- Those who like that sort of thing will no doubt enjoy this discussion at Biofortified of that recent paper about a herbicide resistance transgene possibly giving a fitness advantage to weeds. And more.
- As for me, I’d rather read about Neolithic spices. Or beer.
- Some food companies more committed to nutrition than others shock. But good to have the data.
- Bananas to the rescue in cacao plantations. If I had the willpower I’d try to mash it up with the previous thing. Anyway, coffee next?
- Eating more spuds in the Village. Eating more millets in the village.
- Australian National Herbarium gets a Facebook page.
- The history of the Rockefeller Foundation’s agriculture work. That would include the Green Revolution.
- Really confused Telegraph piece on heirloom and/or organic apples.
- I guess I missed National Rum Day. But I’m nevertheless glad that it exists.
Brainfood: Coloured wheat, Very wild wheat, Yam bean, Turkish pigeons, Impact of margarine, Refugia, GM and choice, Indian sorghum, Cameroonian oil palm
- The anthocyanin content of blue and purple coloured wheat cultivars and their hybrid generations. In other news, there are blue and purple wheat cultivars.
- Phylogenetic relationships and Y genome origin in Elymus L. sensu lato (Triticeae; Poaceae) based on single-copy nuclear Acc1 and Pgk1 gene sequences. It’s a very diverse genus, probably polyphyletic, and has exchanged genes with Aegilops/Triticum in the past. And could again in the future, presumably.
- Microsatellite Markers for the Yam Bean Pachyrhizus (Fabaceae). They work, both on the 3 (sic) cultivated species and 2 wild relatives.
- The domestic livestock resources of Turkey: inventory of pigeon groups and breeds with notes on breeder organizations. 72 breeds? Really?
- Land use impact assessment of margarine. Land occupation by the crops involved has a bigger impact on ecosystem services and biodiversity than the transformation process.
- Bio-cultural refugia — Safeguarding diversity of practices for food security and biodiversity. Important for food security locally, but also because of the memories of how the “surprises of the past” were handled.
- Farmer’s choice of seeds in four EU countries under different levels of GM crop adoption. More GM adoption = less choice. For maize in 4 European countries anyway.
- Sorghum landraces patronized by tribal communities in Adilabad district, Andhra Pradesh. And now safe in NBPGR too.
- Molecular characterization of oil palm Elaeis guineensis Jacq. materials from Cameroon. It’s all one big populations, and you don’t need that many accessions to represent the whole.
Nibbles: Obituary, Nomenklatura
- Kenneth John Frey, oat breeder and more besides, has died.
- A food forager discovers the importance of the proper names for plants.
Nibbles: Baobab, Courses, Social Media, “Exotic” edibles, Cereals on display, Ithyphallic lettuce, Ancient manure, Entomophagy, SRI, Weed evolution
Quick catch-up after 10 days away edition. If I missed anything spectacularly important, it’s bound to resurface.
- A baobab (not the baobab) in danger of extinction.
- Could it be saved by attending a course on Contemporary Approaches to Genetic Resources Conservation and Use?
- And if it’s courses you’re interested in, we have:
- Agriculture nutrition linkages, also from Wageningen.
- Agroecology – the Future of Farming?, from the College of Enlightened Agriculture at Schumacher College. Why the weaselly question-mark?
- And a conference on domestication.
- The value and use of social media as communication tool in the plant sciences deconstructed by AOBBlog.
- AOBBlog also gives the “cunning culinarists” at Kew some stick on their 100 exotic edibles.
- Personally, I’d quite like to try Dead Man’s Fingers.
- And take a look at Kew’s new display of summer cereals.
- I don’t see any mention, however, of lettuce as a sacred sex symbol, with added vocabulary-enhancing properties.
- And speaking of manure, its use is almost as old as agriculture.
- If I had a donut for every why-don’t-we-all-eat-insects article I’ve read, I’d be spectacularly overweight by now.
- Big Picture Agriculture offers An Interview with Cornell’s Dr Erika Styger about the System of Crop Intensification (SRI-Rice).
- Is watergrass (Echinochloa) a problem for SRI-Rice? I don’t know, but it supports Ford Denison’s argument about the speed of evolution in weeds …
- … prompted by Carl Zimmer’s article on weeds in the New York Times.
Brainfood: Wheat breeding, Wild chicken diversity, Wild rice diversity, Sustainable biofuels, Biofuels and biodiversity, Land sparing & sharing, Soil fertility, Cooking cassava, Cherimoya value chains
- Genetic Diversity and Population Structure of Tetraploid Wheats (Triticum turgidum L.) Estimated by SSR, DArT and Pedigree Data. Diversity in morphology and storage proteins in Italian durum varieties decreases after 1990, but not in molecular markers.
- Genetics driven interventions for ex situ conservation of red junglefowl (Gallus gallus murghi) populations in India. 9 birds from the most diverse population of 4 were selected to breed with all the others to rescue them from the perils of inbreeding.
- Geographic variation and local adaptation in Oryza rufipogon across its climatic range in China. Some variation correlated with geography, but plenty of plasticity too.
- Debate: Can Bioenergy Be Produced in a Sustainable Manner That Protects Biodiversity and Avoids the Risk of Invaders? It depends. But they’re not talking about agricultural biodiversity.
- Scenarios for future biodiversity loss due to multiple drivers reveal conflict between mitigating climate change and preserving biodiversity. Looks like growing biofuels to counter climate change might not be a great biodiversity conservation strategy. But we knew that from the above.
- Beyond ‘land sparing versus land sharing’: environmental heterogeneity, globalization and the balance between agricultural production and nature conservation. As the scale of analysis increases, you have to be more careful about addressing environmental heterogeneity. You mean like mosaics?
- Overview of long term experiments in Africa. Rotations are better than monoculture for soil fertility. Well, it’s good to have the data.
- Effects of boiling and frying on the bioaccessibility of β-carotene in yellow-fleshed cassava roots (Manihot esculenta Crantz cv. BRS Jari). Fry away. Finally some good news.
- Value chains of cherimoya (Annona cherimola Mill.) in a centre of diversity and its on-farm conservation implications. They can be bad.