- Svalbard among things being discussed at EATx Cali today. Who knows, maybe other genebanks too?
- The cucumber’s wilder relatives.
- Armenian wine going back to the future.
- Whole grains deconstructed.
- Unpicking domestication in chickens and cattle. And the original paper on the latter, featuring the aurochs genome.
- Breeders have bred omega-3 alpha-linolenic acid (ALA) out of soybeans, but are now going back to wild relatives to breed it back in.
Brainfood: Pigeonpea gaps, Indian rice diversity, Brazilian melons, Ifugao terraces, Collard greens, Climate analogues, Brachiaria diversity, Philosophy of genebanks, Wild barley & drought, Pepper valuation
- Identification of Gaps in Pigeonpea Germplasm from East and Southern Africa Conserved at the ICRISAT Genebank. Lots of collecting work to do.
- Rice Diversity – The Genetic Resource Grid of North-East India. 10,000 cultivars?
- Diversity of Melon Accessions from Northeastern Brazil and Their Relationships with Germplasms of Diverse Origins. Have come from all over.
- Disentangling Values in the Interrelations between Cultural Ecosystem Services and Landscape Conservation—A Case Study of the Ifugao Rice Terraces in the Philippines. They may be beautiful, but they need to be profitable.
- Genetic Diversity and Population Structure of Collard Landraces and their Relationship to Other Brassica oleracea Crops. Collard can be used as a source of diversity for other brassicas.
- Climate Analogues for agricultural impact projection and adaptation – a reliability test. Fail.
- Genetic Diversity and Structure of Ruzigrass Germplasm Collected in Africa and Brazil. The move from Africa to Brazil did not too adversely affect the diversity of this important forage Brachiaria.
- Saving the gene pool for the future: Seed banks as archives. “Decisions about how to salvage the past are always, necessarily, about how we value the future.”
- Response of Cultivated and Wild Barley Germplasm to Drought Stress at Different Developmental Stages. The wild is better.
- Screening Genetic Resources of Capsicum Peppers in Their Primary Center of Diversity in Bolivia and Peru. Different entrepreneurs in different countries value local peppers differently.
Nibbles: Pig landrace, Campbell’s Soup tomato, HarvestPlus, CG & SDGs, Georgian wine, American vegetables, Kenya & nutrition, Equator Prize, Wheat breeding
- So there’s a “celebrity pork expert.” No, not David Cameron, Carl Blake.
- Nevermind about resurrecting pig breeds, how about resurrecting “America’s best tomato“?
- Mapping biofortification outreach.
- CG writes letter to heads of state on SDGs. But will they listen?
- How they store wine in Georgia.
- US needs more veggies. Don’t we all.
- Kenya is a nutrition star.
- The Equator Prize 2015 winners are in.
- Article on wheat illustrated with picture of millet labelled sorghum
Nibbles: Beautiful downtown Burbank, Oz rice weed and nuts, Teff embargo, Kew Gardens, Cherokee seeds, Vegetables semantics, MLN progress, Fishy chart, Inuit fishy diet, Bioversity photo fix, African food security, ICIPE cashes in, Root & tuber congress, Smallholders, EU agroecology, Sackville Hamilton, Kiwifruit history, USDA pathogen collection
- Luther Burbank “…was willing to cross just about anything that had leaves…”
- No, rice did not originate in northern Australia. Not in the sense those words are usually used.
- Aussies to embrace cannabis. But not in the sense those words are usually used.
- Australian exporters nuts for more than just macadamia. Ah, interdependence…
- Meanwhile, Ethiopian teff exporters licking their lips in anticipation.
- Kew is bigger than the sum of its parts.
- Cherokee Nation genebanker gets award.
- Yes, BBC, vegetables exist, let’s move on.
- Maize Lethal Necrosis on its last legs? Well, “progress is being made” at any rate.
- The Economist’s daily chart is on declining fish stocks. Why have they gone all warm and fuzzy lately? Something in the zeitgeist?
- Inuit are genetically adapted to their fishy diet.
- Damn it, I lost! Probably fixed.
- Africa sets up a new institution for food security. Which is not the same as hunger, we are told. But is it malnutrition.
- ICIPE scales up and out. More impact than any “new institution” is going to achieve.
- World Congress on Root & Tuber Crops has a new website.
- It’s the smallholders, stupid. Like the ones growing tea in Kenya, frinstance.
- The EU to discuss agroecology. Yesterday, alas.
- IRRI and Plant Treaty to share an IT-savvy genebank manager.
- How kiwifruit became kiwifruit.
- Microbes have collections too.
Nibbles: Tomato diversity, Coffee trial, Basque genetics, Water and ag, Heirlooms galore, 3 trillion trees, Agroforestry, Old oats, IP in ag, Food companies and CC, Wheat Initiative, Crop game, Eggplant breeding, E African drought
- One crazy French guy, 1134 tomato varieties.
- The World Coffee Research International Multi Location Variety Trial really gets off the grounds. See what I did there?
- The Basques descend from Neolithic farmers.
- Ancient Sri Lankan irrigation systems. Which Bangladesh doesn’t need.
- National Heirloom Expo is on.
- Did we link to this three-trillion-tree story yet? I don’t think so. How many are edible fruit trees, I wonder?
- …or indeed agroforestry and fertilizer trees. Always worth listening to Jules Pretty.
- So much for the Paleolithic Diet.
- In agricultural innovation, “optimal IPR use depends on the technology itself as well as on market conditions.”
- Multinational food companies found to be short-sighted shock.
- The global impacts of UK food consumption.
- The Wheat Initiative has an agenda.
- Can you recognize these crops? ‘Course you can.
- Eggplant pre-breeding project involving wild relatives makes mainstream media. Faith in humanity restored. Until you see what else is on that page.
- Drought hits Ethiopia. Let them eat sweet potatoes?