- Multiple origins of the determinate growth habit in domesticated common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris). Bush beans happened often, maybe even the seven times other evidence suggests.
- Detecting Insect Pollinator Declines on Regional and Global Scales. Will cost you $2 million.
- Mixtures of genetically modified wheat lines outperform monocultures. Neat; the mixture components differed only in their pathogen resistance traits.
- Plant chemistry underlies herbivore-mediated inbreeding depression in nature. Herbivores probably good for outcrossing.
Brainfood: Spanish terraces, Flower patches, Population ecology, Maize germplasm use, Seed info system, Maize and CC, Medicago predation, Species richness prediction, Rice salt-tolerance
- The genesis of irrigated terraces in al-Andalus. A geoarchaeological perspective on intensive agriculture in semi-arid environments (Ricote, Murcia, Spain). They were built very early on, on a specific soil type, by first burning the vegetation and then essentially inverting the soil profile.
- Creating patches of native flowers facilitates crop pollination in large agricultural fields: mango as a case study. Sweet.
- The ecology of plant populations: their dynamics, interactions and evolution. A whole special issue. Most intriguing is perhaps review of plant-pollinator interactions on the Galapagos. All very important for in situ conservation of crop wild relatives.
- Diversity in global maize germplasm: Characterization and utilization. Three priorities: phenotyping, phenotyping, phenotyping.
- Phytotracker, an information management system for easy recording and tracking of plants, seeds and plasmids. They could have used GRIN-Global, but I guess that doesn’t track plasmids.
- Increasing influence of heat stress on French maize yields from the 1960s to the 2030s. Any day with maximum temperature above 32°C is bad, and their recent increase has led to yield stagnation. They are going to increase further, which means that the French are going to have to find a 12% increase in base yields by 2035 or eat less maize. Do they in fact eat any maize now? What countries are now like what France will be like in 2035?
- Combined impact of multiple exotic herbivores on different life stages of an endangered plant endemism, Medicago citrina. IUCN says it’s endangered. Rabbits, mice and rats are important parts of the problem.
- Estimating species richness: still a long way off!. Bummer.
- New allelic variants found in key rice salt-tolerance genes: an association study. A couple possibly interesting mutations identified by EcoTILLING bunch of IRRI accessions. We shall see if anything comes of them. Actually, how will we find out if something does? I hope the info will go back into the IRRI genebank documentation system.
Nibbles: SOWF, Pollinators, Bamboo, Policy, Cupuaçu, Salak, Pomegranate
- State of the World’s Forests 2012 is out. Save some trees by downloading the PDFs.
- More from FAO: Potential Effects of Climate Change on Crop Pollination. Stick that in your crop model.
- And then there’s climate change and bamboos — of interest to more than pandas?
- Bioversity policy wonks call for New strategies and partnerships for the sustainable use of plant genetic resources. What was wrong with the old ones?
- Kew says The taste of the Amazon is Cupuaçu. A name I recognized only because I recently spent half a lifetime on Wikipedia’s entry for Theobroma.
- Smithsonian says The taste of Indonesia is salak, a name I didn’t recognise even when told it is snakefruit. Or Salacca zalacca, a name to really conjure with.
- Cynthia says, the taste of love is pomegranate. Let us go to the vineyards to see …
Nibbles: Audacity of hops, Potato catalogues, Heirloom apples, Heirloom wheat, UK systematics, Millennial olives, CIAT celebrates, IITA in the news, Agrobiodiversity marketing awards, Insects in orchards, Quinoa
- U. of Minnesota has a poster of the pedigree of hop varieties which I covet.
- Cool catalogue of the native potatoes of a bit of Ecuador. Via Red Electronica de la Papa.
- Stark photos of a few heirloom apples, with descriptions.
- Meanwhile, Brockwell Bake sows some heritage wheats. With stark photo
- Report on the state of UK capacity in taxonomy. How many countries have reports on the state of their taxonomy? Anyway, here’s some of that capacity at work.
- Farrago on some old olives in Jerusalem.
- CIAT celebrates 45 years of existence.
- Meanwhile, IITA pushes soil fertility management and cassava.
- Arca-Deli Awards awarded.
- Defra’s latest Biodiversity News has stuff on the importance of insect biodiversity to pest control and pollination in orchards.
- The International Year of Quinoa, which is next year, has a website, and all sorts of associated social networking goodness. And here’s a nice little student video on the crop, for a somewhat different perspective.
Brainfood: Biodiversity surveys, Potato innovation, Wild sorghum, Bumblebee decline, Naked barley, Primate deterrents, Pastoralism, Mapping, Japanese forests, Aquaculture, Birds, Lentil mixtures, Eucalypt plantations, Seed adoption, Altai nomadism, Dung beetle diversity
- Systematic, large-scale national biodiversity surveys: NeoMaps as a model for tropical regions. The Neotropical Biodiversity Mapping Initiative (NeoMaps) provides good estimates of species richness, composition and relative abundance, in about 1 month of fieldwork per major taxonomic group and about US$ 1–8 per sq km. Now to do something similar for crop diversity.
- Insights into potato innovation systems in Bolivia, Ethiopia, Peru and Uganda. Rapid appraisal of potato innovation system by CIP et al. reveals differences among countries, but significant role of CIP across countries. Roles of farmer organizations and input supply companies limited everywhere.
- Population genetic structure of in situ wild Sorghum bicolor in its Ethiopian center of origin based on SSR markers. Significant differentiation among populations, despite long-distance seed movement and introgression.
- Assessing declines of North American bumble bees (Bombus spp.) using museum specimens. Half of the species are declining.
- Is naked barley an eastern or a western crop? The combined evidence of archaeobotany and genetics. Well, it used to be western too, up to the Bronze Age. Now mainly eastern.
- Crop protection and conflict mitigation: reducing the costs of living alongside non-human primates. A diversity of strategies for coping with malevolent biodiversity.
- Conserving biodiversity in a changing world: land use change and species richness in northern Tanzania. But, would you know it, pastoral grazing threatens other mammals.
- Mapping from heterogeneous biodiversity monitoring data sources. Could be interesting when folks get around to mapping agricultural biodiversity by smart phone.
- Sustainable management of planted landscapes: lessons from Japan. They planted trees, then neglected them because imports were cheaper, and now they’re paying some kind of price.
- Aquaculture: a newly emergent food production sector—and perspectives of its impacts on biodiversity and conservation. Mixed …
- Protection strategies for farmland birds in legume–grass leys as trade-offs between nature conservation and farmers’ needs. Cut high for succesful skylark nests with minimal impact on milk.
- Optimizing lentil-based mixed cropping with different companion crops and plant densities in terms of crop yield and weed control. Mixtures might be better, especially with wheat and barley.
- Role of eucalypt and other planted forests in biodiversity conservation and the provision of biodiversity-related ecosystem services. They can provide an opportunity for forest restoration, but it will take some rethinking. The mother-in-law will be pleased.
- Influence of Sources of Seed on Varietal Adoption Behavior of Wheat Farmers in Indo-Gangetic Plains of India. You need to get the message out if you want your improved varieties adopted. Can’t imagine you’d need a multinomial logit model to figure that out.
- Pastoral nomadism in the forest-steppe of the Mongolian Altai under a changing economy and a warming climate. As transport costs go up, and goat numbers increase because of cash from cashmere, mobility decreases and overgrazing results. A traditional way of life becoming unsustainable before your eyes.
- Species-rich dung beetle communities buffer ecosystem services in perturbed agro-ecosystems. Functional redundancy is not redundant after all.