Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog
Agrobiodiversity is crops, livestock, foodways, microbes, pollinators, wild relatives …
Those of you who remember our little discussion here recently of grasspea breeding, and in particular the importance (or otherwise) of breeding for low values of the neurotoxin β-N-oxalyl-L-α,β-diaminopropionic acid (β-ODAP) in its seeds, will not be surprised to learn that a press release a few days ago announcing a new(ish) promising low-ODAP variety called …
Continue reading “Getting to the root of the Ceora family tree”
We unfortunately seem to be doing a lot of this lately. Dirk Enneking informs us on Facebook that Prof. Clive Francis, a famous Australian genetic resources scientist, has died. You can get an idea of his influence from a blog post by Ken Street dating back to 2008, but describing a situation that, alas, has …
Grass pea (Lathyrus sativus L.) is an important crop in Ethiopia. Its vital importance in the Ethiopian agriculture emanates from its resistance to drought, salinity, waterlogging and low soil fertility. However, low levels of the amino acids methionine and tryptophan and the presence of the neurotoxin β-N-oxalyl-L-α,β-diaminopropanoic acid (ODAP) in the seeds are the major …
I’m taking the liberty of elevating a question form our friend Dirk Enneking to a full post, because I suspect more peple see posts than comments. Can you help Dirk? Does any of our learned friends from India, Nepal and Ethiopia who have posted here, have a current perspective on the role that grass pea …
A post over at Biofortified entitled “Will cover crops feed the world?” asked an intriguing question: Why not take a survey of red clover and hairy vetch germplasm, looking for those that fix nitrogen at high rates, have good winter survival, and decay at a reasonable rate to provide fertilizer for crops the following year, …