Threats

Nibbles: Plant breeding book, Ug99, NGS, Monitoring, Genetic diversity and productivity, Adaptive evolution, Amaranthus, Nabhan, Herbarium databases, Pepper, Shade coffee and conservation, Apples, Pathogen diversity, Phytophthora

Book on history of plant breeding reviewed.
Rust never sleeps.
Ask not what next generation sequencing can do for you.
Long-term datasets in biodiversity research. Nothing about genetic diversity though. Bummer.
And genetic diversity is important, is it? Yep, it increases productivity, at least in Arabidopsis.
No evidence of adaptive evolution in plants. What? Surely some mistake? I’m serious. And don’t call me Shirley.
The latest from Worldwatch on African leafy veggies. Again, some links would have been nice.
And Worldwatch also interviews Gary Nabhan on Vavilov.
You can browse Tropicos specimens in Google Earth.
Using pepper to protect stored rice.
More evidence of the goodness of shade coffee.
The diversity of Bosnian apples.
Mammal plus bird species richness explains 72% of country-to-country variation in the number of human pathogens. Diversity begets diversity. But which way does the causality go?
Phytophthora infestans in Estonia: “…higher proportion of metalaxyl resistant isolates from large conventional farms than from small conventional farms or from organic farms.” Metalaxyl is a fungicide.

Beer with shrooms. Well, not quite, but one can hope.
No more corn detasseling? Say it ain’t so.
“Oman to Plant 100,000 Coconut Trees in Dhofar.” That’s in the south of the country, a fascinating area. And one asks, as ever: What varieties, and what’s going to happen to the local material?
Be like the bamboo, man.
From DAD-Net, news of a mini-conference on the camel. And an article on same.
The struggle for forest grazing rights in India.
Dump blueberries, eat local berries, Brits told. Pavlovsk still in trouble.

How to identify small grains.
Can you identify a garlic?
“You can’t expect a starving person to save a tree.” I s’pose not. But is that any reason to endow a chair in conflict resolution and development?
“A farmer needs to let the garden get wild in order to protect it from the wild.” Course she does.
Sorghum a huge success in Kitui, Kenya.
Field trip to a grower of old grain varieties.
New cowpea varieties selling like hotcakes, FARA told. And the old cowpeas?

New cassava varieties saving Zanzibar. Good to hear, though as ever one worries about what’s happened to the local landraces.
Alder’s photos of the Potato Park. Do follow her travels around South America in search of agrobiodiversity.
Namibia looks for other marula products.
Saving the taimen in Mongolia. That would be a fish. A mighty fish.
Interesting Indian symposia: wild fruits; “lifestyle floriculture.” Oh, to have more information.
“Gariguette strawberries are an old variety and are non-licensed.” Crazy, eh?

Conserving dambos for livelihoods in southern Africa. How many CWRs are found in such wetland habitats around the world, I wonder.
Cucumis not out of Africa.
Exploring “the connection between traditional knowledge of herbs, edible and medicinal plants and media networked culture.” And why not.
PBS video on malnutrition.
Fungal exhibition at RBG Edinburgh.
Indian Council on Agricultural Research framing guidelines for private-public partnerships in seed sector. That’ll stop the GM seed pirates.
Conserve African humpless cattle! They’re needed for breeding.
UG99 — and crop wild relatives — in the news. The proper news. The one people pay attention to.
Vanilla lovers better start stocking up.
Kenyan farmers earning money selling sorghum to brewers. What’s not to like.