- Oh dear, someone else has fallen for the “weeds are better for you” line, cautious question-mark notwithstanding.
- And guess what? The poor don’t buy nutritious foods. How silly of them.
- Great post explaining the great unseen: mycorrhizal fungi as drivers of plant diversity.
- Gluten-free wheat? Really (even if the links still don’t work).
- What would you video on honeymoon in Mexico? A visit to a vanilla plantation. What else?
- Conserving apples and earth apples at opposite ends of the world.
- Oh, no, pashmina’s in trouble!
Brainfood: Pests & CC, Germplasm pix, Latvian legume rescue, Estonian potatoes, NZ genebanks, Yam polyploids, Tree evaluation, Ethiopian veggie, European seed law, Zulu sheep, Celosia management
- Crop pests and pathogens move polewards in a warming world. At 3 km/year.
- Systems for making NIAS Core Collections, single-seed-derived germplasm, and plant photo images available to the research community. The next level in genetic resources documentation?
- Recovering Genetic Resources of Some Legume Species of Latvian Origin by Plant Tissue Culture. You have to work at it.
- Overview of in vitro Preservation of Potato and Use of the Gene Bank Material in Estonia. They like coloured potatoes in Estonia.
- The key roles of seed banks in plant biodiversity management in New Zealand. Are many and varied.
- Microsatellite and flow cytometry analysis to help understand the origin of Dioscorea alata polyploids. Unreduced gametes did it.
- Genetic variation in progenies of Jacaranda cuspidifolia Mart using the fan systematic design. Yon can measure genetic variation and evaluate performance under different spacings at the same time, which is important in a tree.
- Diversity analysis in Plectranthus edulis (Vatke) Agnew collection in Ethiopia. As ever, a considerable amount of variability was found. Oh hum.
- The European seed legislation on conservation varieties: focus, implementation, present and future impact on landrace on farm conservation. There should be more landraces in the Common Catalogue.
- Characterization of Zulu sheep production system: Implications for conservation and improvement. If they’re so drought tolerant, why is drought threatening them? Well, there’s drought, and then there’s drought.
- Effects of paraquat on genetic diversity and protein profiles of six varieties of Celosia in South-Western Nigeria. That would be a tasty and diverse local leafy green. Well, before the paraquat anyway.
Nibbles: Sustainability, Decaffeinated coffee, Salep orchids, Conference, Negroamaro
- The Sustainable Development Solutions Initiative wants your comments on its report Solutions for Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems. You have till 15 August. h/t ILRI.
- We can do you natural decaf, if you’re willing to risk losing the entire coffee crop to drought or insects.
- Likewise, we can do you Turkish ice-cream, but you may have to do without some orchids in future.
- I don’t suppose the January 2014 meeting on “Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture in a Changing Climate” being organised by NordGen will be able to help, but it might.
- I confess, I have found myself sipping a Negroamaro and wondering how it got that name.
Nibbles: Feed lots, Tom Wagner, Ag Game, Cereal maps, Climate change, All change, Bananas extinct?, Permaculture course, Criminal urban ag, IPRs and GMOs
- Feed lots, from the ever-wonderful Nicola Twilley – is the first of our eye-openers.
- Bifurcated carrots is hosting a PDF profile of Tom Wagner, prolific breeder of tomatoes and potatoes.
- Katherine McDonald is keen on a farming simulator game. Games? Who has time? Maybe this weekend.
- 1969 maps of cereals in India. I’d love to see them updated. A project for …
- … Jacob van Etten. He and Emile Frison say that “Harnessing Diversity by Connecting People is the Key to Climate Adaptation in Agriculture”.
- On Dr Frison’s last day as DG of Bioversity International. So, farewell then …
- … the banana. Pat Heslop-Harrison consulted by BBC’s The Food Programme. Here’s his take on Bananas and their future.
- Cornell University is offering an online course in permaculture design.
- Wouldn’t it be cool if the city planners in Los Angeles decriminalized urban agriculture?
- Grist gets to grips with the locks that imprison GMO research – real and imaginary.
Brainfood: Coloured wheat, Very wild wheat, Yam bean, Turkish pigeons, Impact of margarine, Refugia, GM and choice, Indian sorghum, Cameroonian oil palm
- The anthocyanin content of blue and purple coloured wheat cultivars and their hybrid generations. In other news, there are blue and purple wheat cultivars.
- Phylogenetic relationships and Y genome origin in Elymus L. sensu lato (Triticeae; Poaceae) based on single-copy nuclear Acc1 and Pgk1 gene sequences. It’s a very diverse genus, probably polyphyletic, and has exchanged genes with Aegilops/Triticum in the past. And could again in the future, presumably.
- Microsatellite Markers for the Yam Bean Pachyrhizus (Fabaceae). They work, both on the 3 (sic) cultivated species and 2 wild relatives.
- The domestic livestock resources of Turkey: inventory of pigeon groups and breeds with notes on breeder organizations. 72 breeds? Really?
- Land use impact assessment of margarine. Land occupation by the crops involved has a bigger impact on ecosystem services and biodiversity than the transformation process.
- Bio-cultural refugia — Safeguarding diversity of practices for food security and biodiversity. Important for food security locally, but also because of the memories of how the “surprises of the past” were handled.
- Farmer’s choice of seeds in four EU countries under different levels of GM crop adoption. More GM adoption = less choice. For maize in 4 European countries anyway.
- Sorghum landraces patronized by tribal communities in Adilabad district, Andhra Pradesh. And now safe in NBPGR too.
- Molecular characterization of oil palm Elaeis guineensis Jacq. materials from Cameroon. It’s all one big populations, and you don’t need that many accessions to represent the whole.