 showed genetic differences, and 3 of these also morphological differences.
- History of crop introductions, breeding and selection in Australia: The 140 years from 1788. But at what cost?
- The welfare effects of crop biodiversity as an adaptation to climate shocks in Kenya. Crop diversity mitigates income variability risk caused by climate.
- Genetics of yield, abiotic stress tolerance and biofortification in wheat (Triticum aestivum L.). Well that seems sorted then.
- Is plant variety registration keeping pace with speed breeding techniques? No?
- Global Cropland Connectivity: A Risk Factor for Invasion and Saturation by Emerging Pathogens and Pests. Nice maps of ease of movement among different cultivation areas of vegetatively propagated crops. Could be used to model movement of genetic resources as well as of pests/diseases?
- Global patterns of population genetic differentiation in seed plants. More population differentiation for tropical, mixed‐mating, non‐woody species pollinated by small insects, and lower for temperate, outcrossing trees pollinated by wind. Could perhaps be mashed up with this fragmentation database.
Nibbles: Wild bees, Korean rice, Peanut coffee, Ag research, Sugarcane, Eat This Newsletter
- Wild bees important even if there are plenty of honeybees.
- The rice war hots up between Korea and Japan.
- Peanut coffee. Peak 2020. Hopefully.
- Op-ed on international agricultural research and indigenous knowledge systems takes us 25 years back in time to a simpler world.
- New varieties are behind sugarcane expansion in the US. You want to delve a little deeper into the history of sugarcane down South? Ok, but it ain’t pretty. Still, some people want to redeem the crop.
- Jeremy’s latest newsletter. Lots of good stuff on there. I’ll be saying a little more about it in a post.