- Ok here goes, there’s a week’s work of Nibbles we’ve got to catch up on.
- World running out of chocolate! Tell that to Cologne.
- Yeah well I prefer tea to cocoa.
- Greenpeace: “Smart breeding” will save us, not GMOs. Breeders: All breeding is smart.
- Guess the world’s biggest cash crop. Yeah, that one.
- Alas, it’s not included in the recent strategy for conserving medicinal plants. Not that it would need conserving.
- The domestication of the world’s biggest crop, period. Deconstructed. And if you want to drill down.
- And of the world’s biggest fruit.
- And of the world’s biggest pet.
- And of the world’s most difficult to eat vegetable.
- Root “vegetables” made simple. Because winter.
- And why you must eat your veggies, including the difficult ones.
- Videos on Kew’s monocot database and on the renovation of another famous herbarium.
- The real Johnny Appleseed.
- But you too can save seeds, just like Johnny.
- But don’t forget to safety duplicate, like CIP has done, at Embrapa.
- And this shows you what those seeds can look like.
- You don’t necessarily need seeds to save plants, though.
- Mapping fallen fruit. Because we can.
- Road trip!
- Boat trip!
- Selected Techniques in the Art of Agriculture. From French to Turkish to Arabic. One of many nifty agriculture-related resources in the World Digital Library.
- Oh yeah, the IUCN World Parks Congress has been on and its all over the intertubes. Including with neat visualizations, natch.
- How many of the species in the COMPADRE database of plant demography information are in protected areas? How many are crop wild relatives? I need an intern.
Nibbles: Wonder Bread, Cassava sex, Languages and biodiversity, Wild Musa, Bronze Age musings, New Indian rice varieties, Improved breeds in Kenya, GMOs in China, Organic vision, Foreign food, Publicity, Nutrition advice & indicators, Ethiopian seed banks, Zimbabwe millet, Agroforestry, MSB legume collection, Demon paywalls, CIMMYT seed, Tempting apple
- The industrial sliced loaf as racist fantasy.
- Bill Gates talks dirty. About cassava, settle down.
- Where the wild things are is where the languages are, but why? And where are they endangered?
- This new Indian wild banana is probably a bit endangered.
- The past may be a foreign country, but they got Street View there too.
- Blockbuster rice in India. (But how energy-efficient is it?)
- And potentially blockbuster livestock breeds in Kenya.
- China goes GMO. Which of these?
- Maybe they should read this vision for organic farming? You know, just for completeness?
- Have a food adventure! Just perhaps not in China.
- FAO and National Geographic have a food security adventure together. For more stuff like this, no doubt…
- Eat more plants, and ditch the junk food. Sounds easy, doesn’t it? Ok, for the more complicated, nerdy approach, there’s always fancy indicators.
- Ethiopia’s community seed banks.
- I bet there are some in Zimbabwe…
- African Development Bank makes a bet on agroforestry. Maybe health is why? There’s more that one reason…
- Gotta be strategic with your legume collecting.
- Want conservation science to translate into impact? Don’t publish behind a paywall.
- CIMMYT earns its keep.
- Build a better apple, and you won’t be able to keep the journalists away.
Brainfood: Shea diversity, Weedy rice, Old barley, Grassland diversity, Afrikaner cattle, Sudanese baobab, FGR review, Small farmers, Ecological pest management, Andean ag changes, European soil biodiversity, Durum adaptation, Agrobodiversity indicators
- Genetic diversity in shea tree (Vitellaria paradoxa subspecies nilotica) ethno-varieties in Uganda assessed with microsatellite markers. Three geographic populations revealed by SSRs, not much related to the folk classification.
- Malaysian weedy rice shows its true stripes: wild Oryza and elite rice cultivars shape agricultural weed evolution in Southeast Asia. The weed is caught in the middle and swings both ways.
- Farmers without borders—genetic structuring in century old barley (Hordeum vulgare). Nordic barley structured latitudinally, with lots more variation within landrace accessions than now, according to historical specimens.
- The Agrodiversity Experiment: three years of data from a multisite study in intensively managed grasslands. Does increasing plant diversity in intensively managed grassland communities increase their resource use efficiency? No idea, but here’s the data from a huge multi-site experiment. Go crazy.
- Genetic diversity in selected stud and commercial herds of the Afrikaner cattle breed. It’s doing just fine, genetically, despite recent declines in numbers.
- The African baobab (Adansonia digitata, Malvaceae): Genetic resources in neglected populations of the Nuba Mountains, Sudan. Maybe a little more variation in homesteads compared to the wild. Maybe.
- Seeing the trees as well as the forest: The importance of managing forest genetic resources. The first State of the World’s Forest Genetic Resources and the first Global Plan of Action for the Conservation, Sustainable Use and Development of Forest Genetic Resources summarized: exchange, test in common gardens, and be clever with genetics, in breeding, management and restoration.
- Are small family farms a societal luxury good in wealthy countries? Rich countries don’t mind inefficient farms because they look nice.
- DIVECOSYS: Bringing together researchers to design ecologically-based pest management for small-scale farming systems in West Africa. Where do I sign up?
- Ecosystem governance in a highland village in Peru: Facing the challenges of globalization and climate change. Big Dairy doing for Andean crops.
- Intensive agriculture reduces soil biodiversity across Europe. What they said.
- The climate of the zone of origin of Mediterranean durum wheat (Triticum durum Desf.) landraces affects their agronomic performance. 4 main climatic zones, accounting for up to 30% of variation in important evaluation traits. FIGS, anyone?
- Indicators for the on-farm assessment of crop cultivar and livestock breed diversity: a survey-based participatory approach. And only 5 of them too!
Brainfood: Biogeoinformatics, FGR review, Lesser pulses, Slovak orchards, Wheat evaluation network, Iranian olives, Beans & FIGS, Blasted rice, Tibetan pigs, Alpine grass, Development as freedom
- Biogeoinformatics of livestock genomic resources. Don’t forget the “geo” bit. Goes for plants as well!
- Utilization and transfer of forest genetic resources: A global review. They’ve been going on for 200 years, but we’ll need provenance trials and conventional breeding more than ever in the future. Phytosanitary risks involved in tree germplasm movement are now better managed, but the big problem in the future will be Nagoya. Molecular assisted breeding? Meh.
- Genomics and molecular breeding in lesser explored pulse crops: Current trends and future opportunities. We’re mostly still awaiting our jetpacks.
- Orchards as traces of traditional agricultural landscape in Slovakia. About half are left, but they won’t save themselves.
- A wheat phenotyping network to incorporate physiological traits for climate change in South Asia. Local checks significantly earlier than the best CIMMYT can offer. Evaluate the whole genebank?
- Genetic structure of Iranian olive cultivars and their relationship with Mediterranean’s cultivars revealed by SSR markers. The N Iran cultivars are different from everything else.
- Leaf traits associated with drought adaptation in faba bean (Vicia faba L.). Chalk up another success for FIGS.
- Large scale germplasm screening for identification of novel rice blast resistance sources. 289 out of 4246 accessions showed resistance against all five rice blast isolates. The 4246 chosen on basis of “annotated rice blast resistance information” from the IRRI genebank. No word on whether FIGS was considered.
- Genetic Variation of EPAS1 Gene in Tibetan Pigs and Three Low-Altitude Pig Breeds in China. One haplotype seems to be particularly associated with high altitude adaptation. Unclear if that is a really important objective of pig breeding around the world.
- Morpho-physiological variation of Poa alpina L. genetic resources from the Rhaetian Alps, Italy, grown in two altitude-contrasting sites. There was more variation within than among populations, and it’s ok to do seed production for high altitude sites at low altitudes. No word on whether same could be said for alpine pigs.
- Protection of Traditional Knowledge and Origin Products in Developing Countries: Matching Human Rights and IP Protection with Business Development Opportunities. It’s all in the value chain.