- RICA: A rice crop calendar for Asia based on MODIS multi year data. RiceAtlas validated. Still trying to figure out how to mash it up with genebank accession locality data though. Any GIS geniuses out there to help me?
- AEGIS, the Virtual European Genebank: Why It Is Such a Good Idea, Why It Is Not Working and How It Could Be Improved. Certify genebanks, that’s how.
- Reap the crop wild relatives for breeding future crops. Needs good data and certified genebanks. Plus gene editing.
- Opportunities and Challenges to Improve a Public Research Program in Plant Breeding and Enhance Underutilized Plant Genetic Resources in the Tropics. Needs better social networking. Plus better data and certified genebanks, presumably.
- From seed to sequence: Dematerialization and the battle to (re)define genetic resources. Ah yes, data.
- Current Advancements and Limitations of Gene Editing in Orphan Crops. Ah yes, gene editing.
- Revitalizing Traditional Agricultural Practices: Conscious Efforts to Create a More Satisfying Culture. Meanwhile, in Sweden…
- Sacred natural sites and biodiversity conservation: a systematic review. Of course sacred sites are good for biodiversity. But it’s always good to have the data.
- Global relationships between crop diversity and nutritional stability. Sacred sites are not enough, alas.
- Preserving local biodiversity through crop diversification. Crop diversity is even good for birds…
- Concentrating vs. spreading our footprint: how to meet humanity’s needs at least cost to nature. …but, overall intensification of agriculture coupled with sparing land for conservation (maybe even in sacred sites) is the best approach for wildlife. And humanity, for that matter. So, back to needing better data from certified genebanks, so we can get that intensification done, right?
- Quantifying the scale of genetic diversity extinction in the Anthropocene. Right!
Nibbles: Oil palm, Diverse forestry, Financing biodiversity
- Parasites of oil palm monocultures as avatars of hope and justice.
- 30 ways to leave your monoculture.
- French take on investing in natural capital. Hopefully not oil palm monocultures though.
Nibbles: Ethiopian gardens, Potato history, Early tobacco, Byzantine wine, American grapevines, Farmers & conservation
- Lecture on the enset (and other things) gardens of Ethiopia coming up in November.
- Book on the potato and governance tries to rescue small subsistence farmers from “the enormous condescension of posterity.”
- (Really) ancient Americans may have smoked around the campfire. Tobacco, people, just tobacco.
- Byzantine era wine factory found in Israel. Pass the bottle.
- Meanwhile, half a world away, Indigenous Americans were using their own grapes in their own way.
- Farmers and conservation of crop diversity.
Brainfood: Cola trade, Amalfi terraces, Satoyama value, Burkinabe cattle, Tree planting, Chickpea adoption, Varietal diversification, Wheat diversity, Maize adaptation, Stress breeding, Root & tubers, Cropping data
- Evidence of an Eleventh-Century AD Cola Nitida Trade into the Middle Niger Region. Before then, there was not much trade between the savannah and forest zones of West Africa, which is kind of remarkable.
- Risk factors and plant management activities for the terraced agricultural systems on the Amalfi coast (Italy): an interdisciplinary approach. The terrace walls need agriculture just as much as agriculture needs the walls. Had me wondering whether those terraces were there when the cola trade started up in West Africa.
- Nexus of the awareness of ecosystem services as a “public-benefit value” and “utility value for consumption”: an economic evaluation of the agricultural culture of Satoyama in Japan. Ecosystem services are hard to sell. Probably in Amalfi too, I bet.
- Values and Beliefs That Shape Cattle Breeding in Southwestern Burkina Faso. Community-based breeding programmes need trusted leadership. Don’t we all.
- Limited effects of tree planting on forest canopy cover and rural livelihoods in Northern India. Decades of tree planting wasted. If only there had been better leadership.
- Unplanned but well prepared: A reinterpreted success story of international agricultural research, and its implications. Yeah, but even when an intervention is a success, as in this case, the reasons are beyond the control of researchers. The lesson: plan for the unplannable…
- Smallholder farmer engagement in citizen science for varietal diversification enhances adaptive capacity and productivity in Bihar, India. …and bet on diversity, of course…
- Introducing Beneficial Alleles from Plant Genetic Resources into the Wheat Germplasm. …like wheat breeders have been doing…
- A B73 x Palomero Toluqueño mapping population reveals local adaptation in Mexican highland maize. …and maize farmers too for that matter.
- Developing climate-resilient crops: improving plant tolerance to stress combination. And the need for diversity is only going to increase.
- Suitability of root, tuber, and banana crops in Central Africa can be favoured under future climates. I wouldn’t plan on it though…
- A review of global gridded cropping system data products. …but it’s good to finally know how all the different products that can be used to make these predictions stack up against each other.
How are plants doing out there?
The International Workshop on the Global Plant Health Assessment is being held in Toulouse, France, on October 5-8, 2021.
The Global Plant Health Assessment (GPHA) aims to provide a first-time ever overall assessment of plant health in the natural and human-made ecosystems of the world. Plant health is assessed through the functions that plants ensure in ecosystems: “ecosystem services”. The GPHA will assess plant health on the basis of published, science‐ and fact‐based, expert evaluations.
There’s lots of interesting reporting on Twitter using #GPHA2021.
