- Ok here goes, there’s a week’s work of Nibbles we’ve got to catch up on.
- World running out of chocolate! Tell that to Cologne.
- Yeah well I prefer tea to cocoa.
- Greenpeace: “Smart breeding” will save us, not GMOs. Breeders: All breeding is smart.
- Guess the world’s biggest cash crop. Yeah, that one.
- Alas, it’s not included in the recent strategy for conserving medicinal plants. Not that it would need conserving.
- The domestication of the world’s biggest crop, period. Deconstructed. And if you want to drill down.
- And of the world’s biggest fruit.
- And of the world’s biggest pet.
- And of the world’s most difficult to eat vegetable.
- Root “vegetables” made simple. Because winter.
- And why you must eat your veggies, including the difficult ones.
- Videos on Kew’s monocot database and on the renovation of another famous herbarium.
- The real Johnny Appleseed.
- But you too can save seeds, just like Johnny.
- But don’t forget to safety duplicate, like CIP has done, at Embrapa.
- And this shows you what those seeds can look like.
- You don’t necessarily need seeds to save plants, though.
- Mapping fallen fruit. Because we can.
- Road trip!
- Boat trip!
- Selected Techniques in the Art of Agriculture. From French to Turkish to Arabic. One of many nifty agriculture-related resources in the World Digital Library.
- Oh yeah, the IUCN World Parks Congress has been on and its all over the intertubes. Including with neat visualizations, natch.
- How many of the species in the COMPADRE database of plant demography information are in protected areas? How many are crop wild relatives? I need an intern.
Nibbles: Easy Eleusine, Ethical down, Bison pix, Svalbard pix, Salinity costs, Nutrition conference, Veggies for nutrition
- Finger millet is the future in Zimbabwe.
- Conventional down has a problem. I do prefer unconventional down myself.
- They had National Bison Day and nobody told us.
- Epic’s Excellent Svalbard Adventure.
- Start planning for next year’s cucurbit conference.
- Soil salinity sucks.
- On the other hand, this nutrition conference is in only a couple of weeks. And there will be radio.
- Not that these Indonesian ladies will need that.
Brainfood: Filipino rice synonyms, Jatropha breeding, Polish oats, Amazonian peppers, Wild lentils, Indian pigeonpea, Russian peas, Pulse markers, Wild pollinators, Phenotyping platforms, Almonds & peaches, Cerrado roads, Arboreta conservation
- Multiplex SSR-PCR analysis of genetic diversity and redundancy in the Philippine rice (Oryza sativa L.) germplasm collection. 427 rice accessions in the national collection with similar names resolve to about 30 unique profiles. I think. The abstract is a little hard to follow, and that’s all I have access to.
- Quantitative genetic parameters of agronomic and quality traits in a global germplasm collection reveal excellent breeding perspectives for Jatropha curcas L. 375 genotypes, 7 locations and 3 years get you quite enough data to plan a decent breeding programme.
- Studies on genetic variation within old Polish cultivars of common oat. Forward into the past.
- Morphoagronomic peppers no gender pungent Capsicum spp. Amazonia. Actually nothing to do with gender. That’s a mis-translation of “genus,” if you can believe it. Paper basically says that Amazonian peppers are really variable, which is not as interesting as it might have been.
- Global Wild Annual Lens Collection: A Potential Resource for Lentil Genetic Base Broadening and Yield Enhancement. The core collection of wild annuals (which is actually a somewhat novel concept) comes mainly from Turkey and Syria, and it’s got diversity that’s not in the cultigen.
- Pigeon pea Genetic Resources and Its Utilization in India, Current Status and Future Prospects. Indian genebank evaluates the ICRISAT core and mini-core. Then does some mutation breeding :)
- Molecular genetic diversity of the pea (Pisum sativum L.) from the Vavilov Research Institute collection detected by the AFLP analysis. Molecular data does not correspond with subspecies nor ecogeographic groupings. Back to the drawing board.
- Characterization of microsatellite markers, their transferability to orphan legumes and use in determination of genetic diversity among chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) cultivars. Chickpea SSRs are ok for other, less studied, crops too.
- From research to action: enhancing crop yield through wild pollinators. Go wild.
- Integration of phenotyping and genetic platforms for a better understanding of wheat performance under drought. You really need managed environment facilities. Didn’t a paper in Brainfood last week say what you needed was a network of field sites? I guess you need both.
- Wild almonds gone wild: revisiting Darwin’s statement on the origin of peaches. He was not entirely wrong.
- The role of roadsides in conserving Cerrado plant diversity. 70% of species is not bad, I guess. No word on whether that includes wild peanuts, but I suspect yes.
- Do living ex situ collections capture the genetic variation of wild populations? A molecular analysis of two relict tree species, Zelkova abelica and Zelkova carpinifolia. Yes and no. But this is in botanic gardens and arboreta, what about seedbanks? The cerrado people want to know…
Nibbles: Georgian kitchen garden, Italian citrus history, Domestication infographics, AVRDC, Zambian nutrition policy, Camel-keeping, ESA states its case, Making lunch
- Podcast double: Georgian kitchen gardens (with pix) and Italian citrus.
- Domestication infographics are now officially a thing.
- Feeding the world with vegetable research, courtesy of AVRDC. Need to register, alas.
- Zambia biofortifies. Maybe they didn’t register for the above.
- Camels as biocultural artifacts.
- European Seed Association breaks down the tumultuous last 18 months of the European seed sector.
- “It takes more than 40 different species to make a simple lunch…”
Nibbles: CIAT genebank, Breeding course, Tomato sequencing, EUFORGEN celebrations, Gates projects, GCP quiz & video, CFS41 ITPGRFA side event
- A new genebank for CIAT?
- DuPont Pioneer sponsors a plant breeding symposium at Wageningen University. You can attend by webinar but you have to register. But I fear this is going out way too late. Sorry! Nevermind, you’re still in time for this.
- 360 tomato genomes give an all-round view of its evolution.
- EUFORGEN turns 20. Don’t know EUFORGEN? Watch this video. Or go to this side event.
- Self-reproducing hybrid cowpea and sorghum? Gates Foundation is on it. Ah, but it’s not all sweetness and light in Seattle.
- It’s also a bit late, so don’t expect a prize, but you can still take the GCP World Food Day quiz just for fun.
- But for real fun, watch their cassava video.
- Oh my! Judge for yourself whether it was worth listening to.