- Sweet potato cuttings to the rescue in Fiji. Hope there’s a nice mix of varieties.
- Quinoa: and so it begins.
- Filipinos not eating their fruits. Bad for Filipino health, no doubt bad for Filipino agrobiodiversity too.
- Maybe they should look to Cape Verde?
- ICARDA waxes poetic about lentils.
- Ecosystem services mapping projects go online. Or they will do, eventually. Just a survey for now. Should that include in situ CWR conservation projects? Now’s your chance to have your say.
Brainfood: Climate in Cameroon, Payments for Conservation, Finger Millet, GWAS, Populus genome, miRNA, C4, Cadastres, Orange maize, Raised beds, Contingent valuation, Wild edibles, Sorghum genomics, Brazilian PGR, Citrus genomics
- Climate and Food Production: Understanding Vulnerability from Past Trends in Africa’s Sudan-Sahel. Investment in smallholder farmers can reduce vulnerability, it says here.
- An evaluation of the effectiveness of a direct payment for biodiversity conservation: The Bird Nest Protection Program in the Northern Plains of Cambodia. It works, if you get it right; now can we see some more for agricultural biodiversity?
- Finger millet: the contribution of vernacular names towards its prehistory. You wouldn’t believe how many different names there are, or how they illuminate its spread.
- Genome-Wide Association Studies. How to do them. You need a platform with that?
- Revisiting the sequencing of the first tree genome: Populus trichocarpa. Why to do them.
- Exogenous plant MIR168a specifically targets mammalian LDLRAP1: evidence of cross-kingdom regulation by microRNA. “…exogenous plant miRNAs in food can regulate the expression of target genes in mammals.” Nuff said. We just don’t understand how this regulation business works, do we.
- Anatomical enablers and the evolution of C4 photosynthesis in grasses. It’s the size of the vascular bundle sheath, stupid!
- Land administration for food security: A research synthesis. Administration meaning registration, basically. Can be good for smallholders, via securing tenure, at least in theory. Governments like it for other reasons, of course. However you slice it, though, the GIS jockeys need to get out more.
- Genetic Analysis of Visually Scored Orange Kernel Color in Maize. It’s better than yellow.
- Comment on “Ecological engineers ahead of their time: The functioning of pre-Columbian raised-field agriculture and its potential contributions to sustainability today” by Dephine Renard et al. Back to the future. Not.
- Environmental stratifications as the basis for national, European and global ecological monitoring. Bet it wouldn’t take much to apply it to agroecosystems for agrobiodiversity monitoring.
- Use of Contingent Valuation to Assess Farmer Preference for On-farm Conservation of Minor Millets: Case from South India. Fancy maths suggests farmers willing to receive money to grow crops.
- Wild food plant use in 21st century Europe: the disappearance of old traditions and the search for new cuisines involving wild edibles. The future is Noma.
- Population genomic and genome-wide association studies of agroclimatic traits in sorghum. Structuring by morphological race, and geography within races. Domestication genes confirmed. Promise of food for all held out.
- Response of Sorghum to Abiotic Stresses: A Review. Ok, it could be kinda bad, but now we have the above, don’t we.
- Genetic resources: the basis for sustainable and competitive plant breeding. In Brazil, that is.
- A nuclear phylogenetic analysis: SNPs, indels and SSRs deliver new insights into the relationships in the ‘true citrus fruit trees’ group (Citrinae, Rutaceae) and the origin of cultivated species. SNPs better than SSRs in telling taxa apart. Results consistent with taxonomic subdivisions and geographic origin of taxa. Some biochemical pathway and salt resistance genes showing positive selection. No doubt this will soon lead to tasty, nutritious varieties that can grow on beaches.
Nibbles: Maya nut, Afroculinaria, Biofortification, CGIAR genebanks, FAO data, Rice drought, Bioregions, Sustainable intensification, Caviar, Beer
- Had no idea there were so many Maya nuts around. Glad Jeremy reminded me. And some Central Asian nuts for balance.
- The best of Afroculinaria.
- The best of HarvestPlus. Oh for the time to do a mashup. Anyway, does this count? And what’s that you say? You have a paper you’re writing on the subject?
- CIP genebank sees CIMMYT’s ISO accreditation (certification? whatever) and raises it a new piece of software. ILRI genebank doubles down.
- One Data Portal to Rule them All. At FAO. Somewhat underwhelming, frankly.
- Rice boffins target drought-stressed villages
- New map of bioregions. In the Daily Mail?
- Sustainable intensification debate gets nowhere. Pretty cynical note to leave you with, don’t you think?
- Ok, so here’s something a little more festive. California caviar.
- And some beer to go with that.
Will the real Musa haekkinenii please stand up?
Oh dear. The Musa taxonomists among you will have spotted that the wild banana species illustrated in the previous post, with Markku Häkkinen standing beside it, was not the new species he recently discovered in Vietnam but rather Musa viridis. Markku is understandably a bit incensed about it and asked us to correct ScienceNordic’s error. We are happy to do so, with apologies for perpetuating the mistake, and to publish below Markku’s photo of the real Musa haekkinenii. I knew I should have waited for ProMusa to do its thing.
Finnish sea captain finds new banana in Vietnam
Finnish sea captain and amateur botanist Markku Häkkinen has studied wild bananas for nearly 40 years. Now he has found the new species to science.
That’s from ScienceNordic. The new species is called Musa haekkinenii, and was described earlier this year in Phytotaxa by a team of Vietnamese taxonomists, who graciously named it after Markku. Congratulations to all concerned. And we look forward to seeing the full details on ProMusa.
LATER: No, wait.