- Domestication of Brassica oleracea L. It happened in the balmy Mediterranean, not along those blustery Atlantic cliffs.
- Validating local knowledge on camels: Colour phenotypes and genetic variation of dromedaries in the Nigeria-Niger corridor. The locally recognized colour-based breeds are not supported by the genetics.
- The Battle over Plant Genetic Resources: Interpreting the International Treaty for Plant Genetic Resources. The Treaty phrase “genetic parts and components, in the form received” can be interpreted in ways that do not clash with TRIPS. The author also suggests that the Benefit Sharing Fund should be used to pay lawyers, but I’m not sure if that’s tongue-in-cheek.
- The response of the distributions of Asian buffalo breeds in China to climate change over the past 50 years. Fancy maths says it’s minimal.
- Functional traits in agriculture: agrobiodiversity and ecosystem services. It’s not the taxa. Or it shouldn’t be.
- Expert opinion on extinction risk and climate change adaptation for biodiversity. In situ most preferable, ex situ most feasible.
- Conserving pollinator diversity and improving pollination services in agricultural landscapes.The view from China is much like the view from everywhere else.
- Heritage Values and Agricultural Landscapes: Towards a New Synthesis. Back to the future: heritage can mean resilience.
- Using legacy botanical literature as a source of phytogeographical data. Text parsed to yield maps. Brave new world.
- Production diversity and dietary diversity in smallholder farm households. Want better nutrition? Access to markets better than promoting production diversity.
Tourism and conservation
The Convention on Biological Diversity has just published its User’s Manual on the CBD Guidelines on Biodiversity and Tourism Development. It seems very thorough, as far as it goes — but does it go far enough? In particular, what about tourism offers based on agricultural biodiversity? This is what the guide says about how tourism could help achieve the Aichi Targets:
It has been shown that effective tourism planning and actions can contribute to achieving at least 12 of the 20 Aichi Biodiversity Targets contained in the [Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020]. For some Targets (5, 8, 9, 10 and 12) this is primarily about greater control and management to reduce damage to biodiversity from tourism. For others (1, 11, 15, 18, and 20) this is about pursuing the positive contribution of tourism to biodiversity awareness, protected areas, habitat restoration, community engagement, and resource mobilization. A further dimension is the better integration of biodiversity and sustainability into development policies and business models that include tourism, thereby supporting Aichi Targets 2 and 4.
But what about Target 13? Remember that?
By 2020, the genetic diversity of cultivated plants and farmed and domesticated animals and of wild relatives, including other socio-economically as well as culturally valuable species, is maintained, and strategies have been developed and implemented for minimizing genetic erosion and safeguarding their genetic diversity.
Surely agritourism is potentially just as valuable a tool for conserving biodiversity as trekking in protected areas. Shouldn’t the user’s manual, and indeed the guidelines, address the needs of this sector, or at least recognize that it exists? It seems that the CBD has trouble thinking of agricultural landscapes as harbouring biodiversity worthy of being conserved — and visited.
Nibbles: Summer holidays, Tajik bread, Farm to pizza, Västerbottensost, Diverse bananas, Banana wine, Chinese agroforestry, Peak coffee, Responsible oil palm, Model chickens, Damn you NS
- Ah, summer and its funny medieval holidays.
- Making bread in Tajikistan.
- Making pizza in Sussex.
- Making cheese in (one village in) Sweden.
- Diversifying bananas in Queensland.
- Diversifying banana products in Kenya.
- Diversifying with trees in China.
- Better diversify coffee.
- I see your responsible soy and raise you responsible oil palm.
- Cocks of the walk.
- I’m so annoyed the New Scientist article on breeding less bitter veggies is behind a paywall that I won’t even link to it. Google it, if you must.
Brainfood: Vavilov then & now & always, Helmeted fowl diversity, MLND resistance, Sorghum diversity, Facilitation, Rice yields, Biodiversity services, Wild tomato diversity, Date diversity
- In the Footsteps of Vavilov: Plant Diversity Then and Now. The Pamiri Highlands of Tajikistan, the Ethiopian Highlands, and the Colorado Plateau of Southwestern North America compared at time of Vavilov and now: “Localities that have retained diversity have suffered the least.”
- Vavilovian Centers of Plant Diversity: Implications and Impacts. “His concept of specific centers of origin for crop plants was not an isolated aphorism but has directed breeders, on their study and reflection, to the continued improvement and economic development of plants for humanity.”
- Mitochondrial DNA variation of Nigerian domestic helmeted guinea fowl. Recent domestication, and lots of intermixing mean not much diversity, and what there is doesn’t have structure.
- Genome-wide association and genomic prediction of resistance to maize lethal necrosis disease in tropical maize germplasm. That’s when two viruses attack synergistically. Resistance is from multiple loci with smallish effects, and there are some promising markers.
- Genome-environment associations in sorghum landraces predict adaptive traits. Genotype predicts drought tolerance.
- Facilitation and sustainable agriculture: a mechanistic approach to reconciling crop production and conservation. Understanding facilitative plant–plant interactions (intercropping, varietal mixtures) in crops leads to more sustainable farming practices. Or it could.
- The relative contribution of climate and cultivar renewal to shaping rice yields in China since 1981. Mainly new varieties. Climate change has actually helped, but for how long?
- Biodiversity inhibits parasites: Broad evidence for the dilution effect. Meta-analysis shows biodiversity decreases parasitism and herbivory.
- Using genomic repeats for phylogenomics: a case study in wild tomatoes (Solanum section Lycopersicon: Solanaceae). Data that are usually thrown away turn out to be useful for something after all.
- Genetic structure of the date palm (Phoenix dactylifera) in the Old World reveals a strong differentiation between eastern and western populations. Asian and African genepools, with geneflow E to W.
Nibbles: Barley domestication, Apple pie, Mexican food & drink, CABI, Old seeds, IT
- Secret of barley brittle rachis revealed. In other news, there’s a Centre of Excellence in Plant Cell Walls.
- Bramley apple pie filling protected. But from who?
- Participatively bred Oaxacan maize finds a market niche.
- Have some tequila with that participatively bred Oaxacan maize.
- “We can call a government and tell them our data is telling us that a pest is on the way.”
- The coolness of seeds.
- Yeah but “[g]ood seed in the wrong place is no longer good seed.”