- Meet a pumpkin breeder.
- Meet the history of atomic plant breeding.
- Meet a cassava anthropologist.
- Dial back the banana apocalypse stuff, banana guy says.
- On the other hand, the American chestnut apocalypse is all too real.
- A really wild pig.
- Grafting gone wild.
- Wild plants reveal a gene to speed plant breeding, someday.
- Beautiful Neolithic tools from the Sea of Galilee.
- And a beautiful, but slightly freaky, Egyptian rug. Made of cat hair.
Nibbles: Heirloom collection, Booze, Grape history, CWR training, New perennial wheat species, Brazilian cacao, Smelly durian, CIAT genebank
- “Every heirloom plant seed grown for food has a story…”
- The history of alcohol.
- The history of a particular alcohol-producing plant.
- U. of Minnesota students travel to crop cradle.
- They could just have gone to Washington State University.
- Brazil is back in the cacao game.
- Deconstructing durian’s smell is easier than you thought.
- The CIAT genebank in Scientific (Latin)American.
Brainfood: Pre-breeding, Wheat in Ethiopia, CAP & minor crops, IITA germplasm management, Cassava improvement, B73 maize inbred, Livestock uses, Range expansion, Sustainability standards, Soybean origins, Popping sorghum
- Evolving gene banks: improving diverse populations of crop and exotic germplasm with optimal contribution selection. Crop genebanks should learn from livestock breeding.
- Ethiopian wheat yield and yield gap estimation: A spatially explicit small area integrated data approach. You can explain 40% of the variation in wheat yield without leaving your office.
- Land Use, Yield and Quality Changes of Minor Field Crops: Is There Superseded Potential to Be Reinvented in Northern Europe? The CAP has been really bad for minor crops in Finland.
- Navigating international exchange of plant genetic resources amidst biosecurity challenges: experiences of IITA in Africa. Genebanks need to work closely with people who know about phytosanitary rules.
- Rooting for cassava: insights into photosynthesis and associated physiology as a route to improve yield potential. Canopy structure and architecture could do with improvement. No doubt IITA are working on that.
- Genetic variability within accessions of the B73 maize inbred line. Is greater than it should be.
- Using Rare Breeds in Animal-Assisted Activities: A New Model Proposed at the “Animal Farm” in Ladispoli (Rome, Italy). Worthy effort, terrible name.
- Adaptive and non-adaptive evolution of trait means and genetic trait correlations for herbivory resistance and performance in an invasive plant. When plants are released from pressure from natural enemies, they gradually lose resistance to herbivory and perform better, but independently.
- How Can High-Biodiversity Coffee Make It to the Mainstream Market? The Performativity of Voluntary Sustainability Standards (VSS) and Outcomes for Coffee Diversification. Apparently, it can’t, not without changing its flavour.
- Genetic diversity center of cultivated soybean (Glycine max) in China – New insight and evidence for the diversity center of Chinese cultivated soybean. Here. But not only.
- Heritability of Popping Characteristics in Sorghum Grain. You can breed for popping quality, but environment also has an effect.
Brainfood: Sustainable ag, American ag diversity, Valpolicella and CC, Heritage textiles
- Diversification, Yield and a New Agricultural Revolution: Problems and Prospects. It’s not about the yield.
- Spatiotemporal Patterns of Field Crop Diversity in the United States, 1870–2012. It peaked in 1960. Like Elvis.
- Resistance and resilience to changing climate of Tuscany and Valpolicella wine grape growing regions in Italy. Should they ever decide to move those grapes, now they know where to.
- Conservation and Valorization of Heritage Ethnographic Textiles. Like Neolithic beer, only with textiles. Hemp for IPK and VIR genebanks used to conserve and restore old Romanian shirts etc. hed by the National Museum of the Romanian Peasant.
Genebank accessions to restore old Romanian shirts
The National Museum of the Romanian Peasant has a heritage textile collection, and the odd shirt and carpet understandably occasionally needs restoration. So the museum has launched the interdisciplinary MYTHOS project (Development of Advanced Compatible Materials and Techniques and their Application for the Protection, Conservation and Restoration of Cultural Heritage Assets)…
…which…aims to obtain fibres, yarns and fabrics which will serve as reference materials. They will be greatly similar, biologically and technologically, to the fabrics used in the heritage textiles containing bast fibres. In this way, all restoration and conservation work will be safely carried out, while respecting the cultural and historical value of these heritage objects.
Since flax is not much grown any more in Romania, the museum had to go to genebanks in Germany and elsewhere to obtain old varieties.
It is also processing the resulting fibre according to traditional methods, and has come up with an artificial ageing process. But that’s not all. The idea is to also revitalize hemp cultivation.
In Romania, the efforts to revitalize the tradition of flax and hemp cultivation follow two directions: an industrial one, focused mainly on the export of seeds and a traditional one, targeting rural households. At this stage of the project, with a view of developing the second direction, we have involved a small producer of traditional fibres. A unique project, “Manual weaving”, undertaken and coordinated by Mr. Andrei Sas, is involved in the marketing of fabrics made from natural fibres: hemp, cotton, wool. Through this activity, it has become a keeper of local traditional weaving techniques, proving that artisans can contribute through their products to their own welfare and that of the region, thus supplementing their income.
Now here’s a fun use of genebank accessions.