- Want to teach about agrobiodiversity? Help is at hand.
- Want to learn about agrobiodiversity? Stay here.
- Want to know what’s going on in biodiversity conservation at Cambridge? Here’s how. Tell us if agriculture gets a look-in. If it doesn’t, come back here. But I bet there’ll be something about landscapes.
- What is a landscape? “The answer … differs tremendously depending on the respondent,” it says here. Wow, those Cambridge boffins will be so shocked.
- Want to know about the plants in that landscape whose definition is so much in the hands of respondents? Most were discovered by just a few botanical superstars. But how many women?
- And if that landscape is Turkish and there are (is?) livestock in it, this is what you’ll see.
- Want to tour the world’s top evolution sites? Here’s the first stop. Now, how about crop evolution (and domestication, natch) sites. Like some livestock- and crop-wild-relative-discovered-by-a-botanical-superstar-filled Turkish landscape, perhaps.
- Or what about sites connected with food production and marketing more generally, for that matter. No, that list would be too long. Interesting, but too long. Would need to prioritize ruthlessly.
- One thing for certain, though, it should include a couple of community genebanks.
- Where it is not inconceivable that seeds would be protected following age-old practices. Which may or may not be taught in fancy courses.
- Oh, and beer.
Agricultural calendar in northern Thailand
Thanks to Amanda for sending us this photo of one of the exhibits at the Opium Museum at Chiang Saen, Thailand, which is in the middle of the Golden Triangle. A nice way of displaying variation in local knowledge about agricultural practices, in this case the cropping calendar. It was not accompanied, alas, by a similar display of differences in crop or variety menus, alas. But one can imagine how that too could be made rather attractive.
Nibbles: Microbial diversity, Blog, Yams, Benefits of diversity, Ancient ploughing, Oman’s genebank, Lodoicea, Wheat senescence, Maize landrace marketing, Setaria flowering, Prisoner yams, Eating weed
- Microbiologist makes Guardians of Microbial Diversity award. Agromicrobes awaited.
- Fabulous giant new superinteresting megablog scheduled to launch today.
NoRSS.Yet? - Who likes which yams (by which they mean Dioscorea) in Madagascar? Kew will have answers.
- Genetic diversity invades the zeitgeist, or something.
- Or would you prefer something a little more down to earth?
- Oldest ploughed fields in Czech lands.
- Crazy mixed up report on this weeks new genebank, in
OmanQatar. “Up to 10,000 genes”? Be still my beating heart. - Ich bin ein coco-de-mer-nut.
- Heat speeds up wheat aging. I know how it feels.
- A “Starbucks Of Tortillas”? Sounds worse than it is.
- Welcome news of fundamental work on a “minor” millet.
- IITA goes to jail.
- Genetically modifying cannabis to make it safe to eat. Such a bad idea. On so many levels.
Nibbles: Rice breeding, West African agriculture, Asian AnGR, Wheat breeding, Chinese semiotics, Neglected plant at NordGen, Fledermaus, PPB
- Norwich boffins save the world. To get the real story, you need to deconstruct the piece using this.
- “Results indicate that the greatest agriculture-led growth opportunities in West Africa reside in staple crops (cereals and roots and tubers) and livestock production.” Minor crops get the shaft again?
- Project tackles conservation of Asian farm animal diversity. I’ve always wondered whether there might be a role for ecotourism. I’d pay to see weird cocks. And hens.
- Pakistani boffins return home with skills to improve wheat P efficiency. And the resources? We shall see.
- Chinese food and plant semiotics. Can’t wait for LanguageLog to get to grips with this.
- NordGen characterizes a weirdly-named exotic Cinderella crop. Can you guess which?
- And can you guess what the “best kept secret of agricultural success” might be? Clue: nothing to do with those East Anglian boffins of the first item.
- Participatory plant breeding and gender analysis. They’re not giving much away at the source site.
Brainfood: Conservation policy, Grasspea breeding, Modeling rice diseases, Maize roots, Literature on new oil crops, Native vs non-native trees in Indonesian city parks, Cherimoya maps, Darwin Core, Seed dispersal and conservation, Oxalis variation, Polyploidy and variation, Pollinators, Microsymbionts, Plant migration, Culture and agriculture
As ever, we have added most of these references to our public group on Mendeley, for ease of finding. “Most?” we hear you say. “What gives?” Well, Mendeley and some academic publishers still don’t play nicely. There’s nothing to stop you adding the paper in question by hand, if you’re so inclined, but we don’t really have the time. And if you do, please do it right.
- Why are some biodiversity policies implemented and others ignored? Lessons from the uptake of the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation by botanic gardens. Because there are no feedback mechanisms?
- Genetic improvement of grass pea (Lathyrus sativus) in Ethiopia: an unfulfilled promise. Conventional breeding for low ODAP hasn’t worked, so forget about solving that problem through conventional breeding, and move on to other problems, or use genetic transformation.
- Modeling and mapping potential epidemics of rice diseases globally. It is not particularly well done, but one is surprised to see it done at all. NiM ((Not in Mendeley.))
- Morphological and physiological characteristics of corn (Zea mays L.) roots from cultivars with different yield potentials. More roots means more yield. Among some modern varieties anyway. Under some conditions. NiM
- Trends in literature on new oilseed crops and related species: Seeking evidence of increasing or waning interest. And finding it, alas. Sort of. NiM
- The green colonial heritage: Woody plants in parks of Bandung, Indonesia. Native species used to be used more, and should be used more again. NiM
- Mapping Genetic Diversity of Cherimoya (Annona cherimola Mill.): Application of Spatial Analysis for Conservation and Use of Plant Genetic Resources. Cool maps of microsat hotspots.
- Darwin Core: An Evolving Community-Developed Biodiversity Data Standard. The way out of Genebank Database Hell? Well, maybe the match that will light the torch that will show the way out.
- Seed dispersal in changing landscapes. Fragmentation, harvesting, invasions and climate change affect seed dispersal in ways that need to be understood by conservationists. NiM. And the BBC’s more verbose take on it.
- Distribution models and a dated phylogeny for Chilean Oxalis species reveal occupation of new habitats by different lineages, not rapid adaptive radiation. Title says it all, really. It’s not that a single lineage exploded as new habitats became available. Old lineages were pre-adapted to the new habitats. ((Finding the actual paper online could be really, really hard.))
- Extensive chromosomal variation in a recently formed natural allopolyploid species, Tragopogon miscellus (Asteraceae). Polyploidy leads to all hell breaking lose in the genome for generations.
- Overplaying the role of honey bees as pollinators: A comment on Aebi and Neumann (2011). It’s the wild bees, hoverflies and other native pollinators, stupid! But still.
- Arbuscular Mycorrhizas Reduce Nitrogen Loss via Leaching. 40 times less, no less.
- Distributional migrations, expansions, and contractions of tropical plant species as revealed in dated herbarium records. Eppur si muovono. And more on the paper. And more on herbarium digitization in general. what can I tell you, I’ve got apophenia.
- Ecological and socio-cultural factors influencing in situ conservation of crop diversity by traditional Andean households in Peru. There are influences; and why wouldn’t there be?