- 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.
Nibbles: Hunger, Breeds, Jatropha, Value chains, Vegetables, Temperature, Quinoa
- The Lancet waxes optimistic on hunger and poverty goals.
- Korea keen to help compile information on African livestock.
- Is there nothing Jatropha cannot do? Now it’s a carbon sink.
- Fijian ginger and Ethiopian beans; two value chains explored in the latest New Agriculturalist.
- An International Symposium on Vegetables in August 2014, with lots of interest, but as it is under the ISHS you’ll have to pay to read about it.
- “Temperature alters population dynamics of common plant pests.” Ya don’t say.
- “Help a Bolivian farmer: Eat quinoa“. Now there’s a headline with attitude.
Nibbles: Baobab, Courses, Social Media, “Exotic” edibles, Cereals on display, Ithyphallic lettuce, Ancient manure, Entomophagy, SRI, Weed evolution
Quick catch-up after 10 days away edition. If I missed anything spectacularly important, it’s bound to resurface.
- A baobab (not the baobab) in danger of extinction.
- Could it be saved by attending a course on Contemporary Approaches to Genetic Resources Conservation and Use?
- And if it’s courses you’re interested in, we have:
- Agriculture nutrition linkages, also from Wageningen.
- Agroecology – the Future of Farming?, from the College of Enlightened Agriculture at Schumacher College. Why the weaselly question-mark?
- And a conference on domestication.
- The value and use of social media as communication tool in the plant sciences deconstructed by AOBBlog.
- AOBBlog also gives the “cunning culinarists” at Kew some stick on their 100 exotic edibles.
- Personally, I’d quite like to try Dead Man’s Fingers.
- And take a look at Kew’s new display of summer cereals.
- I don’t see any mention, however, of lettuce as a sacred sex symbol, with added vocabulary-enhancing properties.
- And speaking of manure, its use is almost as old as agriculture.
- If I had a donut for every why-don’t-we-all-eat-insects article I’ve read, I’d be spectacularly overweight by now.
- Big Picture Agriculture offers An Interview with Cornell’s Dr Erika Styger about the System of Crop Intensification (SRI-Rice).
- Is watergrass (Echinochloa) a problem for SRI-Rice? I don’t know, but it supports Ford Denison’s argument about the speed of evolution in weeds …
- … prompted by Carl Zimmer’s article on weeds in the New York Times.
Nibbles: Brazil nut, PVP, Dog evolution, Plant Treaty in India, Kerala veggies, Rust tracking latest, Adapt or die, Quinoa latest, NZ seed exchange, African soybeans, Ancient aquaculture
- The Brazil nut needs its pollinators.
- How USDA protects plant varieties.
- American dogs are Asian, not European.
IndiaNepal working out how to implement the ITPGRFA.- Kerala’s vegetable terrace gardeners.
- Haven’t heard much about Ug99 lately, have we? Doesn’t mean people aren’t keeping a careful eye on it.
- Climate change 10,000 times faster than vertebrate evolution.
- Why quinoa is not “taking over the world.”
- Not even New Zealand. Though not for want of trying.
- In the meantime, soybeans taking over Africa?
- Aquaculture that’s sustainable and ancient. Includes taro fish ponds, which for some reason seem to me cool beyond measure.
The Indonesian fires and crop wild relatives
I know what you’re wondering. You’re wondering whether those fires in Indonesia which are causing so much trouble with haze in Singapore and other neighbouring places are also endangering any crop wild relatives back home. Well, thanks to the following Twitter exchange with the GIS people at Kew, I now know (or have been reminded, actually) that NASA makes available global data on active fires:
@AgroBioDiverse @worldresource yes with GeoCAT & kml layer import – this is from last 24 hrs http://t.co/3utE5w6cMb pic.twitter.com/RqtpAIsm0n
— KewGIS (@KewGIS) July 10, 2013
We can of course mash that up in Google Earth with, say, the distribution of wild rice (Oryza spp) from Genesys. That would be the little pale blue circles in the map reproduced below.
Which does suggest that at least some of the Indonesian fires may be occurring in wild rice habitats. They may actually be beneficial to some of the weedier species, though, for all I know. Anyway, as ever, it’s nice to have the data. And, just as importantly, be able to play with it.