- Sometimes all it takes is a goat.
- Or a camel.
- I wonder how either would figure into a metric for a sustainable diet. Wonder if these people will be interested in those metrics.
- Cassava figures in lots of different ways.
- No word on whether carbon dioxide will affect its nutrient content the way it does with other crops.
- Who cares, it’s yield we’re after. Well, that’s in trouble too in some parts of Africa.
- That’s the only way those African seed start-ups are going to survive.
- Yeah, but disease resistance is important, Shirley. PlantVillage gets a blog.
- And weeds? Don’t forget the weeds. Although of course some of them you can eat. Put that in your metrics.
- Meanwhile, France starts to re-wild. Would love to see some wild relatives in the Bois du Boulogne. Livestock wild relatives, not your crazy cousin on his gap year.
- And now we can figure out what climate change might do to them. I guess this thing might work for European animals. Says here it works for Australian trees.
- Speaking of France, garlic is quintessentially French, isn’t it? Well, maybe, but it’s also very Korean, in its black, cured form.
Nibbles: Coffee rust, Wheat blast, Livestock yield gap, Livestock adaptation, Extension, Med diet, Organic < conventional, Douglas fir breeding, Best moustache in cryo, Fortifying rice
- Coffee rust is doing a number on livelihoods in Central America.
- Wheat blast could do the same in South America.
- ILRI DG on smallholder livestock producers: one-third don’t have the conditions in which to be viable, one-third can go either way and one–third can be successful. I suppose all of them are going to need adaptation options.
- Not to mention extension services.
- Meanwhile, bureaucrats busy protecting the Mediterranean diet.
- The inevitable productivity penalty of organic.”
- Douglas fir ready for its genomic closeup.
- Cryopreservation update, with video goodness.
- Lots of ways to skin the malnutrition cat: zinc and rice.
Brainfood: Grasspea genomics, Eggplant genomics, Snakegourd hybrids, Bean drought resistance, Wild pear diversity, CNN 51 deconstructed, Sicilian grape diversity, Cash in the Usambaras, Kenyan sorghum diversity, Chinese sesame diversity, Chinese millet breeding
- Large-scale microsatellite development in grasspea (Lathyrus sativus L.), an orphan legume of the arid areas. Let the Grasspea Revolution begin.
- High resolution map of eggplant (Solanum melongena) reveals extensive chromosome rearrangement in domesticated members of the Solanaceae. Let the Eggplant Revolution begin.
- Genetic variability in snakegourd (Tricosanthes cucurminata). The Hybrid Snakegourd Revolution is one I’d really like to see.
- Differentially Expressed Genes during Flowering and Grain Filling in Common Bean (Phaseolus vulgaris) Grown under Drought Stress Conditions. We know the drought resistance genes.
- Chloroplast DNA-based genetic diversity and phylogeography of Pyrus betulaefolia (Rosaceae) in Northern China. 3 particularly diverse populations, probably refugia, plus 3 others, identified for conservation.
- Genetic Characterization of the Cacao Cultivar CCN 51: Its Impact and Significance on Global Cacao Improvement and Production. It’s high yielding, resistant to lots of stuff, variable, and an important breeding resource. But it tastes like shit.
- Genotyping of Sicilian grapevine germplasm resources (V. vinifera L.) and their relationships with Sangiovese. Wait, Sangiovese was originally from Sicily?
- Allanblackia, butterflies and cardamom: sustaining livelihoods alongside biodiversity conservation on the forest–agroforestry interface in the East Usambara Mountains, Tanzania. My money is on the butterflies.
- Influence of Ethnolinguistic Diversity on the Sorghum Genetic Patterns in Subsistence Farming Systems in Eastern Kenya. Pattern of sorghum diversity correlates with language groups, not morphology. Improved varieties get given local names and slowly merge with landraces.
- Genetic analysis and molecular characterization of Chinese sesame (Sesamum indicum L.) cultivars using Insertion-Deletion (InDel) and Simple Sequence Repeat (SSR) markers. Improved varieties have narrower genetic base than landraces. Move along there, nothing to see here.
- Innovation of the New Superior Quality Foxtail Millet [Setaria italica (L.) P.Beauv] Variety-Jigu32 with Characteristics of Stress Resistance, Stable and High Yield and Its Physiological Mechanism. This looks like a really dodgy journal. Apologies to them if they’re not, but those ads at the bottom are weird. Anyway, this paper seems to describe the canonical genebank success story: assemble a diverse germplasm collection, evaluate the hell out of it, pick the best, fiddle with them, evaluate the hell out of the results, end up with something better than you started with. Maybe those sesame breeders could learn something…
Nibbles: Food future, Bean breeding 101, Yield gaps, Mitigation strategies, Sparing vs sharing, Diverse diets, Open seeds, Fake seeds, Florida citrus threat, Hot chicks, Nutrition nuggets
- Food? We don’t need no stinking food.
- Bean breeder begs to differ.
- Where we could do with more food.
- Nobody’s talking about mitigation any more. Oh yes they are.
- Land shparing is the answer.
- ICRAF decides to gather evidence for the benefits of agroforestry for nutrition.
- More on those open source seeds. Which I hope nobody will counterfeit.
- Florida needs new grapefruits, whether open source or not.
- Naked neck chickens look weird, but they may be really heat resistant, so get over it. Ghana has.
- Canadian grad students summarize nutrition research in a pithy sentence. Sound familiar?
Nibbles: Global plant cover, Veggies in Africa, Ancient middens, Raspberry fruit colour, Citrus greening, Jordan biodiversity, US nutrition, Subsidies, Seed and voucher fair, Bean diversity, Grape mildew fight
- GIS geeks sort out land cover at last.
- Role of vegetables in combating malnutrition in Africa. Author offers pdf of paper.
- Ancient native American middens just keep on giving.
- Raspberry colour good predictor of various fruit post-harvest characteristics. Good short-cut for breeders.
- Getting to the root of citrus greening. Scary disease.
- Freaky stuff about using frog eggs to figure out the genetics of grapevine’s susceptibility to another scary disease.
- Video of our friend Dr Nigel Maxted on Jordan’s socioeconomically important plants.
- Physician, heal thyself. Indian tells USAID to take care of its own food insecurity.
- How to create subsidies that promote biodiversity, in a model, which is probably highly unrealistic.
- Very realistic notes from a seed and voucher fair in Malawi.
- And anecdotes on the benefits of bean diversity in Uganda.