- Breeding cacao in Ecuador.
- Supporting specialty crops in the US.
- Tasty Chinese piglets.
Desperately seeking data
We’re trying something new here, trying to keep on the cutting edge of the inter webs.
What happened was, a couple of days ago, we saw a video about a warning service for UK growers of winter oilseed rape (aka canola). There’s a model that predicts when fungus outbreaks are particularly likely, so farmers don’t have to spray with fungicide on a schedule, rather than when most needed.
That’s good. But, just out of interest, I wondered how much diversity there is in the resistance to the two prime fungal threats among the varieties of oilseed rape grown in the UK. Because, maybe, farmers and researchers there could even consider whether sowing a mixture might give them as much protection as a fungicide. Just a thought, y’know.
What followed (curated and enlivened thanks to Luigi’s efforts) was https://wtcampaigns.wordpress.com/2012/10/30/ash-dieback-chalara/, and not in a particularly good way. 1
Bottom line: there is actually a lot of data at the HGCA, but it is in PDFs, which makes it harder to do any sort of analysis, and I couldn’t find anything on the area planted to specific varieties. Oh, and the email trail went cold very quickly.
Nibbles: Cryo primer, Ag development paradigms smackdown, Edible book, Roots & tubers conference, Deep taxonomy, WWF ag investment report, Forecasting rape disease, Amaranth, Competition
- Science 2.0 Conservation 101 #fail.
- It’s the roads, stupid. Well, not only. Cowen cowed.
- Big book on the edible plants of Central America online.
- Big root and tuber meet gets off the ground in Nigeria with pean for cassava.
- How to link taxonomic names to everything
- Responsible investment in agriculture. Mitt Romney alerted.
- Video on diseases of oilseed rape, Rothamsted shares forecast (and it’s not good). So, is there any diversity in host response?
- Amaranth, big time.
- Correcting the capitalist tools on their misunderstanding of evolution. The tragedy is, they don’t seem to know they don’t know.
Brainfood: Organic ag, Garlic conservation costs, Spelt malting, Wild rice genetics, Diversity and ecosystem function, Old late blight, Urbanization and biodiversity, Seed laws, DNA from herbaria, Fruit & veg & school, Quinoa bars, Maize introgression
- Organic vegetable farms are not nutritionally disadvantaged compared with adjacent conventional or integrated vegetable farms in Eastern Australia. Something for the next meta-analysis.
- Comparing costs for different conservation strategies of garlic (Allium sativum L.) germplasm in genebanks. It depends.
- Malting process optimization of spelt (Triticum spelta L.) for the brewing process. You can make a decent beer from spelt. Can I do the evaluation?
- Genetic differentiation of Oryza ruffipogon [sic] Griff. from Hainan Island and Guangdong, China Based on Hd1 and Ehd1 genes. It’s different, because of different ecology.
- Plant species diversity and genetic diversity within a dominant species interactively affect plant community biomass. In other words, the higher the genetic diversity within the dominant species, the further the effect of species diversity on biomass goes from negative to positive. Bottom line is that you have to consider multiple diversity levels in relating biodiversity to ecosystem functioning. At least in this ecosystem.
- Evidence for presence of the founder Ia mtDNA haplotype of Phytophthora infestans in 19th century potato tubers from the Rothamsted archives. “…the founder Ia mtDNA haplotype survived in potato tubers after 1846 and was present over 30 years later in the UK.”
- Global forecasts of urban expansion to 2030 and direct impacts on biodiversity and carbon pools. Urban area to triple, affecting important biodiversity hotspots. Biggest surprise to me was Turkey. Gotta be a lot of CWRs there that are going to be threatened by urbanization. But I guess this is good news for urban agriculture?
- Seed Governance at the Intersection of Multiple Global and Nation-State Priorities: Modernizing Seeds in Turkey. Developing countries are opting for laws that favor commercialization and privatization because they’re buying into the currently dominant paradigm of what agricultural development means. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t. And if my aunt had wheels she’d be a bus.
- DNA Damage in Plant Herbarium Tissue. There isn’t enough of it to matter.
- Systematic review and meta-analysis of school-based interventions to improve daily fruit and vegetable intake in children aged 5 to 12 y. Fruit yes, veggies no.
- Use of cereal bars with quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa W.) to reduce risk factors related to cardiovascular diseases. Only 22 young(ish) subjects, but promising.
- The Genomic Signature of Crop-Wild Introgression in Maize. The wild relative has helped the cultigen to adapt to highland Mexico.
A London botanical garden in trouble
It sounds as though the botanical garden of the South London Botanical Institute may be threatened by development. According to BGCI the garden has a particularly important collection of Rubus. The institute’s website mentions a Medicinal Border, Gerard’s Border, a Southern Hemisphere Area, and also that
British natives, ferns, scented plants, drought tolerant plants, monocots and unusual vegetables are also represented.
So some agricultural biodiversity is involved here, though I do not know to what extent the “unusual vegetables” and Rubus species, say, are to be found in other genebanks and botanical gardens. In any case, if you think losing this garden would be a bad idea, you can sign a petition. Fingers crossed.