- Yucca flowers not at all yucky to eat.
- Dept of Schadenfreude: First parasitic nematodes reported in biofuel crops.
- “I’ve often thought about this return to local knowledge and food in India.” Had no idea there had been a move away from local food in India.
- Biological collections porn.
- Breeders’ wish list published.
- First GM bananas harvested. Do they make good beer?
- How to do Geographical Extrapolation Domain Analysis. Off you go now.
Nibbles: Fungi, Dogs, Protected areas, Banana, Ethiopia, Haiti
- Chromosomes can hop from one pathogenic fungus to another. Probably not a good thing.
- Dogs originated in the Middle East after all. Decide, already, will ya?
- IUCN also has a Protected Area of the Day. Genebank of the day, anyone?
- Problems with bananas in Uganda surprisingly mainly abiotic. Live and learn.
- Vaviblog celebrates Gary Nabhan’s birthday. Kinda. Which is also St Patrick’s Day? How cool is that?
- Report on Haiti’s seed security. Needs digesting.
Stripe rust collection makes a move
Yes, fungi have genebanks too.
Nibbles: Seeds, Genebanks, Backed up, Seed banks, Pollinators
- Molecular approaches to seed quality.
- CIAT answers the perennial question: how is Svalbard like a hard disk?
- Speaking of which, Svalbard is now the “world’s most diverse collection of crop diversity“. Er …?
- But … “Despite the rapid progress, Fowler said the bank still has significant holes in its collection“.
- Survival Seed Bank smackdown!
- Global pollinator declines: a review of a review.
Another critically endangered crop wild relative
Like London busses in days of old, the IUCN’s endangered species doodad is featuring another crop wild relative just days after the previous one. This time it is Ramosmania rodriguesii, a somewhat distant relative of coffee, at one time reduced to a single tree on the Indian Ocean island of Rodrigues.
RBG Kew has been propagating the plant, and has this to say about its uses:
Locals on Rodrigues believe that a tea made from the leaves of café marron is an invigorating drink that can treat venereal diseases and hangovers, although this has not been scientifically proven. An even more fanciful story is the ability of café marron to prevent children from having nightmares, but only if the child’s cuddly toy is thrown at the plant!
Café marron clearly hasn’t had much opportunity to contribute to coffee breeding programmes — it only set its first seed after being brought into captivity in 2003 — but you never know.