- Indirect Effect of a Transgenic Wheat on Aphids through Enhanced Powdery Mildew Resistance. Plants resistant to fungus have more aphids. Oh dear.
- A case study of seed exchange networks and gene flow for barley (Hordeum vulgare subsp. vulgare) in Morocco. There is more movement of material among villages than interviews suggest.
- Evaluation of plant-derived products against pests and diseases of medicinal plants: A review. Extracts from some medicinal plants used to protect other medicinal plants.
- Identifying key knowledge needs for evidence-based conservation of wild insect pollinators: a collaborative cross-sectoral exercise. Top one: How important is the diversity of pollinator species to the resilience and reliability of the pollination service? Seems a pretty good start.
Nibbles: Diversification talk, Gene award, Community genebanks, GCARD, Natural products, Nutrition talk, Wild bees, GM for drought fail, Face of breeding, Cheese, Bird, Cacao smuggling, CWRs, Perreniation
- ICRISAT DG agrees with Bioversity DG. Kinda. CGIAR DGs communicating via blog. Who’d have thunk it.
- Borlaug Global Rust Initiative gives its first Gene Stewardship Award to Nepali breeders. I wonder if they work with community genebanks at all. Or what they think about them. Or even if they know they are there.
- GCARD 2 is coming, socially networked up the wazoo. Be afraid.
- Authenticating natural health products via barcoding.
- FAO discussion on making agriculture work for nutrition.
- Nice photos of wild bees.
- Not sure if we already linked to the big report on why biotechnology is not delivering drought-resistant crops.
- Meet a Breeder. Conventional, natch.
- Who moved my artisanal cheese?
- Bird diversity on intensive farms like happy Tolstoyan familes: the same everywhere.
- What’s a poor cacao farmer to do? Obey the law and make a loss, or break it in the hope of breaking even?
- Kew does the crop wild relatives thing for Plantwise, and check out that picture!
- Nature discovers perreniation as salvation of African soils; can resilieficiency be far behind?
Nibbles: Fertilizer tree, Indo-European, Human diversity, European pollinators, DNA data quality, Biodiversity maps, Organizzzzzz, Plantain
- Faidherbia albida gets another push. To quote from the recent Crops for the Future dissection of neglected/underutilized species: if it’s so good, how come it’s not used more?
- The Indo-European roots of names for pulse crops. Not nearly as boring as it sounds. Oh, and since we’re on the subject…
- Human biodiversity files: athleticism, foodism.
- Huge EU project monitors pollinators. What could possibly go wrong?
- Cleaning up DNA Sequence Database Hell.
- Nice biodiversity hotspot maps. No plants. Definitely no agrobiodiversity.
- A philosopher’s take on that organic agriculture meta-analysis.
- Not Musa, but still edible.
Nibbles: Bees, Gait genes, Eradicate hunger, Conference
- Honeybees create a buzz in Nepal.
- Gene for silly equine walks.
- Men and Women Farming Together Can Eradicate Hunger. Headline says it all, really.
- We’re not the only ones wondering what’s going on at the 2nd global conference on agriculture, food security and climate change, which started yesterday.