- Mo’ women power, mo’ better food security. ILRI leads the pack of CGIAR centres, but there’s loads of stuff elsewhere.
- British diplomat ponders the value of biodiversity.
- Less than a human life, at least in some parts of Brazil.
- Speaking (cynically) of values and prices, informed speculation on speculators is at hand.
- Berries make you brainy; so I guess that reporter hasn’t eaten any lately.
- You too can determine future-oriented research pathways for food security in East Africa, and no need to pig out on berries.
- A kinda sorta interactive map of European agricultural biodiversity. Is it sustainable?
- That map may need a special section for Florence, if one person’s photographic Florentine feast is anything to go by.
- If there were a similar map for the US, it would probably include this kind of thing from the Cherokee.
Brainfood: Falcons, Wild soybean squared, Horse domestication
- Effects of Introducing Threatened Falcons into Vineyards on Abundance of Passeriformes and Bird Damage to Grapes. Potential savings of US$234/ha for Sauvignon Blanc, more for Pinot Noir.
- Genetic characterization and gene flow in different geographical-distance neighbouring natural populations of wild soybean (Glycine soja Sieb. & Zucc.) and implications for protection from GM soybeans. There is a small amount of outcrossing, which decreases with distance. GM crops should be grown far from wild populations, certainly more than 1.5km. And we can work out better ways to collect for ex situ conservation.
- Phylogenetic relationships, interspecific hybridization and origin of some rare characters of wild soybean in the subgenus Glycine soja in China. Intermediate forms are closer to the wild than the cultivated species.
- Mitochondrial genomes from modern horses reveal the major haplogroups that underwent domestication. A diversity of maternal lines were domesticated about 150,000 years ago, leading to about 18 modern haplogroups. One of them is only found in the only remaining wild horse, E. przewalskii.
Nibbles: Citizen science! Apples in Vietnam, Pyramid builders, Ecosystem services, Vegetable network, India’s shame, Dryland diversity
- Unlike spring, we’re late to The Guardian’s citizen science map of “weird nature”. Please Sir, can we have one for agriculture?
- Apples in French Indochina; more histoire des pommes française, or something.
- Scaling up food supplies — in ancient Egypt.
- “Conserving biodiversity could benefit the world’s poor,” it says here.
- South Asian boffins launch regional vegetable research network. Only 5 crops, but open-pollinated varieties will be included in the trials.
- “Ending malnutrition is a matter of political will. If India wanted to address childhood malnutrition in any serious way, it could.” Marion Nestle lays it on the line.
- Diversity in drylands linked to greater resilience. A press release, and a news report.
Brainfood: Growth, Grasslands, Seaweed, Apple pedigrees, Marker assisted selection, Ants, Iron biofortification
- Economic growth and biodiversity. “There is no fundamental conflict between economic growth and biodiversity.” Hmmmmn.
- Phytodiversity of temperate permanent grasslands: ecosystem services for agriculture and livestock management for diversity conservation. At heart, a plea for more interdisciplinary research.
- The Interaction between Seaweed Farming as an Alternative Occupation and Fisher Numbers in the Central Philippines. Alternative occupations don’t necessarily reduce over-harvesting.
- Genotyping of pedigreed apple breeding material with a genome-covering set of SSRs: trueness-to-type of cultivars and their parentages. Your papa aint your papa but your papa don’t know.
- The GCP molecular marker toolkit, an instrument for use in breeding food security crops. Marker-assisted selection is not yet used for Musa spp., coconut, lentils, millets, pigeonpea, sweet potato, and yam. For the other 12 crops, 214 molecular markers were found to be effectively used in association with 74 different traits.
- Ant diversity and bio-indicators in land management of lac insect agroecosystem in Southwestern China. When you’re managing for a wild insect, the wild species are secondary.
- Biofortification for combating ‘hidden hunger’ for iron. Swings and roundabouts apply, with a vengeance.
Nibbles: Fish blog, El Guardabosques, Andean crops, Traditional knowledge
- WorldFish director has a brand new blog with a fancy Latin tag. Expiscor: to fish out, to find out, and discover.
- Cuba boasts home-grown Guardians of the Forests.
- Promotion of Andean Crops for Rural Development in Ecuador. No idea what this is or why it popped up now, but worth sharing anyway.
- Bioversity shares slides on The role of agricultural biodiversity in diets in the developing world: Improving diet diversity, quality and ecosystem sustainability.
- IIED comes out for traditional methods to cope with climate change. Could we abandon this sterile dichotomy, please?