- Governance of seed and food security through participatory plant breeding: Empirical evidence and gender analysis from Syria. Women are important.
- Comparison of pollinators and natural enemies: a meta-analysis of landscape and local effects on abundance and richness in crops. Both can be managed at the same time.
- Biodiversity and recipe contests: Innovative socioecological approaches to capture ecological knowledge and conserve biodiversity in Arunachal Pradesh. Women are important.
- Rice breeding in the post-genomics era: from concept to practice. China is where it’s at.
- SNPing Aegilops tauschii genetic diversity and the birthplace of bread wheat. Caspian Iran is where it’s at.
- Inferring recent historic abundance from current genetic diversity. It might actually be possible to infer historic abundance from the genetics of contemporary samples only, which seems kinda awesome.
- Europe’s other debt crisis caused by the long legacy of future extinctions. The current conservation status of vascular plants in Europe reflects the situation in 1900. Can’t help thinking this should be mashed up with the one above.
- Low genetic diversity and significant structuring in the endangered Mentha cervina populations and its implications for conservation. Low only at population level, so must conserve multiple populations. Which one would probably have done anyway, but now at least we know which.
Nibbles: Fertilizer taxes, Sustainable brewing, Naked oats, New potatoes, White veggies, EU seed law, CGIAR policy, Grassland connectivity, Llama meat, Seed eating, Agroecology
- Intriguing: how about a sliding scale for fertilizer taxes?
- Dubious: sustainable brewing in Bogota.
- Surprising: naked oat seeds in Canada.
- Challenging: new coloured potato varieties are nutritious and pest-resistant.
- Illuminating: white veggies are nutritious too.
- Important: EU seed vote coming up.
- Belated: CGIAR goes open access.
- Intoxicating: Japanese drink fermented hydrangea leaves.
- Obvious: Cars move grassland seeds.
- Freaky: interspecific grass hybrid for flood prevention.
- Tasty: Fine carnivorous dining in Bolivia.
- Metaphysical: granivory is murder.
- Political: UK government supports agroecology.
Nibbles: African food, Cattle grazing, Young farmers, Seed policy, Traditional medicine, Litchis, Land use, Perennial sorghum
- Today’s Nibbles is a Kenya edition. Just because.
- But we’ll start with an African foodie revolution that is passing that country by.
- Cattle need diverse foods too, so don’t neglect those forbs, Kenyans.
- A young Kenyan turns to vegetable growing. Not, alas, of the traditional kind. Yet.
- Well, he better get a move on, because it says here people are after his seeds.
- Seeds are what the traditional medicine industry could do with.
- I guess there’s always litchis.
- Wonder what they’ll do to land use patterns.
- But will there ever be perennial sorghum?
The history of national flower collections in the UK
A Facebook post by Plant Heritage earlier today pointed me to a news item on their website to the effect that collections of Monarda and Nepeta have been added to its nation-wide programme of National Plant Collections.
The Collections based near Okehampton, Devon, have been put together by Fi Reddaway in her two acre garden on the edge of Dartmoor. She has used the development of the Collections to help her rehabilitate from ME diagnosed in 2004.
Good news in its own right, for various different reasons. But it also reminded me, coming so hot on the heels of yesterday’s post about UK genebanks, of an intriguingly similar reference I’d run across a few weeks ago on the website of the Cambridge University Botanic Garden:
Our National Collection of Tulipa (species only) is believed to be the only surviving collection in the country recognised under the Ministry of Agriculture’s special collection scheme that was introduced after the Second World War. The origins of the collection, however, go back much further and lie in a tragedy. William Dykes, master of Charterhouse School, keen amateur gardener and botanist, and Secretary of the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS), was a passionate collector of two bulbous genera, Tulipa and Iris. Sadly, in November 1925, only a week after receiving the Victoria Medal of Honour from the RHS, Dykes was killed in a motoring accident.
A sad story indeed, but what is this “Ministry of Agriculture … special collection scheme that was introduced after the Second World War”? I tweeted the reference to Prof. Brian Ford-Lloyd, who might be expected to know about plant genetic resources matters in the UK, and he had not heard of any such scheme, but pointed me in the general direction of the National Archives website.
Bingo! Or at least maybe. Because a little searching soon resulted in a reference to the document “National Species Collections of Flowers: grant to Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew“, dated 1948-1957. Now, I don’t have access to the document in question, so I’m not sure if this “National Species Collections of Flowers” thing is the same as the CU Botanic Garden’s “Ministry of Agriculture … special collection scheme” or indeed Plant Heritage’s “National Plant Collections” programme. Maybe someone out there can clarify the matter. And maybe even tell us if that tulip collection is indeed the last of its ilk.
In the meantime, I choose to marvel at the fact that in a post-war Britain beleaguered by rationing and grappling with all sorts of social problems, the Ministry of Agriculture supported the setting up of a National Species Collections of Flowers.
Nibbles: FAO Commission, Alpine plants conference, Young breeders, Indian sorghum, Pastoralists in the media, Neglected genomics, More quinoa, Cape Gooseberry in Europe, Database hell, Tomayto tomahto, Maple syrup, Double cropping, Cloning trees, Belated Earth Day, UK Plant Science Week
- Summary of that 14th Session of the CGRFA we were all following last week.
- Conferences on “Changes in alpine and arctic flora under climate change” we’ll all be following in September. If you’re from Balkans, Caucasus, Central Asia, the organizers need you in particular. But hurry, before it’s too late!
- In other news, young scientists are into beer.
- India’s Directorate of Sorghum Research gets a genebank. Relationship with NBPGR unclear.
- Media portrayals of pastoralists in Kenya, China and India: The Report. The Brief. The Press Release. ILRI reaction?
- Neglected crops get the genomic treatment. And why that might be a good thing.
- CIAT wades in on quinoa.
- Call for information on Physalis peruviana cultivation in Europe.
- Biodiversity databases have errors! Shock! Horror! Probe!
- The nutritional difference between organic and conventional tomatoes deconstructed.
- Your maple sugaring questions answered. Nice idea.
- Double crop for development. I guess that’s the sustainable intensification everyone is talking so much about.
- If in doubt, clone it!
- Wait, wait, wait, we missed Earth Day?
- And also a bunch of UK plant science conferences. (I had of course linked to the storifications here originally, but they’ve gone now of course.)