Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog
Agrobiodiversity is crops, livestock, foodways, microbes, pollinators, wild relatives …
Stephen J. Gould said that “there’s been no biological change in humans for 40,000 or 50,000 years.” Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending beg to differ and, in “The 10,000 Year Explosion,” point to evidence for a recent acceleration in human evolution (e.g. lactose intolerance) ((Fans of the Coen brothers will recognize the title of this …
More on an agrobiodiversity-related bit of human diversity, for a change.
Michael Kubisch has submitted another post, based on an article in Nature Genetics. Unfortunately the full article and a News and Views piece about it are behind a paywall. However, I’ve done some sleuthing to find a few links that give more details on the story, which I’ve added at the end. As Michael noted, …
Continue reading “Lactose tolerance: independent origins and strong selective pressure”
Average returns on agricultural R&D investment is 100%, says CGIAR. I wonder how many from this list of the most innovative plant varieties of 2020 can trace back to some CGIAR product. Or genebank. Which sweet potato varieties do consumers actually like in PNG? Cool visualizations of the relationships between Mexican crops and foods. One …
I’ve been sitting on a couple of linked press releases from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History for a few months now and it’s about time I did something about them. So here goes. The releases summarize two papers deriving from the analytical work of Dr Shevan Wilkin and her colleagues …