VIR’s Pavlovsk Research Station, a set on Flickr.
Still all to play for at Pavlovsk.
Plantwise Knowledge Bank: The Video
The Plantwise knowledge bank will be a comprehensive global resource bringing together the best worldwide knowledge on crops, pests, diseases and weeds.
Well, it’s not exactly the citizen science advocated by some of our readers, 1 but this is an interesting exercise in a sort of crowdsourcing. One hopes that variety-level information on the crop will be recorded at the same time as all that pest and disease stuff. And that the whole lot won’t be behind some paywall.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfEfxLcgHk4&feature=player_embeddedNibbles: Lupine, Methane, Food crisis, Nutritionists, Carrots, Poi, Barhal, Mung bean, Invasives, European bison, Mango
- Saving the scrub lupine. Well, it’s a crop wild relative of sorts.
- Dietary approaches to reduction of belching. No, not less beer and peanuts in front of the TV.
- “Governments and institutions should strongly promote new agricultural technologies suitable for smallholders through increased investment in crop breeding and livestock research.” That would be IFPRI on the actions needed to prevent recurring food crises. Hope that includes supporting the genebanks.
- “Can’t nutritionists make up their minds? They keep changing things!” Nuff said.
- Carrots are exotic? In Canada? Yes indeedy.
- Rachel dissects the cost of proper poi in Hawaii.
- Behold Barhal, relative of breadfruit.
- High yielding mung-bean repatriated to Somalia. Genebanks protect and serve?
- Do your bit for conservation, eat an invasive. Or, perhaps, a bison?
- Bad news for Indian mangoes. What I want to know is whether there are any varieties that are doing really well.
- Mediterranean forests going up in smoke. Bad for the crop wild relatives in them too, no doubt
Mapping drought risk
Just a quick follow-up to the rhyming couplet on water-related stresses in the just-published Brainfood. The Center for Hazards and Risks Research (CHRR) at Columbia University, which we have mentioned here before in connection with tsunami risk, also has data on Global Drought Hazard Distribution.
With a little R-related effort by Robert 2 you can get a Google Earth file, which looks like this for Asia. 3 I’ve also added MODIS fire hotspots for the past 24 hours, merely because I can. That would be the little fire icons.
And that means you can mash up drought risk with germplasm origin (from Genesys, say), in this case from Chad as an example.
Which is a great thing to be able to do because as we have just had reconfirmed by our friend Dag Endresen, the origin of germplasm allows you to make some predictions about its performance.
Brainfood: Chia, Lentils, Bambara groundnut, Cacao, Amaranths, Rwanda, Cherimoya, Conservation, Drought, Plasticity, Phenology
- Extending the range of an ancient crop, Salvia hispanica L.—a new ω3 source. So we can grow it in the US, natch.
- Characterization of the lentil landrace Santo Stefano di Sessanio from Abruzzo, Italy. In the market, some are not what they claim to be; I’m shocked.
- Genetic diversity in Bambara groundnut (Vigna subterranea (L.) Verdc.) as revealed by phenotypic descriptors and DArT marker analysis. They’re pretty diverse, especially in Cameroon/Nigeria, which may be where they were domesticated.
- Genetic diversity and spatial structure in a new distinct Theobroma cacao L. population in Bolivia. They’re different from other cacao populations, and probably indigenous to Bolivia.
- Systematics and taxonomic delimitation of vegetable, grain and weed amaranths: a morphological and biochemical approach. Relationships? It’s complex.
- First and second millennium a.d. agriculture in Rwanda: archaeobotanical finds and radiocarbon dates from seven sites. Earliest pearl millet (Pennisetum glaucum), finger millet (Eleusine coracana) and sorghum (Sorghum bicolor) in the region, but do they really mean AD?
- The use of consecutive micrografting improves micropropagation of cherimoya (Annona cherimola Mill.) cultivars. It does, what more can I tell you?
- Social and ecological synergy: Local rulemaking, forest livelihoods, and biodiversity conservation. Big meta-analysis reveals complexity and the importance of participation by “local forest users.”
And here are a trio of rhyming couplets, if you see what I mean:
- The relative importance of drought and other water-related constraints for major food crops in South Asian farming systems. Drought and water constraints are widespread in South Asia. Though they contribute no more than 20-30% of current yield gaps, investment in genetic solutions needs to continue. Alas, there are significant Challenges in breeding for yield increase for drought. Nothing that can’t be overcome, though.
- Rethinking species’ ability to cope with rapid climate change. It’s the plasticity, stupid.
- Meta-analyses suggest strong selection on flowering phenology both in plants in general and in chickpea in particular.