- More livestock films than you can shake a stick at.
- The Consortium all at sea.
- Road trip! Herbarium specimen collecting in Nepal.
- Call for nutritional composition data on the staples of Papua New Guinea.
- Wanna intensify agriculture in the highlands of East Africa? Here comes the PowerPoint.
- The Tragedy of the Commons averted in Mongolia through collective action.
- A new approach to functional traits? I don’t see the difference myself, but I’ll take their word for it.
Banana threat averted? Not quite yet
Strange news from Scidev.net, which reports that:
[R]esults of a field study in Davao City, on the island of Mindanao in the Philippines, show that two Cavendish varieties are highly resistant to Panama disease.
These varieties, he said, were produced in Taiwan by selecting improved mutants from the Cavendish variety.
Why strange? For one thing, because Cavendish bananas have long been resistant to Panama disease. That’s why they are so widespread, because they replaced Gros Michel, the previous dominant variety, which was wiped out commercially by Panama disease in the 1950s and 1960s.
To give credit, Scidev.net explains that the threat is a new form of Panama disease, which is caused by the fungus Fusarium oxysporum, known as Tropical Race 4. Cavendish was resistant to race 1 of Fusarium wilt, to which Gros Michel was susceptible. Tropical Race 4 attacks Cavendish too. But not, according to the report, all Cavendish plants. Some clones, like those ones from Taiwan, are showing resistance.
Strange too because the thrust of the Scidev.net piece is that Filipino scientists are calling on the government to establish a National Research, Development and Extension Center for Banana. But hang on. Tropical Race 4 is a global menace. The very fact that Taiwanese selections are showing promise on Mindanao in the Philippines should give pause.
Wouldn’t it be much more efficient for all governments in the region and beyond to contribute to a global effort? The big banana concerns were to some extent to blame for the demise of Gros Michel and the march of Panama disease, as they abandoned infected plantations and brought new areas into cultivation until there was nowhere left to run and they had to switch. This time around, they could support a globally co-ordinated effort to find and distribute more resistant varieties.
Nibbles: Vigna umbellata, Afghanistan wheat catalogue, Pingali, Camptotheca, Water stress, Organic Farming for Health and Prosperity
- Crops for the Future finds a nice ricebean project.
- The wheats of Afghanistan.
- A former ICRISAT intern speaks. The world listens.
- Collecting the Happy Tree of China.
- Global water stress maps. Does CCAFS know? Or care?
- Rodale hearts organic.
Brainfood: Rice yield, Carrot evaluation, Caper chemistry, Rice fortification, Range shifts, Baobab, Tunisian thyme, Drought-tolerant rice
- Rice yields and yield gaps in Southeast Asia: Past trends and future outlook. If average farmers became like best-yielding farmers that would meet 2050 needs, except in the Philippines, where some more structural stuff is needed.
- Method of evaluating diversity of carrot roots using a self-organizing map and image data. The sound you hear is that of butterflies being broken on wheels.
- Bioactive compounds from Capparis spinosa subsp. rupestris. Are pretty much the same as those in subsp. spinosa.
- Constitutive Overexpression of the OsNAS Gene Family Reveals Single-Gene Strategies for Effective Iron- and Zinc-Biofortification of Rice Endosperm. So that’s a good thing, right?
- Analysis of climate paths reveals potential limitations on species range shifts. Corridors not the answer. Or not the only answer. Or not the full answer.
- An updated review of Adansonia digitata: A commercially important African tree. Do baobab scientists not sometimes long for the Time Before Reviews, when they actually, you know, did stuff?
- Genetic diversity, population structure and relationships of Tunisian Thymus algeriensis Boiss. et Reut. and Thymus capitatus Hoffm. et Link. assessed by isozymes. Dad, what’s an isozyme? Ah, son, it’s a thing people used in the Time Before DNA. The two species are different, they need to be managed in different ways.
- Potential Impact of Biotechnology on Adaption of Agriculture to Climate Change: The Case of Drought Tolerant Rice Breeding in Asia. Kinda pointless: “in severe drought both the [drought tolerant] and the conventional varieties were either not planted or, if planted, did not yield”.
Nibbles: Elm disease, Kew genebank, Maize domestication, Wildlife vs livestock, Medieval figs, Alternative food security, Spineless lulo, Mangos for Haiti, Aubergine breeding, Urban ag in Japan, West African research
- “Beginning in the late 1990s, Kock travelled throughout Ontario collecting twigs of seemingly healthy mature elms, in what amounted to an elm dating service.”
- “…a curated inventory of miscellaneous interestingness” lands on the Millennium Seed Bank. Hilarity ensues.
- What do hopscotch, architecture and maize have in common?
- Zebras good for cattle.
- The fig deconstructed.
- “Improve yields through crop diversity…” ??? Who are these people?
- Crops for the Future bemoans the loss of “a spineless variety of Solanum quitoense.” Someone, somewhere must still have it, surely.
- Mangos: Haiti’s new best friend?
- Home-bred eggplants. Or aubergines.
- “Urban agriculture in Japan, cultivating sustainability and well being.” Again? Still?
- West Africa to get bunch of specialist biotechnology centres for crop improvement. No word on where the existing national genebanks fit in. Nor, ahem, what role IITA, ICRISAT and the other CGIAR Centres are going to play in all this.