- Nutrition is so confusing.
- There are so many plants, for a start.
- And it’s so difficult to get them from the forest.
- And they’re difficult to describe.
- And they get all kinds of diseases.
- Could grow them in nutrition gardens, I suppose.
- Learn to save their seeds.
- Or just go for fish.
Nibbles: Breeding data, Maize data, Bottle gourd origins, Agroforestry meet, EU seed, New pepper
- Pssst, you breeder there? Need a data management system? IPB have got one for you going cheap…
- Maybe you want to test that out on some CIMMYT wheat and maize lines? CIMMYT can help you out with a new database.
- Bottle gourd: Out of Africa after all, by sea.
- World Congress on Agroforestry social media mashup for Day 1.
- The latest on the new EU legislation on the marketing of seeds.
- New Piper species found in Ecuador, and it’s a doozy.
Brainfood: Cucumber diversity, Micronutrients in Africa, Natural enemies, Ag expansion, Food security & trade, Chinese forages, Frafra potato, Rayada rice, Persea agroforestry, European oats, Agrobiodiversity & health
- A genomic variation map provides insights into the genetic basis of cucumber domestication and diversity. Four geographic groups, bottleneck not too bad. Opportunity for breeding for better nutritional value. But I suspect that’s a low bar.
- Dietary mineral supplies in Africa. Zn seems to be the lowest hanging fruit, as it were. I wonder if above’s super-cucumbers would help.
- Mechanisms for flowering plants to benefit arthropod natural enemies of insect pests: Prospects for enhanced use in agriculture. If you chose the right plants to plant, you can boost biological control of insect pests on farms.
- Agricultural expansion and its impacts on tropical nature. Roads will lead to increased conversion of natural ecosystems to agriculture in South America and Sub-Saharan Africa. Sustainable intensification is the answer.
- From Food Insufficiency towards Trade Dependency: A Historical Analysis of Global Food Availability. If most of us have more food now, it’s because of trade.
- Technical challenges in evaluating southern China’s forage germplasm resources. Nothing they can’t handle, clearly.
- Sustaining Frafra potato (Solenostemon rotundifolius Poir.) in the food chain; current opportunities in Ghana. Better varieties and processing. Where have I heard that before? Oh yeah, in every single paper on neglected crops.
- Rayada specialty: the forgotten resource of elite features of rice. It’s a weird variant of deepwater rice from Bangladesh with possible enhanced stress tolerance due to longer root system.
- Persea schiedeana: A High Oil “Cinderella Species” Fruit with Potential for Tropical Agroforestry Systems. Superior genotypes of this neglected avocado relative identified in fairs in Mexican region, and targeted for vegetative propagation and participatory breeding.
- Quality characteristics of European avena genetic resources collections. The modern varieties are better, but that doesn’t mean the old ones are useless.
- Nutrient Intake, Morbidity and Nutritional Status of Preschool Children are Influenced by Agricultural and Dietary Diversity in Western Kenya. Low food variety is associated with stunting. Kinda sorta.
Nibbles: Not just yield, Nutrition infographic, Kenya tea, Tree domestication, Golden Rice talk, iRNA, Urban ag, Indian homegardens, Chocolate pix
- Ann Tutwiler, DG of Bioversity, on why we have to solve a quadratic equation of food security now. But is it 7,000 edible plant species, or 12,000? h/t Nancy Castaldo
- Go to page 9 for a cool infographic on nutrition which kinda illustrates that. But really, what a palaver to find it. Which actually I did via Twitter.
- Quadratic? More like non-linear para-differential equations. Or one of those weird things out of chaos theory.
- You can bet ICRAF think one solution to that equation involves the domestication of fruit trees.
- Is Golden Rice another solution? There’s a debate later tonight that might help you decide.
- And while we’re dealing with gene jockeys, apparently RNAi is the Next Big Thing.
- Community, ecosystems, poverty reduction; urban agriculture can do it all. And Dyno Keating, DG of AVRDC, would probably agree.
- And here’s a big PDF from the Centre for Indian Knowledge Systems to show you exactly how. Who needs equations?
- Fed up with maths? Cacao, bean to bar, in photos.
Nibbles: British foods, NBPGR wheat, CIMMYT wheat, Innovation, Ghana cowpea, Nordic grog, Medicinal purposes, Heirloom chocolate, Grünewoche, Dog genomics, Berry go Round, Broad beans, Ag landscapes, Tea and CC
- Google Map of British protected food names. Where’s fish and chips? Or the cream tea. Japan next?
- Indian genebank in the record books for characterizing wheat.
- And with no help from CIMMYT!
- Getting those damn smallholders to innovate already.
- Ghana gets a new cowpea to innovate with. Well, almost.
- And there I was thinking smallholders had been innovating for thousands of years. Even in the frozen north. Winter may be coming, but we’ve got grog. Which you know is good for you.
- As is chocolate, so go ahead and submit your heirloom cacao beans for evaluation. But don’t be tempted to cheat. We’ll know if you are.
- Oh damn, it’s Green Week.
- The story behind the methods used in a recent paper on dog diversity. Wonkish.
- We seem to have slipped off the Berry Go Round treadmill, which means we missed some gorgeous photos of broad beans.
- And another belated treat: UNESCO’s round up of World Heritage agricultural landscapes.
- …one of which is not tea in China, but maybe it should be, before it’s too late.