- It’s that time again. National Public Radio eats weeds and other wild foods.
- It’s that time again. The complexity of Maple Syrups (but no mention of variety).
- It’s that time again. Mainstream media get hold of Striga control story.
- It’s that time again. Wheat fungus love from The New York Times to our friends at ICARDA.
- It’s that time again. Is quinoa kosher?
Nibbles: Wheat rust, Mill, Cassava
- A big-deal wheat rust conference started today at ICARDA in Aleppo, and there are various webby ways to keep in touch, like RSS (pointless?) and Twitter.
- Stop Press: Wheat rust presentations now on SlideShare.
- A windmill in south London. Jeremy says, “I hope it grinds slow, but exceeding fine.”
- Cassava!
Nibbles: Languages, Bats, Climate change, Bioinformatics, Wild Garlic
- Bioinformatics techniques applied to languages.
- Bats are agrobiodiversity too.
- “Biodiversity is under severe threat from climate change, but we need to be careful that we don’t give a false impression of what our confidence is.” Attribution to climate change easy at global level; at local, not so much.
- Problems with bioinformatics? BioStar is a site for asking, answering and discussing bioinformatics questions.
- A wild garlic festival in Wales this Saturday.
UG99 resistant varieties
In case you’re not following the discussion here on knowledge management, here’s a map of the wheat varieties resistant to UG99.
If you use Google to search for images of “UG99 resistance” it is right up there, near the top, and several versions are available…
Brainfood: Brazil nut, Cassava relatives, Botanic gardens, Pollinators, OECD, IPM, Community genetics, Insect resistance, Marco Polo sheep, Abiotic stresses, Better climate change modelling
- Made in Brazil? Brazil Nut, yes. The genus Manihot, not so much.
- The role of botanic gardens as resource and introduction centres in the face of global change. They have one. But they need to be more like genebanks.
- Global growth and stability of agricultural yield decrease with pollinator dependence. Analysis of time-series FAO production data shows that more pollinator-dependent crops have lower yield growth and lower yield stability. So both should benefit from more active management of wild pollinators and their habitats. Results can be extended to other ecosystem services but that was a bridge too far for this reader.
- Draft Policy Framework for Investment in Agriculture. “The purpose of this document is … to initiate discussion.” Off you go.
- Deterrent and insecticidal properties of bean seed (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) whole meal or protein extract incorporated into the diet of Callosobruchus maculatus (F.) (Coleoptera: Bruchidae). To protect chickpeas from bruchid beetles, add bean proteins.
- Community genetics: at the crossroads of ecology and evolutionary genetics, a special issue of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, which includes …
- … Insect-resistant biotech crops and their impacts on beneficial arthropods. The abstract gives nothing away: “The findings … are discussed.”
- High connectivity among argali sheep from Afghanistan and adjacent countries means you need international collaboration for conservation. Good luck with that.
- Better phenomics and genomics means you can do really cool Genetic analysis of abiotic stress tolerance in crops, and their wild relatives of course. But we knew that.
- Five ways of Improving assessment and modelling of climate change impacts on global terrestrial biodiversity: more data, process-based modelling, better understanding of role of community interactions and of the effect of genetic variation, and better functional groupings of species for improved simulations of vegetation distribution.