- Development of a Statistical Crop Model to Explain the Relationship between Seed Yield and Phenotypic Diversity within the Brassica napus Genepool. Look for primary raceme area.
- Screening of Date Palm (Phoenix dactylifera L.) Cultivars for Salinity Tolerance. In Oman, Manoma and Umsila are particularly tolerant.
- Genetic structure and isolation by altitude in rice landraces of Yunnan, China revealed by nucleotide and microsatellite marker polymorphisms. Geneflow is horizontal, adaptation vertical.
- Breeding Perennial Grain Crops Based on Wheat. By adding a wild genome.
- European cowpea landraces for a more sustainable agriculture system and novel foods. 24 of them, no less. But you have to start somewhere, I suppose.
- Genetic diversity of Elaeis oleifera (HBK) Cortes populations using cross species SSRs: implication’s for germplasm utilization and conservation. From 532 palms in 19 populations to 34 individuals.
- Large-Scale Screening of Intact Tomato Seeds for Viability Using Near Infrared Reflectance Spectroscopy (NIRS). Good-bye germination tests?
- Genetic identification of ‘Limau Kacang’ (Citrus sp.), a local mandarin cultivated in West Sumatra by sequence-related amplified polymorphism (SRAP). It’s a ponkan.
- Cassava haplotype map highlights fixation of deleterious mutations during clonal propagation. Cassava is decaying genetically, but breeders are helping.
- Ancient genomic changes associated with domestication of the horse. The ancient DNA of immediate post-domestication horses suggests that the stallion bottleneck happened later.
- Genetic Diversity and Population Structure of Two Tomato Species from the Galapagos Islands. They mirror island formation.
- The Tea Tree Genome Provides Insights into Tea Flavor and Independent Evolution of Caffeine Biosynthesis. It evolved caffeine independently of coffee but not cacao. And flavour is down to a whole genome duplication.
- The contribution of international vegetable breeding to private seed companies in India. It can still make one, but for traits rather than varieties.
- Domestication, diversity and use of Brassica oleracea L., based on ancient Greek and Latin texts. Their use as a hangover cure has a long and august pedigree. No word on their raceme area.
Nutrition toolkit all set to make agriculture oh so sensitive
FAO’s Toolkit on Nutrition-sensitive Agriculture and Food Systems is out. Without a huge amount of fanfare, as far as I can tell, which is a bit surprising. Anyway, good to see agrobiodiversity properly highlighted in multiple places, including as an entry point for various interventions, and as part of several indicators.
Meanwhile, that call for best practices for healthy food systems (which means nutrition-sensitive, among other things), is still open.
The price of tea in Kenya
“When countries change their trade policies to protect themselves against price falls, small farmers – particularly those in developing countries – tend to lose profits,” said Will Martin, senior research fellow at IFPRI. “This platform gives governments access to the most recent information available, so they can make informed decisions on food policy that avoid creating global price instability.”
“This platform” is Ag-Incentives, and it’s just been launched by IFPRI.
Policies that affect incentives for agricultural production, such as those that raise prices on domestic markets, can artificially distort the global market, which then undermine market opportunities for small farmers in the world. Ag-Incentives allows users to compare indicators, such as nominal rates of protection, across countries and years.
At the moment, it seems that it is only “nominal rates of protection” (NRP) that are being compared, across countries and years, but that will no doubt change as the platform evolves. What are NRPs?
…the price difference, expressed as a percentage, between the farm gate price received by producers and an undistorted reference price at the farm gate level.
The “undistorted price” being “generally taken to be the border price adjusted for transportation and marketing costs.”
If I understand this correctly, if NRP is negative, the commodity is being taxed, positive and it is being subsidised. This is the picture for tea in Kenya, as an example.
I’ll run it by the mother-in-law to see if she can make some sense of it, in particular what happened in 2006 and 2014.
EucarpiaGR2017: better late than never
Oh gosh, I forgot to give the obligatory shout-out to the EUCARPIA meeting, this year on “Mobilizing the green gold of plant genetic resources.” Silly me. Follow what’s left on #eucarpiaGR2017, there’s some really interesting stuff on.
The Doyen of seed system research Mauricio Bellon presented new data and analyses from sites around the world. #eucarpiaGR2017 pic.twitter.com/4bydfiY43c
— Ola Westengen (@OlaWestengen) May 11, 2017
LATER: Oh, and compare and contrast with this:
Ghostly Bramley
I don’t think I linked last year to the sad news of the impending demise of the original Bramley apple tree. I did link a year before to the news that the pie filling made from said apple was being protected by the EU. And I’ll link now to an article about what Brexit may mean for British apple growers. But all merely by way of introduction to this stunning 3D scan of that fading mother tree in Southwell.
3D scan and drawing of the 200 year old original Bramley Apple tree in Southwell. The 'mother' of all modern Bramley apples. pic.twitter.com/gCq1zmpl0n
— Wolfgang Buttress (@WButtress) May 10, 2017