Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog
Agrobiodiversity is crops, livestock, foodways, microbes, pollinators, wild relatives …
So I’ve trawled the latest IPBES Global Assessment Summary for Policymakers for references to agricultural diversity, so you don’t have to. Here’s the most relevant of the Key Messages: A6. Globally, local varieties and breeds of domesticated plants and animals are disappearing. This loss of diversity, including genetic diversity, poses a serious risk to global …
An interesting review is just out by the Grand Old Man of plant conservation (or one of them), Vernon Heywood, under the title Plant conservation in the Anthropocene – challenges and future prospects. It’s a long read, but worth it, and thanks go to the Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences for funding …
Continue reading “Reviewing plant conservation in the Anthropocene”
Genotyping-by-sequencing highlights original diversity patterns within a European collection of 1191 maize flint lines, as compared to the maize USDA genebank. “The joint analysis of collections by GBS offers opportunities for a global diversity analysis of maize inbred lines.” Genetic Diversity among Selected Elite CIMMYT Maize Hybrids in East and Southern Africa. It could, and …
We’ve poked fun in the past at people who think that high prices for quinoa are taking food out of the mouths of poor farmers in Bolivia and Peru, but here’s a confession. We didn’t have actual objective evidence that this was not the case. Just a gut feeling, based on experience and knowing people …
Continue reading “How to get over your quinoa guilt trip, kinda”
Ok here goes, there’s a week’s work of Nibbles we’ve got to catch up on. World running out of chocolate! Tell that to Cologne. Yeah well I prefer tea to cocoa. Greenpeace: “Smart breeding” will save us, not GMOs. Breeders: All breeding is smart. Guess the world’s biggest cash crop. Yeah, that one. Alas, it’s …