Threats

April 4, 2015April 2, 2015

Monitoring plant diseases

I think we may have blogged about ProMED before, but I don’t feel at all guilty about another shout-out. I have no idea to what extent the whole thing is automated, but if there’s anything in the press about a disease — of plants, livestock or humans — it gets a little write up on the website, and a dot on the map. And you can sign up for email alerts or subscribe to an RSS feed, or indeed to their Twitter feed or Facebook page if that’s your vice. I sometimes dream of doing something similar for all kinds of threats to agrobiodiversity.

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And while we’re on the subject, just a reminder that there’s a new new app for Pacific pests and pathogens, courtesy of those nice people at Pestnet.

April 4, 2015April 2, 2015

Nibbles: Local earthworm, Public-private, Cassava double, Food prices, Amazonian rubber, Mongolian ag, Pacific roots, Potato CWR, Ugandan plantain, Galician brassicas, Contesting agronomy, Silver bullet

Lamb ham: an easter tradition we can all get behind.
Indian researchers market a new earthworm. Not to bring you down or anything.
PPP are the new black. It says here.
Cassava gets Big Data treatment. That’s kinda biotechnology too. But then you have to commercialize the stuff, right?
“Food price shocks are both a determinant and effect of conflict.”
Recognizing the “rubber soldiers”.
Chinese experts tell Mongolians how to be more resilient to climate change. I hope it works out for them.
New potato and sweet potato varieties for the Pacific come to CePaCT.
Any of those potato varieties benefit from wild relatives?
New plantain variety for Uganda.
Galician genebank gets old brassicas. National genebank unavailable for comment. Actually, national genebank unavailable.
“We can see the blinkered promotion and systematic ‘bigging-up’ of individual agricultural technologies, and their real or imagined impacts, as a direct result of the uncritical acceptance of the language of ‘impact at scale’.”
Biotechnologist says we need biotechnology to feed world. QED.

March 31, 2015March 31, 2015

Nibbles: Rabbit origins, New beans and rice, New maize, Fermentation, Grape bugs, Kenya supergoats, Peruvian edible insects, Betelmania, Sustainable cacao, Making cider, Land rights, Kew funding, Avocado origins, German genebank, Oman roadshow, Chinese agriculture then and now, Underground farm, Irish potatoes, Lactase history, Nutrition report, Breeding wheat, Pulse year, Perennial cereals, Shaker agriculture, Food conference, Lupin breeding, Tanzanian ag landscapes, Coffee film, American food, Breakfast around the world, Indian wild figs, Baobab, Fragmentation, History of breeding, MARDI fruits, IARI head, Wild pig genome, Breed typology

Yeah, I know, been slacking with the blogging again of late. Lots of travel. Will try to post about it a bit now I’m back. Here’s the usual back-in-the-office game of catch-up.

We start with something topical for Easter. The origin of the bunny: it’s not the genes, it’s the gene control control.
CIAT’s heat-resistant beans are all over the internet. IRRI’s new rices, not so much.
I hope they get names like Bill Tracy’s new open-pollinated maize variety.
Bugs come in communities, and they do best when they stay that way.
Even on grapes.
Gotta get me one of these Kenyan supergoats.
Are bugs next on Peru’s gastronomia menu? Probably not.
Ban the betel!
More on that we-need-GMO-to-save-chocolate thing. Because this?
Some like it hard.
Three steps to secure land rights.
“If the seeds are never grown, they will fizzle out. Who is going to sow them and harvest them to keep them fresh?”
The avocado shouldn’t be here. So sue me.
The Ghana News Agency (and nobody else) says there’s a new genebank in Berlin.
Oman’s biodiversity (including agricultural) goes on the road.
Chinese agriculture goes sustainable. Well, in theory. Including for buckwheat, presumably.
Maybe you can work out what this early Chinese flour was actually of: millet, barley and/or wheat?
Meanwhile, in Japan, the opposite of sustainable farming beneath a Tokyo street.
The Irish and the potato: in need of a reset?
Want to develop? Learn to metabolize lactose.
Ten research questions on nutrition.
Well at least this gluten nonsense ¹ is helping bring back some funky grains. And is spurring breeders. Who should perhaps be focusing on more important problems?
Pulses will get their 15 minutes in 2016.
The Land Institute is still at it, and still getting press.
The United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing established one of the earliest seed companies in the US.
No, getting to the bottom of food ain’t easy.
Lupins better than soya in the UK, because breeding.
A Tanzanian mash-up: Farmers need the landscape. I’m not kidding. And yet…
There’s a film about coffee called “A film about coffee.”
“In the future, the American dream of big cars and burgers will need to be adjusted to more active transport and sustainable, healthy eating. Better is the new bigger. The world needs a new diet. And it is waiting for the US to take the lead.” Good luck with that.
Maybe start with breakfast?
Indians need their wild figs.
As much a African need baobabs, probably.
A fragmented forest is no forest at all. Well, almost.
BHL does domestication. As ever, great pix too.
Malaysia protects its fruits.
Who will head the Indian Agricultural Research Institute?
The pygmy hog has been sequenced.
A typology of livestock breeds.

March 16, 2015March 5, 2015

Brainfood: Camelina improvement, School garden impact, Biodiversity rice, Seed networks, Indian wheat geography, Protected areas, Late blight resistance, Peanut biotech

Camelina as a sustainable oilseed crop: Contributions of plant breeding and genetic engineering. It will help that it’s close to Arabidopsis.
Sustenance and sustainability: maximizing the impact of school gardens on health outcomes. You need proper experimental design if you’re going to say that such an impact exists. But such an impact probably exists, sometimes.
Consumer preferences for agricultural products considering the value of biodiversity conservation in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam. Consumers are willing to pay extra for crane-friendly rice. Or at least they say they are.
An Analysis of Social Seed Network and Its Contribution to On-Farm Conservation of Crop Genetic Diversity in Nepal. Fancy software shows farmers exchange seeds, and it’s important.
Spatial Distribution of Trait-specific Diversity in Indian Wheat Collections. From 5930, 3973 are geo-referenced, showing where more collections need to be made. Unless of course they are among those 1957 and nobody can tell.
Walk on the Wild Side: Estimating the Global Magnitude of Visits to Protected Areas. 8 billion visits per year (80% in Europe and North America), generating $600 billion per year in direct in-country expenditure and $250 billion in consumer surplus. Remember that we spent $10 billion per year worldwide in safeguarding protected areas.
Allele Mining in Solanum Germplasm: Cloning and Characterization of RB-Homologous Gene Fragments from Late Blight Resistant Wild Potato Species. 17 gene fragments from 11 wild potato species could be useful in breeding for late blight resistance.
Genetic diversity of the world’s largest oil palm (Elaeis guineensis Jacq.) field genebank accessions using microsatellite markers. Extreme West Africa group, West-Central-East Africa group and Madagascar group, with the last quite distinct.
Progress in genetic engineering of peanut (Arachis hypogaea L.) — A review. Our jetpacks are in the mail.

March 14, 2015March 15, 2015

Nibbles: Old pretzel, Wine podcast, Nordic podcast, Tea history, Pacific pests app, Eating bugs, Chicken history, African superfoods, Gender, Access to seeds, Sorghum beer, Making mead, Cumin, Bolivian school meals, MLN, Hidden hunger conference, CIP & IK, Potato Park, CIP’s Sawyer, Saving wheat, Resettlement, Sustainable cacao, Deforestation map, Language map

Again, sorry for slow blogging last week. Work, you know. Here we play catch-up.

While we were away, we reached 6000 Twitter followers! Thanks, everyone!
And Germans found a 250-year-old pretzel. Wait, you can get those at Kamps every day though. (Bonn inside joke.)
Oh, and Jeremy talked to a wine expert about how to become a wine expert.
But he has competition from the Nordic Food Lab now. What are you waiting for, subscribe to both!
Since we’re on podcasts, Laszlo Montgomery’s monumental ten-part blockbuster on the history of tea in China recently came to a close.
Talking of iTunes, ver. 2 of the Pacific Pest and Pathogens app is out.
Don’t want to get into the whole eating insects thing? Feed them to your chickens instead.
There’s even an infographic about that now.
But what will it do to the poor old chicken?
Cooking up some African superfoods. No insects (or chickens) were harmed in the making of this article.
Yeah but who will be doing the cooking?
And where to get the seeds? Maybe African Seed Access Index will help, though I somehow doubt it. At least for baobab.
Oh well, there’s always beer I guess. (Though even that you can’t take for granted these days.)
Or mead, at a pinch.
I bet the Sumerians put a pinch of cumin in their beer. And mead.
What about Latin America superfoods, though? Bolivians put them in their school meals, that’s what.
Maize was a Latin American superfood once. Having trouble in Africa now, though.
Wait, what, there was a 2nd International Congress on Hidden Hunger at the University of Hohenheim last week? And all I got was this t-shirt? Any superfoods on the menu there, I wonder?
CIP on how it deals with traditional knowledge.
For example at the Potato Park. Where I’ll be next week, incidentally. Stay tuned… But again, I rather fear that blogging will be on the light side next week.
CIP has come a long way since its first DG, Dr Richard L. Sawyer, who sadly just passed away.
Modelling the effects of climate change on wheat. Again. Can never have enough data. Anyway, wild relatives the answer?
Mongolian nomads settle down. And not in a good way.
There’s more to sustainable cacao than productivity. Fortunately, some people are on that. Meanwhile, at the other end of the poverty spectrum…
Don’t think I’ve ever seen a nerdy interactive map like Global Forest Watch go mainstream. Hope for us all. Mash it up with this next?