- Development of microbial consortia as a biocontrol agent for effective management of fungal diseases in Glycine max L. Bacteria gang up to fight soya fungal pathogens. Ain’t diversity grand.
- Species richness of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi: associations with grassland plant richness and biomass. More symbiotic fungi, more plant species and more biomass. Ain’t diversity grand.
- Trees in a deforested tropical landscape: species and trait diversity and potential ecosystem services. Even isolated exotics provide services, for all their lack of biodiversity conservation value.
- Green Light for Green Agricultural Policies? An Analysis at Regional and Global Scales. Model suggests that biodiversity targets for EU farmland lead to externalities paid for by others.
- Exploring restoration options for habitats, species and ecosystem services in the European Union. Target degraded habitats in cheap countries to meet most targets at lowest costs.
- How common is homoploid hybrid speciation? Not very. Thank heavens for the other kind.
- Explaining the ‘hungry farmer paradox’: Smallholders and fair trade cooperatives navigate seasonality and change in Nicaragua’s corn and coffee markets. Fair trade farmers still endure 3 hungry months, but having fruit trees helps.
- Drivers of plant biodiversity and ecosystem service production in home gardens across the Beijing Municipality of China. More edibles and fewer ornamentals with increasing distance from central Beijing. But probably still not enough to meet demand.
- Genetic polymorphism of fifteen microsatellite loci in Brazilian (blue-egg Caipira) chickens. Blue eggs?
- Indigenous chicken genetic resources in Kenya: their unique attributes and conservation options for improved use. And not a single blue egg in sight. Conservation through use.
- Lathyrus diversity: available resources with relevance to crop improvement – L. sativus and L. cicera as case studies. Genotyping and core collections needed.
- Genetic diversity and population structure of black Dahe pig based on DNA sequences analyses of mitochondrial and nuclear genes. Not much diversity in this Chinese pig. No word on their presence in Beijing homegardens.
- Associations between polymorphisms of the GFI1B gene and growth traits of indigenous Chinese goats. Polymorphic sites associated with growth traits. Let the molecular breeding begin. No word on whether same possible for pigs.
- Worldwide Patterns of Ancestry, Divergence, and Admixture in Domesticated Cattle. Cattle came into Europe in at least 2 waves, one from the Middle East, one from W Africa via Spain. The Asian breeds are something else again, and were involved in only the former of those waves.
- Effect of coconut water and growth regulator supplements on in vitro propagation of Corylus avellana L. One fruit helps conservation of another.
Quinoa backlash backlash recap recap
Let’s recap. First, the Quinoa Boom on the Bolivian Altiplano was A Good Thing. A backlash was, in retrospect, inevitable. Soon enough, it was A Bad Thing. Then, slowly, sense prevailed, and we were all, like, We Need More Data. Most recently, we’ve had It’s Complicated.
So it’s interesting, don’t you think, that Alternet, which sort of started the backlash in the first place, has just published a piece which includes this summary:
…American accounts of the story “either fall on the side of ‘the quinoa boom is amazing and it’s lifting people out of poverty’ or ‘the quinoa boom is terrible and is destroying people’s lives,’ and in both of those narratives the indigenous people are given no agency…”
And is it just a coincidence that FAO has also just published online an infographic on The impact of the Quinoa boom on Bolivian family farmers? It not only identifies the challenges, but suggests some solutions as well. But you’ll have to click on it here on the left to see all that.
Meanwhile, though…
The most recent Farm Bill was an excellent opportunity for quinoa to gain both broader recognition and government payments. After all, temperate japonica rice, used in sushi, made the list of government supported commodities. Perhaps quinoa is next.
That would be in the US. Agency indeed.
Historical crop videos online
Alerted by a tweet from Pat Heslop-Harrison, I delved into British Pathé’s new Youtube archive of 85,000 historical films. The following little gem turned up when I searched for wheat.
I shared it with my go-to guy on wheat genetic resources, and he had this to say:
Multi-branched spikes have been investigated by a number of researchers (including Cal Qualset from whom we have germplasm he developed). It’s interesting to see farmers harvesting a variety with the trait. It seems an obvious way to increase yield (make the wheat spike into a sorghum-like inflorescence) but results have not been as encouraging as the morphology suggests.
Have fun searching for your favourite crops.
My happy liver I cover with a garment fit for a queen
Since we’re on the subject of agricultural biodiversity and poetry, let’s also deal with that Sumerian ode to beer that featured in another article I linked to recently. It’s called the “Hymn to Ninkasi,” and it was found on a 19th century BC cuneiform tablet. Ninkasi means “lady who fills the mouth,” and was, aptly enough, the goddess of brewing. I found a longer version of the poem online, along with a recipe for the beer it describes, a “light, unhopped, unfiltered barley beer.” There’s some really detailed scholarship on Sumerian beer out there. What I don’t quite understand is why this stanza
While I circle around the abundance of beer,
While I feel wonderful, I feel wonderful,
Drinking beer, in a blissful mood,
Drinking liquor, feeling exhilarated,
With joy in the heart [and] a happy liver—
While my heart full of joy,
[And] [my] happy liver I cover with a
garment fit for a queen!…
which is rather fun, is found in some sources but not in others. Some disagreement among Sumerian poetry experts? I’d like to think so.
Incidentally, there’s a thing called the Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary Project which has come up with an entirely horrible but endlessly intriguing online resource. It took me like an hour, but I finally figured out what I think is the Old Akkadian cuneiform for Ninkasi.
You’re welcome.
The latest thinking on domestication illustrated
I’m still ploughing through the PNAS special feature on domestication, 1 but I just thought I’d share what are in many ways the money figures. They come from the overview article, and they show the about 20 or so accepted and probable centres of domestication:
And a timeline for selected domesticates:
