- Impact of landscape alteration and invasions on pollinators: a meta-analysis. Habitat alteration and invasions equally bad on visitation rates, invasive animals more bad than invasive plants, and disturbance of the matrix more than fragment size. But there are some differences among vegetation types.
- The determinants of leaf turgor loss point and prediction of drought tolerance of species and biomes: a global meta-analysis. Osmotic potential at full turgor could be used to predict drought tolerance across species. Cut a long story short, that simplifies down to salty cell sap, give or take. Good for choosing crop wild relatives to use in breeding for drought tolerance?
- Market-based instruments for biodiversity and ecosystem services: A lexicon. If you want to tell your tradable permits from your reverse auctions. And really, who doesn’t?
- Phenotypic and molecular dissection of ICRISAT mini core collection of peanut (Arachis hypogaea L.) for high oleic acid. Much diversity in oleic acid (O) to low linoleic acid (L) ratio found. Breeders alerted.
- Phenotypic diversity and evolution of farmer varieties of bread wheat on organic farms in Europe. There wasn’t much of it, over 3 years.
- A Comparison of Dung Beetle (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae) Attraction to Native and Exotic Mammal Dung. They really know their shit.
- Small-scale farming in semi-arid areas: Livelihood dynamics between 1997 and 2010 in Laikipia, Kenya. Life continues to be a bitch, there’s no other way to say it. But when will the people who measure livelihoods measure the diversity of people’s assets as well as their size?
- Climate-associated phenological advances in bee pollinators and bee-pollinated plants. About 10 days over the past 130 years, most of the change since 1970, and bee plants keeping pace with bees.
Nibbles: Genomic data, Seed porn, Ancient Amazonian ag, Genebanks Down Under, Climate data porn, Fiber in Maine, REDD+ at the CBD, Colony Collapse Disorder, Chili porn, Seed systems
- GBIF makes its move.
- Homaging the seed.
- Learning sustainability from old Amazonian farmers. Really old. Really, really old.
- Yet another Aussie genebank. Or maybe the same one, I’ve lost track. And interest.
- Where climate data comes from.
- Maine’s fiber community, what, exposed? Unveiled? Uncovered? And similar from Bolivia.
- REDD+ will save us all.
- Don’t crack open the mead to celebrate the solution to colony collapse disorder just yet.
- All things Capsicum on one handy website.
- Whole bunch of policy briefs on African seed systems. Don’t know if I’ll ever have the time to read through the lot, but cursory perusal suggests the following bottom line: the market can’t do it all by itself.
Nibbles: New drug, Bees, Blood oranges, Dahi, Melaku speaks, So does Rajiv.
- A drug company is almost ready to go with a pain reliever from the Peruvian rainforest, based on Acmella oleracea, “also known as toothache plant”. Clues, wherever you look.
- Why biodiverse beehives do better. It’s partly down to biodiverse bacteria.
- Producing blood oranges anywhere. I’ll enjoy my Sicilian ones more, now I know why only some are bloody.
- A hymn to the diversity of fermented milk products.
- Interview with Melaku Worede of Ethiopia; “we are still losing diversity at an alarming rate”.
- Rajiv Shah, administrator of USAID, explains what it is all about.
Nibbles: No dam, Pollination video, Study the Commons, Cashew genebank, Quebecois varieties, Poultry, Prehistoric globalisation, Options for Southeast Asia, Inforgraphic, Viking beer
- I’ve long thought that getting rid of the Aswan High Dam would be the best way Egypt could improve its food security.
- New video from Biofortified, how to pollinate carrots and beets.
- Hey Lawyers; time to study the commons! Including genetic resources? h/t capri.
- Today’s gene banks will save the world story is about cashews.
- Today’s rich world saving heritage varieties story is from Quebec.
- Today’s old stories given new legs story is about paying farmers for ecosystem services.
- Wired magazine discovers pastured poultry. Can the rest of the world be far behind?
- Proposal for a conference session on prehistoric globalisation of food. I’d be there if I could.
- And more from the Archaeobotanist, another journal special issue on Near Eastern domestication.
- CCAFS highlights (and links to) ICRAF report on climate change options for Southeast Asian Farmers
- Danforth Center depicts evolution of plant science, devaluing the word inforgraphic [sic] beyond repair.
- Viking beer. Sköl, or something.
Nibbles: Rice breeding, West African agriculture, Asian AnGR, Wheat breeding, Chinese semiotics, Neglected plant at NordGen, Fledermaus, PPB
- Norwich boffins save the world. To get the real story, you need to deconstruct the piece using this.
- “Results indicate that the greatest agriculture-led growth opportunities in West Africa reside in staple crops (cereals and roots and tubers) and livestock production.” Minor crops get the shaft again?
- Project tackles conservation of Asian farm animal diversity. I’ve always wondered whether there might be a role for ecotourism. I’d pay to see weird cocks. And hens.
- Pakistani boffins return home with skills to improve wheat P efficiency. And the resources? We shall see.
- Chinese food and plant semiotics. Can’t wait for LanguageLog to get to grips with this.
- NordGen characterizes a weirdly-named exotic Cinderella crop. Can you guess which?
- And can you guess what the “best kept secret of agricultural success” might be? Clue: nothing to do with those East Anglian boffins of the first item.
- Participatory plant breeding and gender analysis. They’re not giving much away at the source site.