Threats

September 22, 2011September 22, 2011

Crawling the web for agrobiodiversity threats

We have often mused here — mainly idly, it must be said — about the possibility of an automated, internet-based system for monitoring the threat of genetic erosion. While we muse, it seems, others roll their sleeves up and, well, do stuff. Welcome to the Threat News Explorer, news of which has reached us via Resilience Science. We’re talking here about “multiple interacting threats (wildfire, insects, disease, invasive species, climate change, land use change)” to “wildlands,” rather than agricultural biodiversity, and so far it looks like mainly in the US. But still, it’s a start. And perhaps of interest to our friends working on the crop wild relatives of the US.

LATER: If you were doing agrobiodiversity threats, you might look at new disease records, for example…

September 21, 2011September 21, 2011

Nibbles: Polyculture, Melons, Cheese 2011, Australian medicinals

Do polycultures have a role in modern agriculture? Well, do they? h/t The Scientist Gardener.
Texas breeders go for better melons.
“Children from the city who try this yogurt don’t like it, but they’re not healthy like my children!”
Hotspots for Aboriginal traditional medicinal plants mapped to within an inch of their lives, thanks to GBIF.

September 20, 2011September 20, 2011

Nibbles: Nigerian farmer speaks, Kenya meeting, Ecuador, Striga-resistant sorghum, Designer veg, Cottontail, Funding conservation, African adaptation

Why one Nigerian agriculture student will not become a farmer.
Meeting in Kenya on agricultural biodiversity, and other stuff, in October.
Ecuador and access to genetic resources (in Spanish).
“Scientists on the verge of releasing new striga-resistant sorghum.” Drought-resistant too! No need for push-pull then?
One wacky plant breeder’s story.
Attractive local bunny in trouble. Not what you’re thinking, get your mind out of the gutter.
Forest bonds in the offing. Genebank bonds, anyone?
Climate change adaptation in Africa: examples of genetic and agronomic fixes. Need both, I guess.

September 19, 2011September 19, 2011

Brainfood: Sorghum core diversity, Indian mango diversity, Montia potential, Assisted migration, Corchorus diversity, Soil DNA, Fire!, Coffee pest, Earthworms

Making life simpler for you, we have created an open Mendeley group for the papers we link to here. If you’re already using Mendeley, feel free to join the group (and use it to suggest papers we might miss). You can also discuss papers there, but frankly, we’d prefer you to do that here. Or on Facebook. Even if you don’t use Mendeley, you can subscribe to the RSS feed from the group and get stuff that way. Are we cool, or what?

Variation in flowering time in sorghum core collection and mapping of QTLs controlling flowering time by association analysis. 4 QTLs and 7 loci detected under different conditions. Is that, like, a lot?
Evaluation of genetic diversity among commercial cultivars, hybrids and local mango (Mangifera indica L.) genotypes of India using cumulative RAPD and ISSR markers. Just one big happy family.
Montia fontana L. (Portulacaceae), an interesting wild vegetable traditionally consumed in the Iberian Peninsula. Aquatic herb has high fibre and lipids. High oxalate too though. Breeders enjoined to get to work. On Montia. Riiiiight.
Taking stock of the assisted migration debate. It’s REALLY complicated. Scientists are not that great at explaining it. More work needed all round. But now we have fancy diagrams.
Genetic diversity and relationships in Corchorus olitorius (Malvaceae s.l.) inferred from molecular and morphological data. Out of Africa. Ethiopia, to be exact.
Meta-barcoding of ‘dirt’ DNA from soil reflects vertebrate biodiversity. Wonder whether it works with agricultural ‘dirt.’
The human dimension of fire regimes on Earth. Entertaining gallop through the history of the use of fire to manage landscapes around the world and down the ages. Need to catch my breath here.
Some like it hot: The influence and implications of climate change on coffee berry borer (Hypothenemus hampei) and coffee production in East Africa. That title just had to come sometime, didn’t it.
A critique of earthworm molecular phylogenetics. So apparently “molecular phylogenetics is now on the verge of revolutionizing earthworm systematics.” Beyond satire.

September 16, 2011September 16, 2011

Objections to “development”

Fishermen and rice farmers in Cambodia’s Ratanakiri province don’t want dams, electricity or even compensation … They just want to preserve their way of life.

What are they, weird or something?

The villagers in question are objecting to proposed dams on tributaries of the Mekong. And it isn’t as if they want better compensation or anything like that. They just don’t want the dams. They want to keep fishing and growing rice. Ah, but you can’t stop progress, can you?