- The USDA is plugging its Atlas of Crop Wild Relatives in Guatemala. So we’ll plug our post about it from November 2011. And ask again: where’s Paraguay?
- The Social Life of Beans in Burundi is a tour-de-force. I can never get enough of informal seed systems, especially from people who live in them.
- And a similar sort of thing on okra. What’s gumbo without it?
- Today’s scary bee decline story. With extra buzz.
- CGIAR comes in for some stick over the insidious view and cunning logic of “Leveraging Agriculture for Nutrition in South Asia (LANSA)”. I couldn’t possibly comment (and CG probably won’t).
- Oh boy! Global Moringa Get-togethers! In India!
- Sorghum domestication in Sudan: earlier, and less uncertain, than before.
- BBC piece on the new outbreak of coffee rust in Central America. Where are the resistant varieties?
- Head of Kew’s MSB tracks rhinos. Well, someone has to.
Nibbles: UK horticulture funding, AVRDC, Biofortification, SRI debate, Stressed bees, Nutrient decline, Beneficial viruses, DNA for dummies, Chaffey, Cow genebank, Organic network
- For UK horticulturalists in need of cash. Wonder if that includes the rosemary collection.
- I’m pretty sure it doesn’t include AVRDC.
- Who would no doubt agree with Mark Lynas that “No-one disputes that a balanced and nutritionally-adequate diet is the best long-term solution to vitamin A deficiency and malnutrition in general.” And be as puzzled as the rest of us for the relative lack of funding for research on such a diet.
- A discussion of why mainstream agricultural science hasn’t got the message across about SRI, courtesy of Facebook. Yeah well, the whole concept of basing interventions on, you know, evidence, is not exactly mainstream. Just ask the balanced and nutritionally-adequate diet guys.
- Bees are stressed out, the poor things.
- Creative Commons graphs on changes in vegetable nutrient content.
- Not all plant viruses are bad.
- Pat Heslop-Harrison talks DNA, with his usual extraordinary fluency, from 11 mins in.
- Plant Cuttings! Everything from the botany of food to transcription factors for C4 photosynthesis.
- Cow genebank proposed.
- IFOAM gets a TIPI. Vandana Shiva no doubt ecstatic.
Nibbles: Gates & Slim, Aquino, Home genebank, Quinoa indigestion, Cornish pasties, Exotic vegetables, Funny cheeses, Leafsnap, Beekeeping
- Bigshots visit CIMMYT, miss opportunity to mention genebank. No, wait…
- Bigshot visits IRRI, including genebank.
- Yeah but who needs those anyway, you can make your own!
- Now the French want their say on quinoa.
- Speaking of the French, you think there is any horsemeat in Cornish pasties?
- “I grew up with zucchini, but I prefer the flavor and texture of angled luffa.”
- Gotta love the fact that there’s a thing called the Rogue Creamery.
- Missed the fact that Leafsnap had been named one of the top 10 science apps of 2012.
- Germans report on Italians helping Ethiopians. To keep bees. One suspects Ethiopians could teach Italians and Germans a thing or two about keeping bees, but that’s another story.
Brainfood: Introductions, Diversified farming systems, Breadfruit, Rice, Aquaculture threats, Arthropods in rice, Diverse landscapes, Diverse pollinators, Species re-introduction, Ecosystem function, Grapes, Prunus africana
- Increases in crop pests caused by Wasmannia auropunctata in Solomon Islands subsistence gardens. Law of Unintended Consequences takes its toll. Or does it? Discussion at Pestnet suggests the Little Fire Ant may not have been introduced as a biological control agent as suggested by the paper.
- A Social-Ecological Analysis of Diversified Farming Systems: Benefits, Costs, Obstacles, and Enabling Policy Frameworks. Special issue of Ecology and Society on DFS. That would be Diversified Farming Systems. Bottom line is that you need to understand both their ecology and their politics to make sense of them, and make them work for you.
- Morphological diversity in breadfruit (Artocarpus, Moraceae): insights into domestication, conservation, and cultivar identification. 221 accessions provide exactly those insights.
- The original features of rice (Oryza sativa L.) genetic diversity and the importance of within-variety diversity in the highlands of Madagascar build a strong case for in situ conservation. Farms are more diverse than villages, which are more diverse than regions, so it may not take that much to conserve a lot of diversity in situ.
- More rapid and severe disease outbreaks for aquaculture at the tropics: implications for food security. Driven by environmental factors, and will get worse with climate change. Strangely, breeding for resistance, and genetic diversity in general, not mentioned.
- Cultivation of Domesticated Rice Alters Arthropod Biodiversity and Community Composition. Wild rice fields have different, less diverse arthropod communities.
- Quantifying habitat-specific contributions to insect diversity in agricultural mosaic landscapes. Some of the different bits of diverse landscapes in Switzerland have unique insects, which is apparently not the case in other places.
- Synergistic effects of non-Apis bees and honey bees for pollination services. And you do need lots of different insects, at least for pollination.
- Earth observation: overlooked potential to support species reintroduction programmes. Translocation and introductions are fraught, but if you still want to do them…
- An improved model to predict the effects of changing biodiversity levels on ecosystem function. Basically, the contribution of species 1 with relative abundance A and species 2 with relative abundance B to ecosystem function is AxB to the power of θ. Can it be extended to ecosystem services, I wonder?
- Pinot blanc and Pinot gris arose as independent somatic mutations of Pinot noir. So that’s where they came from. Insights into “[o]enological aptitude”.
- Divergent pattern of nuclear genetic diversity across the range of the Afromontane Prunus africana mirrors variable climate of African highlands. Sheds light on the history of Afromontane regions.
Brainfood: Beans, Pollinator decline, Wheat mixtures, Outcrossing
- 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.