- Why tenure matters. And why it doesn’t.
- Book on alternative crops for dry areas. Not that alternative, settle down. And anyway, how do they do in mixtures?
- And the award for Best New Variety of the Year goes to…
- CGIAR Consortium hires private sector biotech expert to oversee genebanks et al.
- US set to grow more quinoa. Shame on you, taking the bread out of the mouths of Andean peasants!
- Save our figs!
- Malanga and cassava important on Mayan menu. And maize maybe not so much on Pueblan one as thought.
- New onion wild relative spotted in Central Asia.
- GRAIN objects to new one-size-fits-all SADC seed law.
- Ecological Society of America discovers agriculture.
- Indian institute trains first female coconut pollinators.
Brainfood: Farming systems, Connectivity, Neolithic China, Paleolithic China, Wheat genomes, Litter domestication, Arabian relatives, Pepper composition, GMOs vs agrobiodiversity
- Using biodiversity to link agricultural productivity with environmental quality: Results from three field experiments in Iowa. Diversify any way you can. Even in Iowa.
- Improving conservation planning for semi-natural grasslands: Integrating connectivity into agri-environment schemes. Connect any way you can. Even in Europe.
- Early millet use in northern China. Very early. Starch grains push broomcorn millet use in China back 1,000 years, and foxtail millet 2,000.
- Paleolithic human exploitation of plant foods during the last glacial maximum in North China. And ten thousand years before millets, there were wild grasses, roots, tubers and gourds.
- Draft genome of the wheat A-genome progenitor Triticum urartu. Can be used to find agronomically important genes. But settle down, it’s only one of the 3 wheat genomes, after all.
- Aegilops tauschii draft genome sequence reveals a gene repertoire for wheat adaptation. Not so fast, here comes the D genome too…
- Side-effects of plant domestication: ecosystem impacts of changes in litter quality. Domestication led to higher quality, more easily decomposed litter.
- Crop wild relatives from the Arabian Peninsula. 400 of them.
- Compositional Characterization of Native Peruvian Chili Peppers (Capsicum spp.). There’s much variation, but not that much.
- Feeding the world: genetically modified crops versus agricultural biodiversity. Guess which one is drinking the other’s milkshake. And a similar blast from the past.
Nibbles: Agroforestry, Genomics conference, Weed propagation, Potato gene, Potato Bean, Seeds, Chilli breeding, University, Prize, Arroz etc, Sinai, Maple syrup, Raw milk, Cacao
It’s Easter. A bigger than usual haul to see you safely through the lean times ahead.
- Simons says, plant a tree. And here’s how.
- FAO had an e-conference on “Impacts of genomics and other ‘omics’ for the crop, forestry, livestock, fishery and agro-industry sectors in developing countries” and all I got was this pdf.
- I personally think The Dude would prefer seeds.
- That potato day-length gene paper deconstructed. A bit.
- Owen’s
Potato beanhopniss seeds have sprouted. Can a new variety be far away? - No doubt he’ll be contributing to a list of US seed suppliers for perennial veg.
- There are perennial peppers, you know. A new weapon as the pepper breeding wars heat up?
- And enthusiasm for Kerala Agricultural University cools down.
- “Attention responsible gene stewards!” You had me at Attention. (But you lost me at responsible gene stewards.) On the other hand, if you are “diligent about developing or releasing durable varieties that will ensure long-term global wheat security” stick with it.
- Arroz, trigo, maíz y patata. The usual story: Casi todos los esfuerzos de la Revolución Verde se han enfocado hacia la mejora de los denominados cultivos principales.
- Farming in the Sinai is 5000 years older than it used to be.
- How to get genuine maple syrup.
- Raw milk is fine. No it’s not.
- Nestle and Mars commit to equality for women cocoa farmers. Mondelēz has not yet responded to Oxfam-inspired consumer pressure. Perhaps because few people know they’re Cadbury and Suchard and Toberlone and … what’s with that stupid ē anyway?
Enjoy that Creme Egg!
Nibbles: Ag research impact, Old foods, GMOs, Barcoding, Palms (well it is Easter), Medicinal plants, Passion fruits, Markets, Livestock, Chaffey, Wine and CC, Coffee culture
- “…for many for many smallholder farmers little has changed over the decades in terms of the methods and tools they use.” Geoff Tansey would seem to agree. Nobody has told ACIAR, though.
- Cherfas favourite spread bog butter among oldest food finds.
- Why it is silly to say that GMOs are always bad.
- The Star Trek tricorder-type DNA widget comes a step closer.
- Which will make it easier to do things like working out the evolution of palms. Before it’s too late. Because of all that nasty agriculture. Anyway, read about it on page 3 of Kew Scientist, along with lots of other stuff.
- Like the taxonomy of herbal medicine, for instance, which coincidentally also comes up in a newspaper article from Australia today. Maybe some of the plants involved will go into the Kimberly Ark, whatever that is.
- Passion fruit is the next big thing in Costa Rica.
- Colombian peasant organizations go to market. Including, I bet, with passion fruits.
- Even in the struggle between man and steer, the issue is uncertain.
- Is it time for Plant Cuttings again? Thank goodness.
- I think I’ll read it with some Danish wine at my elbow. Or maybe Vietnamese coffee.
Brainfood: Perennial wheat, Tree diversity, Fire, Dog domestication, Coffee diversity, Uganda cassava diversity, Sorghum structure, Japanese pastures, Maize diversity, Protection, Pigeonpea hybrid, Wheat nutritional composition, Pollinator diversity, Cajanus gap, Tree diversity, Resilient seed systems
- Perennial cereal crops: An initial evaluation of wheat derivatives. Early days still.
- Effects of silviculture on native tree species richness: interactions between management, landscape context and regional climate. Encourage mosaics, and don’t harvest everything.
- The global fire–productivity relationship. It’s humped, and will be changed by climate change, though for different reasons for different productivity levels. Wonder about the fire-diversity relationship, though.
- Ancient DNA Analysis Affirms the Canid from Altai as a Primitive Dog. Bit of a judgement call though.
- Genetic structure and diversity of coffee (Coffea) across Africa and the Indian Ocean islands revealed using microsatellites. Just what you would expect, given the “morpho-taxonomic species delimitations and genetic units.”
- Genetic diversity among farmer-preferred cassava landraces in Uganda. Landraces only a bit more diverse than elites overall, but half of them quite different.
- Correspondence between genetic structure and farmers’ taxonomy — a case study from dry-season sorghum landraces in northern Cameroon. Genetic units = farmer-recognized landraces.
- Plant diversity, productivity and nutritive value change following abandonment of public pastures in Japan. The best way to restore productivity (diversity doesn’t change much) in abandoned pastures is to start grazing them again.
- Genetic variability of maize stover quality and the potential for genetic improvement of fodder value. You can improve stover and grain yield simultaneously, in hybrids. In theory.
- Governance regime and location influence avoided deforestation success of protected areas in the Brazilian Amazon. Total protection better than sustainable use. Ouch. Meanwhile, in the USA…
- ICPH 2671 – the world’s first commercial food legume hybrid. Yet another milestone on the road to the complete eradication of farmers’ rights.
- Genetic improvement of grain protein content and other health-related constituents of wheat grain. Need to figure out the genetic control mechanisms, and then exploit “alien” germplasm using MAS. Oh, and GMOs too.
- Quantifying the impacts of bioenergy crops on pollinating insect abundance and diversity: a field-scale evaluation reveals taxon-specific responses. Diversity begets diversity.
- Diversity and geographical gaps in Cajanus scarabaeoides (L.) Thou. germplasm conserved at the ICRISAT genebank. Now collectors know exactly where to go.
- Tree species diversity increases fine root productivity through increased soil volume filling. Below-ground complementarity is good for everyone’s roots, presumably good for the community too.
- Making seed systems more resilient to stress. Foster informal innovation, but also information exchange (presumably including of the formal kind).