- The taxonomy of cow farts. Can’t improve on that title.
- What the hell is Hawaiian Plantain, and why is it needed in Panama?
- Ever eat a sedge?
- Bet they could do with some pepper.
- Ancient Japanese rice found. Let the DNA extraction begin.
- Indian farmers can now claim royalties on traditional varieties. What could possibly go wrong?
- How about paying them to preserve “traditional and fast disappearing millets“?
- Video on CIFOR’s greatest successes. I think the greatest failures would be more instructive.
- Self-consciously cool (but don’t let put you off) podcast on the domestication of the dog.
- The evolution of human lactose persistence, however, is not all about calcium.
- Today’s theory about honeybee deaths is sure to be discussed at today’s honeybee health summit.
- Can participatory mapping save the commons? Probably not, but fun nevertheless.
- Fun? How about the successful defence of a thesis on “The social structure of cultivated plants: the influence of exchanges, representations and practices on sorghum diversity in Mount Kenya’s people”.
- Keep calm and eat kangkung. Don’t you love it when one meme eats another?
- Say you want an African Green Revolution Forum … Well, you know, go to Maputo.
Nibbles: ICRISAT award, CGIAR funding, Chinese medicine, Gut bacteria, Bee research, Sri Lankan law, Wolf Prize, Field Guides, Tapa exhibition, GFFA2014
- Today in dodgy journalism, part 1: ICRISAT gets a new mandate crop? What was the picture editor thinking. And smoking.
- Today in dodgy journalism, part 2: Two typos in the obsolete name of the CGIAR.
- Dissecting Chinese traditional medicine. Or would that be puncturing?
- Hunter gatherers have special gut bacteria.
- Bees: “That’s the beauty of the research. Because we’re still short on info, everything’s worth knowing about.”
- Maple syrup tasting. Nice gig if you can get it.
- Activist objects to proposed new seed law in Sri Lanka.
- UC Davis wheat geneticist Jorge Dubcovsky wins 2014 Wolf Prize in Agriculture. Congrats.
- Sandy Knapp on what she does all day.
- The future of field guides. Yes, they have one.
- Tapa cloth, in Cologne of all places. Don’t think there were any from Palau, though.
- Abschlusskommuniqué of the Global Forum on Food and Agriculture 2014 supports conservation and use of agricultural biodiversity. Phew.
Nibbles: Potato journeys, European collections, European bees, Wheat breeding, Mountains, Forest restoration, Tall trees, Symbioses, Guanaco reintroduction, Plant genomes, Improving GBIF, 2 sides of beef
- The European encounter with the potato. A Google Earth tour by Jorge L. Alonso, and really rather fun. In Spanish.
- The European encounter with virtual germplasm collections. AEGIS takes another step.
- The European encounter with the honeybee. Bad news for the latter.
- The European encounter with wheat. Its promiscuity will save us. Wheat’s, that is, not Europe’s. No, wait…
- Nope, mountains will save us. Including Europe’s?
- We should be doing reforestation in discrete patches, not huge swathes. Even on mountains, I suppose.
- But if you want those trees to grow really tall, your options are limited.
- No harm in adding a few fungi though. On the contrary…
- And maybe a few guanacos?
- Well we must have at least one genome piece in Nibbles, mustn’t we? Turns out plants are good models for everything else, including us.
- And one database hell piece too, natch. Some thoughts on improving GBIF. Could be applied to Genesys too, I fear.
- Meat: One side, and the other.
Brainfood: Pollinator communities, Supply chains and deforestation, Restoration in cities and connected landscapes, Forages in China, Forages in Australia, Indian eggplant minerals, Mediterranean eggplant, Carpathian agrotourism, Nordic apples, Hungarian grape, Saline SP
- Landscape heterogeneity and farming practice alter the species composition and taxonomic breadth of pollinator communities. Pollinator species richness decreases along with landscape heterogeneity, but different taxonomic groups do different things, so you have to consider composition.
- Enhancing the sustainability of commodity supply chains in tropical forest and agricultural landscapes. You got your institutions, policies, incentives, information and technologies, and now you’ve got a framework to work out how they can combine to produce the desired outcome of less deforestation from the production of agricultural commodities like beef, cocoa, palm oil, rubber and soybean. That’s the theory done, now on with the practice. Which basically comes down to governance.
- Urban Grassland Restoration: A Neglected Opportunity for Biodiversity Conservation. Beyond green roofs. Rooves?
- A Framework to Optimize Biodiversity Restoration Efforts Based on Habitat Amount and Landscape Connectivity. I guess we should apply this to the above? It’s the lack of connectivity that’s gonna kill ya in those urban landscapes.
- Research Progress of Forage Germplasm Resources Innovation in China. Among other things, that progress came with “ion beam implantation” and “spaceship-carried”, which really makes me want to read beyond the abstract, which however would require knowledge of Chinese. If there’s anyone out there who can explain the spaceship, I’d be thrilled.
- Pasture legumes in Queensland: a new wave? Maybe, but if so very much on the cheap. No spaceships in Oz.
- Mineral composition and their genetic variability analysis in eggplant (Solanum melongena L.) germplasm. 2 out of 32 Indian genebank accessions were good for wide range of minerals.
- The Population Structure and Diversity of Eggplant from Asia and the Mediterranean Basin. An eastern and a western genepool according to SSRs, and 3 parallel morphological groups in each of these. No word on their mineral content.
- Green economy and agri-rural tourism. Marketing local eco-bio-products are the way forward for the Carpathians. Would pay money to see that.
- Genetic diversity in Swedish and Finnish heirloom apple cultivars revealed with SSR markers. The Finnish ones are weird.
- Morphological and molecular characterization of varieties and selected clones of ‘Kadarka’ grape. Formerly the widest grown red wine cultivar in Hungary, and a total nomenclatural mess.
- Using salt-tolerant sweet potato varieties in Than Hoa Province, Vietnam. Ok, maybe not peer-reviewed, but interesting as hell. From 530 genebank accessions to 2 promising cultivars, via lab and field trials.
Nibbles: Bees, Okra, Horsemeat, Monoculture, CWRs mapped, Barley, PB&J
- Colony collapse disorder. It’s still complicated.
- The Botanist in the Kitchen is at it again, with an in-depth treatment of okra, slime and chocolate.
- But seriously, why don’t Anglo-Saxons eat equids? It’s all down to religion.
- Nigeria embraces UNCTAD report that warns against monoculture.
- An interactive map of crop wild relatives. If it showed barley too, I know someone who would be in heaven.
- As so often in these matter, Kew comes to the rescue.
- A history of the peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich. My kind of dietary diversity.