There’s some new videos out that readers might be interested in. You can find an entertaining take on herbaria on the Atomic Frontier YouTube channel. And if you’re into amaranth, check out the latest roundup of resources on GRIN-U.
Nibbles: Gulf garden, Lettuce evaluation, Jordanian olive, Kenyan seeds, Hybrid animals, FAOSTAT news
- Qatari botanic garden is providing training in food security, and more. Good for them.
- The European Evaluation Network’s lettuce boffins have themselves a meeting. Pretty amazing this made it to FreshPlaza, and with that headline.
- The Jordan Times pretty much mangles what is a perfectly nice, though inevitably nuanced, story about the genetic depth of Jordan’s olives.
- In Kenya’s seed system, whatever is not forbidden in proposed new legislation…may not be enough.
- Conservation through hybridization.
- FAOSTAT now has a bit that gives you access to national agricultural census data. Which sounds quite important but give us a few days to check it.
Brainfood: Ultra-processed food, Micronutrients, Wheat breeding, Bambara groundnut breeding, Seed longevity, Sheep diversity, Switchgrass ploidy, Seed services, Jersey in Africa, Wine history, Austronesian dispersal
- Ultra-processed foods should be central to global food systems dialogue and action on biodiversity. Should.
- Global plant diversity as a reservoir of micronutrients for humanity. As.
- Mainstreaming grain zinc and iron concentrations in CIMMYT wheat germplasm. Eventually.
- Utilization of Plant Genetic Resources of Bambara Groundnut Conserved Ex Situ and Genetic Diversification of Its Primary Genepool for Semi-Arid Production. Insufficient.
- More on seed longevity phenotyping. p50.
- Gender dynamics around introduction of improved forages in Kenya and Ethiopia. Training.
- Whole-Genome Resequencing of Worldwide Wild and Domestic Sheep Elucidates Genetic Diversity, Introgression, and Agronomically Important Loci. Hairy.
- Jersey cattle in Africa: From the Breed’s Documented Past to a Profit IndexLinked Future. Promising?
- A generalist–specialist trade-off between switchgrass cytotypes impacts climate adaptation and geographic range. Polyploidy!
- Decentralized Seed Services in Africa. Quality.
- The Rise of Wine among Ancient Civilizations across the Mediterranean Basin. Ritual.
- Genome Analysis Traces Regional Dispersal of Rice in Taiwan and Southeast Asia. Ok, I give up, I can’t do this. Austronesian speakers did not spread out of Taiwan because of rice. If you can summarize that in a word, I’m impressed, so let me know.
An apple story a day…
Well, that’s odd. The rush of stories about apples usually happens in the autumn. And yet, just in the past couple of days, quite apart from the tweet about Korbinian Aigner, I have come across:
- An excellent roundup from the Apples & People newsletter.
- A pointer to a webpage on the history of American apples.
- News of newly-bred hypoallergenic varieties.
Oh, and since I have you here, might as well also say that there’s been an update from GRIN-U. No new resources specifically on apples lately, but there’s been a few in the past.
New online training in plant genetic resources
An important announcement from Patrick F. Byrne, Professor Emeritus of Plant Breeding and Genetics at Colorado State University.
- Three 1-credit graduate level courses will be available online from Colorado State University in Fall semester, 2022. The courses deal with the origins and structure of plant genetic diversity; the principles and methods for conserving that diversity; and strategies for using genetic resources in plant breeding. The courses, costs, and registration information are described at http://pgrcourse.colostate.edu/ and a flyer is attached to this message.
- A number of new learning materials are available on the GRIN-U repository (https://grin-u.org/). These include videos on cowpea, sorghum, tomato, and potato; virtual tour videos of USDA’s National Laboratory for Genetic Resources Preservation; ebooks on crop wild relatives and a crop science virtual field tour; and infographics explaining USDA’s National Plant Germplasm System and the role of botanic gardens in conserving plant genetic resources. The videos are also available on the YouTube channel youtube.com/GRINUEducation. We hope these materials are useful to you in your teaching or outreach activities.
- We are looking for success stories on the use of plant genetic resources for plant breeding or plant genetics research. If you have a story to tell, please consider filling out and submitting the attached template.
The materials described here were funded by a grant from the USDA-NIFA Higher Education Challenge Grant Program to Colorado State University, Iowa State University, and USDA-ARS.