Vegetables

Nibbles: Cassava bad and good news, Soybean domestication, Bitter gourd, Drought, Agrobiodiversity job, Heirloom turkey, Eurisco, Artisanal wheat, MSB, Food culture

FAO really very worried about cassava. Does it know that the CGIAR has the technology?
In today’s “crop X domesticated earlier than usually thought” story, X = soybean.
The Deccan Chronicle discovers the Bitter Gourd Project and likes what it sees.
How to drought phenotype crops.
The Christensen Fund has a position open for a Program Associate – Agrobiodiversity and Biocultural Landscapes. Damn, that sounds interesting.
“But, miraculously, the Ghost Turkey survives.”
Eurisco has a new website!
Artisanal wheat on the rise. I love the quip in the caption.
Vancouver ♥ Millennium Seed Bank, and fawns over faux royalty.
Amaranth and pizza offer entreés to culture and politics.

Exclusive breastfeeding duration and later intake of vegetables in preschool children. More breastfeeding means more vegetables later on.
Common names of species, the curious case of Capra pyrenaica and the concomitant steps towards the ‘wild-to-domestic’ transformation of a flagship species and its vernacular names. Applying the common name of a domestic species to a wild one can cause problems. Yeah but how do you get across the importance of wild relatives otherwise?
Testing the central market hypothesis: a multivariate analysis of Tanzanian sorghum markets. Lots of fancy maths proves there are basically two sorghum markets in Tanzania. But what does that mean for diversity?
Evolutionary history of barley cultivation in Europe revealed by genetic analysis of extant landraces. Nine geographically-based populations, which go back to the early days of the spread of agriculture. Now, tell me someone, do they correspond with the human genetic data?
Genetic erosion impedes adaptive responses to stressful environments. Stress reduces variability, which reduces ability to respond to stress.

Don’t forget the open Mendeley group for the papers we link to here.

Someone else is interested in breeding oca for outside the Andes.
Not to be outdone, the World Agroforestry Centre has a blog.
Which somehow missed this story — Study finds mobile phones empower rural farmers — from World Agroforestry Centre.
The Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV) has a new portal with added database goodness. Luigi dons his spelunking gear.
No thanks, no need. From now on, like this guy in Hawaii, I’m googling.

Botswana wants more home-grown R&D for horticulture.
The wonder of Aberyswyth’s high-sugar grasses. (Linking to the link farm because Aber has only a PDF.)
The Archaeobotanist points to an online database of phytoliths … because you never know when you’ll need one.