Wild relatives

Nibbles: Biodiversity economics, ICARDA social network, Beyond food miles, Heirlooms on BBC, Cannabis, Research funding, Cacao diversity, Agriculture from the air, Sustainable intensification example, Research whine, Japanese botanic garden visit, European PGR network, Tribal Glycene, Youth in agriculture

Oxford Review of Economic Policy has special volume on biodiversity economics. Not much ag, though, settle down.
ICARDA announces on Twitter the existence of a new Facebook page which looks a bit like the old one.
It’s the fertilizer miles, stupid.
Great British Food Revival does heirloom carrots. Oh and beer.
Good news for a particular agricultural biodiversity subsector from Amsterdam and Colorado. The Dude unavailable for comment. For obvious reasons.
If you’re from Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda and are doing research on Neglected and Underutilized Species you’ll be interested in this call or research proposals from ISF.
Bioversity deconstructs that paper on the spatial analysis of Theobroma diversity. I still don’t quite get why they didn’t do the gap analysis.
Farming from the air. And more along the same lines. Or polygons, I suppose I should say. Can you estimate diversity from the air? I bet you can.
Sustainable intensification in (sort of) action.
Damn rice farmers not playing ball.
Oxford botany geeks visit Japan, identify wood of bench in noodle bar.
13th meeting ECPGR Steering Committee. All the documents you’ll need. And then some.
Soybean as a vegetable. Possibly an acquired taste.
How to keep young people on the farm? “Perhaps the first point to recognise is that the evidence base on which to build policy and programmes is frighteningly thin.”

Chemical and microbial properties of Chinese traditional low-salt fermented whole fish product Suan yu. “The values of Enterobacteria and Pseudomonads were under the detection limits in six different brands” is about the best that can be said for it.
Tapping into yeast diversity. Some new, diverse wild lineages in China may tell us important things about yeast ecology, evolution and domestication.
Genome size variation among sex types in dioecious and trioecious Caricaceae species. Lots of retrotransposons, and sex chromosomes in some species.
The Archaic Diet in Mesoamerica: Incentive for Milpa Development and Species Domestication. The diet preceded the crops.
Genetic diversity and population structure in the rare Algodones sunflower (Helianthus niveus ssp. tephrodes). Low diversity overall, but some populations quite distinct. Which tells you about how to conserve it.
Albania, the domestication country for pomegranate (Punica granatum L.). Well, maybe.
Mixtures of genetically modified wheat lines outperform monocultures. Two transgenes are better than one.
Climate change impacts on crop productivity in Africa and South Asia. -8% overall. The surprise? Sorghum declines more than maize in Africa, less in S Asia.

U. of Minnesota has a poster of the pedigree of hop varieties which I covet.
Cool catalogue of the native potatoes of a bit of Ecuador. Via Red Electronica de la Papa.
Stark photos of a few heirloom apples, with descriptions.
Meanwhile, Brockwell Bake sows some heritage wheats. With stark photo
Report on the state of UK capacity in taxonomy. How many countries have reports on the state of their taxonomy? Anyway, here’s some of that capacity at work.
Farrago on some old olives in Jerusalem.
CIAT celebrates 45 years of existence.
Meanwhile, IITA pushes soil fertility management and cassava.
Arca-Deli Awards awarded.
Defra’s latest Biodiversity News has stuff on the importance of insect biodiversity to pest control and pollination in orchards.
The International Year of Quinoa, which is next year, has a website, and all sorts of associated social networking goodness. And here’s a nice little student video on the crop, for a somewhat different perspective.

IRRI DG on the Kasalath story and its wider implications.
French collect fonio. Glad someone is.
CIAT bean breeder complains about having too much diversity to play with.
Caribbean needs a regional genebank, catalogue of germplasm. What, still?
Improving cotton in Texas one (or two) chromosomes at the time.
Managing livestock-predator conflicts. The name of the game is prevention.
Candidate gene for improved beer foam identified. I knew all that genomics stuff would come in useful eventually.
Diverse root biome helps plants survive drought.
Gear up for the 7th International Triticeae Symposium, or 7ITS as it is widely, if unfortunately, known.

BBC pounces on CCAFS report previously trumpeted by Bioversity. Bottom line: adaptation may mean changing crops. Bottom bottom line: Will they have enough diversity?
PGR Secure newsletter is out.
GCARD2 rumbles on.
The ankole cow is threatened. What, still?
Tracking ash dieback. And since we’re talking gadgets…
Old cacao trees being replaced in Nigeria. No word on what’s happening to the diversity they represent. Maybe it’s ex situ already? Maybe it’s not significant? I dunno, I would just like to be told.
Slow Food documents African foods. Thankfully no ugali.
Aussies put together cool bean collection.