- New UNESCO World Heritage Sites, including some vaguely agricultural ones.
- Why more of those would make sense.
- Though monitoring would be a challenge.
- Could put it all in genebanks, like these mangoes in India.
- But that’s hard too, just ask this coconut genebank curator in PNG.
Brainfood: Old flax, Rice in Spain, Rice in Iran, Mozambican cowpea, Agrobiodiversity reserve, Old olives, Georgian livestock, Crowdsourcing fungi
- Harvesting wild flax in the Galilee, Israel and extracting fibers — bearing on Near Eastern plant domestication. The wild stuff was harvested before the Neolithic Revolution.
- Building resilience to water scarcity in southern Spain: a case study of rice farming in Doñana protected wetlands. Better to restore part of the rice fields to natural wetlands.
- Evaluation of rice dominance and its impact on crop diversity in north of Iran. Rice can’t catch a break in Iran either.
- Evaluation of four Mozambican cowpea landraces for drought tolerance. One of them is promising.
- Agro-Biodiversity Spatial Assessment and Genetic Reserve Delineation for the Pollino National Park (Italy). Somewhat gratuitous use of GIS, as far as I can see, but pretty maps.
- A comparative analysis of genetic variation in rootstocks and scions of old olive trees — a window into the history of olive cultivation practices and past genetic variation. Much more variation among rootstocks than scions.
- The diversity of local Georgian agricultural animals. I’d like to see a Megrelian horse one day, they sound cool.
- Crowdsourcing to create national repositories of microbial genetic resources: fungi as a model. Why just fungi, though?
Nibbles: Agave pollination, Sanjaya Rajaram, PGR policy history, Ex situ conifers, Botanic garden theft, Kyrgyz forests, Home nurseries, American chestnut, South Pacific action
- Tequila and bats. Two of my favourite things.
- Continuing the Mexican theme, we have a World Food Prize 2014 winner.
- I wonder what he thinks of the changes he’s seen during his illustrious career in the international system for PGR conservation and use.
- I bet there’s a few endangered conifers, and maybe some ex situ collections, in Mexico.
- I hope there weren’t any among the plants stolen from the RBG Edinburgh recently.
- But perhaps there were some fruits and nuts from Kyrgyzstan?
- Well, the way to go is home nurseries, clearly.
- Maybe even with the GM chestnut, why not?
- Meanwhile, in the South Pacific, CePaCT has been really busy.
Nibbles: Nepal goat project, Kenyan camels, Sustainable diet metrics, Agri-informatics centre, Cassava dishes, CC & nutrients, Yield is all, African CC hotspots, AGRA seed enterprises, PlantVillage blog, Medieval weeds, French reserve, Black garlic, Australian tree tool
- Sometimes all it takes is a goat.
- Or a camel.
- I wonder how either would figure into a metric for a sustainable diet. Wonder if these people will be interested in those metrics.
- Cassava figures in lots of different ways.
- No word on whether carbon dioxide will affect its nutrient content the way it does with other crops.
- Who cares, it’s yield we’re after. Well, that’s in trouble too in some parts of Africa.
- That’s the only way those African seed start-ups are going to survive.
- Yeah, but disease resistance is important, Shirley. PlantVillage gets a blog.
- And weeds? Don’t forget the weeds. Although of course some of them you can eat. Put that in your metrics.
- Meanwhile, France starts to re-wild. Would love to see some wild relatives in the Bois du Boulogne. Livestock wild relatives, not your crazy cousin on his gap year.
- And now we can figure out what climate change might do to them. I guess this thing might work for European animals. Says here it works for Australian trees.
- Speaking of France, garlic is quintessentially French, isn’t it? Well, maybe, but it’s also very Korean, in its black, cured form.
Brainfood: Prunus africana diversity, Collecting Prunus, African extension, Nepal genebank, Greek plant eBay, Pepper diversity, Pest spread, Grassland diversity, Cowpea fermentation, Pea diversity, Banana cryo, Biodiversity trends
- Genetic structuring of remnant forest patches in an endangered medicinal tree in North-western Ethiopia. You need to conserve a range of patches of Prunus africana, and probably not just in situ. Would have been perfect for last week’s Brainfood on the complementarity of ex situ and in situ.
- Using simulations to optimize genetic diversity in Prunus avium seed harvests. And if you were to collect seeds for ex situ conservation, this is how you could do it, or at least figure out how best to do it.
- Exploring the Role of Agricultural Extension in Promoting Biodiversity Conservation in Kwazulu-Natal Province, South Africa. Don’t look to extension for help though.
- Ex situ plant conservation initiative in developing country: Nepal as a case study. Wonder if the material in the Himalayan Seed Bank was collected in that way. Or with the help of extensionists for that matter.
- The Electronic Trade in Greek Endemic Plants: Biodiversity, Commercial and Legal Aspects. Or indeed the 10% of the endemic Greek flora that’s traded online. Yeah I know this was in the special Easter Brainfood, but I couldn’t resist the narrative.
- New sources of resistance to Phytophthora capsici in Capsicum spp. For Korea, that is. But they came from all over. As ever.
- Hosting major international events leads to pest redistributions. Watch out Brazil!
- Pyrenean meadows in Natura 2000 network: grass production and plant biodiversity conservation. Forbs are unjustly maligned. Probably starts with that silly name.
- Chemical Changes during Open and Controlled Fermentation of Cowpea (Vigna unguiculata) Flour. Fermentation detoxifies and doesn’t affect nutritional content much. No word on whether it helps with all the farting. Evaluate that!
- Geographical Gradient of the eIF4E Alleles Conferring Resistance to Potyviruses in Pea (Pisum) Germplasm. Gargantuan study of 2,800 global accessions finds 4 resistance alleles, each with its own geographic structure. Much variation, but no resistance in the wild relatives. Bummer.
- Phenotypic and molecular studies for genetic stability assessment of cryopreserved banana meristems derived from field and in vitro explant sources. You can cryopreserve straight from field-grown sucker meristems, rather than having to go through tissue culture. Handy.
- Assemblage Time Series Reveal Biodiversity Change but Not Systematic Loss. Ecosystems are changing, but not yet becoming noticeably less diverse.