- A heart-warming tale of raising pigs the right way.
- Another heart-warming tale of breeding better wheat in Colorado.
- Urban agriculture goes intensive and corporate. Not very heart warming.
- Cornell students to solve nutrition problems in Ghana after 10-day visit. Is that heart warming? I have my doubts.
- Alfred Russel Wallace’s very own sago cakes preserved at Kew. If that isn’t heart warming, I don’t know what is.
Nibbles: Fisheries, Aquaculture, Oman GR centre, Neighbourhood farm, Striga control, Quinoa blog
- Indonesians integrate biodiversity with development.
- Aquaculturists integrate catfish and tilapia with carp.
- Omanis want to integrate genetic resources conservation regionally.
- A community integrates around a neighbourhood farm.
- Integrated solutions needed for Striga? Push-pull, anyone?
- New blog aims to integrate quinoa into Chilean diets.
Nibbles: Yarsagumba, Chocolate meet & dig, Beer dig, Mapping disease, Mapping language, Going digital, Urban ag meet, Weird citrus, CGIAR genebanks and more, Microbiome
- Off-colour jokes pumped out with abandon as Viagra fungus splashed all over headlines.
- Two of my favourite words in one conference: sustainable and chocolate. Can I get some archaeology with that? Yes, you can. Trifecta!
- Prefer beer to chocolate? We’ve got you covered.
- Sudden oak death mapping gets all interactive. Will nobody do something similar for agrobiodiversity?
- The geography of the onion. No, not The Onion. And not interactive.
- Go online, young scientist! Even if it involves giving banana research priority setting a Facebook page? Well, why not.
- Whoa, there’s an Urban Agriculture Summit?
- Citrus australasica? Seriously?
- CGIAR crown jewels safe at last. No off-colour headlines, please.
- Some genebanks doing ok, others not so much.
- Gut microbiome kinda sorta implicated in kwashiorkor. And more from NYT.
Brainfood: Peanuts, CC and biodiversity data, Climate change and vegetables, Biodiversity indicators, Lettuce diversity, Brazilian intensification, Brazilian natural products, English organic, Bolivian traditions, Protecting sea cucumbers, Urban meadows, Crop expansion, Chinese forests, Peach palm, Ancient RNA, Sweet potato movement, Date conservation
- A study of the relationships of cultivated peanut (Arachis hypogaea) and its most closely related wild species using intron sequences and microsatellite markers. It’s a wise peanut that knows its parents: A. duranensis and A. ipaënsis, apparently.
- Creative Commons licenses and the non-commercial condition: Implications for the re-use of biodiversity information. The devil is in the detail. But basically, the Non-Commercial CC license is not what it sounds like.
- Projecting annual air temperature changes to 2025 and beyond: implications for vegetable production worldwide. The devil is in the detail.
- Essential Biodiversity Variables. There are even some on genetic diversity, and domesticated species get a mention. And no, not this sort of thing, do be serious.
- Genetic composition of contemporary proprietary U.S. lettuce (Lactuca sativa L.) cultivars. Romaine and crisphead much less diverse than leaf types. About 10 cultivars main ancestors. Couple wild species used. Lots of other cool stuff in this issue of GRACE. Maybe one day we’ll do a Brainfood on a single issue of a journal? Would people like that? Is anyone listening?
- Insights into Brazilian agricultural structure and sustainable intensification of food production. That insight is spelled GMO. Ah, but with added agroecological and educational goodness.
- Development of a Natural Products Database from the Biodiversity of Brazil. No doubt soon to be patented. See above.
- Food production vs. biodiversity: comparing organic and conventional agriculture. There’s a tradeoff between biodiversity (off-farm) and yield (on farm), at least in lowland England.
- Laggards or Leaders: Conservers of Traditional Agricultural Knowledge in Bolivia. Abandonment of traditional practices, including crop diversity, more to do with getting work off-farm than with age or education.
- Sea cucumbers in the Seychelles: effects of marine protected areas on high-value species. They are positive.
- Creating novel urban grasslands by reintroducing native species in wasteland vegetation. Seeding can create diverse native meadows in urban settings, even if people use them. I don’t know why this should make me feel so happy.
- Crop Expansion and Conservation Priorities in Tropical Countries. So much for peak farmland.
- Role of culturally protected forests in biodiversity conservation in Southeast China. They’re important, especially for tree diversity.
- Peach palm (Bactris gasipaes) in tropical Latin America: implications for biodiversity conservation, natural resource management and human nutrition. They’re good for nutrition and income, but could be even better.
- Deep Sequencing of RNA from Ancient Maize Kernels. That’s right — RNA! It confirms previous ideas, and offers a new tool to look at domestication.
- Historical collections reveal patterns of diffusion of sweet potato in Oceania obscured by modern plant movements and recombination. Speaking of which, the old tools are not that bad. Yes, the sweet potato did come to Polynesia in prehistoric times from South America. But not only.
- On-Farm Diversity of Date Palm (Phoenix dactylifera L) in Sudan: A Potential Genetic Resources Conservation Strategy. Yup, there’s potential alright. Now can we see made real?
Nibbles: CGIAR vision, GFAR vision, UNEP vision, Tree seeds, Aerial vision, Visions of potatoes, Soybeans, DNA sequencing, Rewilding
- The latest bit of CGIAR navel-gazing is about whether research should be for or in development.
- The Futures of Agriculture: Brief No. 42. No, really, 42. Love that plural, though
- And of course UNEP needs to have its say too.
- Oh, wow, someone actually doing something.
- How about a visionary use for tree seeds? Burn ’em!
- Then there are visions of potato diversity.
- And a vision of a world covered in soybeans.
- And DNA sequences as far as the eye can see. So, can we get all those wild relatives done now, just for the heck of it?
- Can you take one more vision? Here’s one of rewilded Europe.