Valuation

Nibbles: Gene, Database, Climate Change, Nutrition, Archaeology, Website, Prices, Svalbard

Today’s maybe we’ll get some coverage if we link it to hunger and famine press release. Petunia gene.
Today’s there’s a database for that announcement. FAO’s Horticulture Cultivars Performance Database.
Today’s impact of climate change on X report. Forest resources in the Caribbean.
Today’s debunking a crappy piece of nutrition research killjoys. Experts respond to nutrition claims.
The Archaeobotanist has been going great guns; new book on domestication and millet domestication. We’ll pass on the museum post till we can firm it up.
IFPRI says let two flowers bloom. Here’s the super-groovy new policy kid on the block for non-policy wonks.
I’ll see your evil speculators and raise you a rising secular trend in food prices. (See what I did there?)
With a heavy clunk, The Economist gave Svalbard’s Doomsday Seed Vault a fine 4th birthday present.

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.

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.

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.