Pollinators

August 26, 2013August 26, 2013

Brainfood: Touristic islands, Pearl millet diversity, Barley diversity, Maize diversity, Weird chickpea, Sweet potato diversity, Pawpaw diversity, Grewia domestication, Agrobiodiversity is the key, Sunflower relative dynamics

Sorry about the Brainfood hiatus lately. Back now, and with a vengeance.

Plant genetic resources in a touristic island: the case of Lefkada (Ionian Islands, Greece). Landraces and tourism can coexist.
Assessment of genetic diversity among pearl millet [Pennisetum glaucum (L.) R Br.] cultivars using SSR markers. The cultivars coming out of a given breeding programme cluster together. No!
Population genetic structure in a social landscape: barley in a traditional Ethiopian agricultural system. Farmer management trumps even altitude.
Environmental and social factors account for Mexican maize richness and distribution: A data mining approach. Oh no it doesn’t.
Identification of an upright peduncle and podding genotype in chickpea germplasm conserved in the National Genebank. That’s one out of 18,873.
Molecular, morphological and agronomic characterization of the sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas L.) germplasm collection from Mozambique: Genotype selection for drought prone regions. 6 out of 28 local genotypes are drought tolerant. No word on whether they’re yellow fleshed too.
Genotyping a large collection of pepper (Capsicum spp.) with SSR loci brings new evidence for the wild origin of cultivated C. annuum and the structuring of genetic diversity by human selection of cultivar types. The taxonomy is ok. Human selection is reflected by genetic diversity. A quarter of the accessions can be chosen which contain 97% of the genetic diversity. In other news, France has a collection of 1,300 peppers.
Phenotypic and Genetic Diversity of Papaya. Wild papayas from South America are closer to an allied genus than to the cultigen.
Grewia flavescens: a potential horticultural crop? Well, maybe.
Agricultural biodiversity as a link between traditional food systems and contemporary development, social integrity and ecological health. You need sustainable small farms tied into global markets for high value food crops and ecosystem services. Marx rolls over in his grave.
Proximity to agriculture alters abundance and community composition of wild sunflower mutualists and antagonists. Wild relative populations nearer to cultigen have more pollinators but fewer seed and leaf munchers than those further away. Not entirely sure what that means for in situ conservation, but I’m sure it’s something.

August 15, 2013August 15, 2013

Nibbles: USNCGRP, Cherokee Purple, Excess urban bees, Bottarga, Cannabis

US listeners get an earful of the National Center for Genetic Resources Preservation.
And can read all about the history of one of the great heirloom tomatoes, Cherokee Purple.
You can’t have too many urban beekeepers, or can you …? Be warned, the full article is behind a paywall.
Floridian bottarga “tastes cleaner than the Italian stuff” shock.
Molecular diversity among Cannabis genomes. We say, “bring back the landraces”.

July 12, 2013July 12, 2013

Nibbles: Brazil nut, PVP, Dog evolution, Plant Treaty in India, Kerala veggies, Rust tracking latest, Adapt or die, Quinoa latest, NZ seed exchange, African soybeans, Ancient aquaculture

The Brazil nut needs its pollinators.
How USDA protects plant varieties.
American dogs are Asian, not European.
~~India~~ Nepal working out how to implement the ITPGRFA.
Kerala’s vegetable terrace gardeners.
Haven’t heard much about Ug99 lately, have we? Doesn’t mean people aren’t keeping a careful eye on it.
Climate change 10,000 times faster than vertebrate evolution.
Why quinoa is not “taking over the world.”
Not even New Zealand. Though not for want of trying.
In the meantime, soybeans taking over Africa?
Aquaculture that’s sustainable and ancient. Includes taro fish ponds, which for some reason seem to me cool beyond measure.

July 1, 2013July 2, 2013

Brainfood: Phenology & CC, Potato nutrition, Buckwheat honey, Visitors in parks, Urban gardeners, Introgression from wild sheep, Catholic conservation, Tomato domestication

Herbarium specimens reveal the footprint of climate change on flowering trends across north-central North America. 2.4 days per °C.
Carotenoid profiling in tubers of different potato (Solanum sp) cultivars: Accumulation of carotenoids mediated by xanthophyll esterification. 60 cultivars, including landraces, fall into 3 main groups. Need to keep an eye out for those xanthophyll esters.
Buckwheat honeys: Screening of composition and properties. In other news, there is monofloral buckwheat honey in Italy and E. Europe. But not as much as the producers say.
Using geotagged photographs and GIS analysis to estimate visitor flows in natural areas. Very cool, but try as I might I cannot think of an application in agricultural biodiversity conservation. Maybe you can.
Quiet sustainability: Fertile lessons from Europe’s productive gardeners. Food gardening in Europe’s cities is not about an “urban peasantry” putting essential food on the table. And it’s not about expousing a yuppie alternative lifestyle. It’s just about the sheer fun of it.
Introgression and the fate of domesticated genes in a wild mammal population. Coat colour polymorphisms in wild Soay sheep was caused by admixture with more modern breed 150 years ago.
Catholicism and Conservation: The Potential of Sacred Natural Sites for Biodiversity Management in Central Italy. So apparently there’s a “common view that Christianity is anti-naturalistic.” Well, it’s wrong. What’s Christianity’s view of agrobiodiversity, I wonder?
Comparative transcriptomics reveals patterns of selection in domesticated and wild tomato. DNA differences due to selection at 50 genes, transcription differences at thousands.

June 23, 2013June 23, 2013

Nibbles: Brazil flora & urban ag, Telling species apart, Canary seed for humans, Training breeders, Solitary bees, Tajik protected area, Rennell Island, Nordic grubs, Belize TV

Brazil’s flora moves online. And its agriculture into its favelas.
Taxonomy 101.
Wish the people who wrote this press release on “canary seed” had taken a taxonomy course. It’s Phalaris canariensis, it turns out.
African breeders to be trained at UCDavis. Ok, but what about WACCI? What’s going on? Cornell-Davis smackdown?
Further proof, if any were needed, of the importance of wild bees.
Tajikistan gets its first World Heritage Site. Includes most of the Pamirs, so surely a whole lot of agricultural biodiversity, both wild and cultivated, plant and animal. Not that that was the prime mover for protection, probably.
Incidentally, there’s a list of World Heritage Sites in danger, and it includes Rennell Island in the Solomons. The reason I bring it up is that it is famous for a local coconut variety. Hope that’s not endangered!
Nordic Food Lab gets money to experiment with cooking insects.
Belize TV looks to agrobiodiversity to cope with climate change.