Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

December 3, 2013December 3, 2013

Scaling up everything except communications

Scale is very much on the agenda today in Africa, though a little bit under the radar, for some reason. We’ve seen no advance publicity, for example, for the launching of the the African Plant Breeding Academy by the African Orphan Crops Consortium (AOCC). We were insufficiently attentive, no doubt. Here’s the press release. And you can follow the proceedings live from the World Agroforestry Centre in Nairobi. There is also tweeting:

Cabinet Secretary Kosgei: Scientists should take advantage of the academy for improved food security #orphancrops http://t.co/ORHbRpu4wX

— CIFOR-ICRAF (@CIFOR_ICRAF) December 3, 2013

You’ll remember that the African Orphan Crops Consortium plans to use next-generation technologies to sequence dozens of heretofore neglected crops and use the resulting megadata to improve them. Good luck to them.

Meanwhile, a little further north, another CGIAR Centre is hosting a meeting of Feed the Future’s Agriculture & Nutrition Global Learning and Evidence Exchange, a meeting which is apparently focusing on scaling up technology adoption. I found out about it via the redoubtable comms people at ILRI:

@ILRI Addis today hosts @FeedtheFuture GLEE on scaling up adoption and use of agricultural technologies. http://t.co/5kuVH3UXZd @agrilinks

— peterballantyne (@peterballantyne) December 3, 2013

But further information is very scarce. Maybe a participant will fill us in. In particular, of course, we’d be very interested in what is being said about the use of agricultural biodiversity in scaling up nutrition interventions.

December 2, 2013

Featured: You say mashua

Eve Emshwiller sets Between the Lines straight on this whole oca thing:

The Andean tuber that has an effect on testosterone is not oca, Oxalis tuberosa, but another Andean tuber that looks even more like oca than potatoes do: Tropaeolum tuberosum, which has several common names in different parts of the Andes, such as mashua, añu, and isañu.

So many Andean roots and tubers, so little time…

December 2, 2013

Food globalization under Mowbray’s Cupola

One of the highlights of my recent trip to India was dinner with Prof. Swaminathan and some of his colleagues at the Madras Club. That’s me under the club’s famed 18th century cupola. The Madras Club is reputed to be the birthplace of mulligatawny soup, so I was planning a post showing how this quintessentially Indian concoction illustrates global interdependence in food products, complete with map of the worldwide origin of the ingredients. A map like this.

But it was Italian night, and I had minestrone.

December 2, 2013December 2, 2013

Brainfood: Latvian tomato heirlooms, Sinai desert gardens, Orange silkworms, Indian pony breeds, Korean radishes, Anthophagy, Hybrids and diversification, Oregano oils, Chinese peanuts, Ethiopian sorghum, Wild rice crosses

Latvia’s Tomato Rebellion: Nested Environmental Justice and Returning Eco-Sociality in the Post-Socialist Eu Countryside. The Man tries to enforce the European Common Catalogue, Latvians rebel.
Traditional agricultural gardens conserve wild plants and functional richness in arid South Sinai. Wild plants survive in gardens, which thus combine diversity and utility.
Analysis of a silkworm F1 hybrid with yellow cocoon generated by crossing two white-cocoon strains: Further evidences for the roles of Cameo2 and CBP in formation of yellow cocoon. What, are we expected to eat this thing now, what with its high carotenoid content and all?
Genetic diversity and bottleneck studies in endangered Bhutia and Manipuri pony breeds. Bottleneck? What bottleneck?
Analysis of the genetic diversity of radish germplasm through SSR markers derived from Chinese cabbage. New Korean radish varieties not same as old Korean radish varieties.
Ethnobotanical study of anthophagy culture in mountainous area of Wenzhou. It pays to eat flowers.
Enabling adaptation? Lessons from the new ‘Green Revolution’ in Malawi and Kenya. Adopting hybrids, and thereby escaping the “low maize productivity trap” is no guarantee that your thoughts will turn to crop diversification.
Phytomorphological and Essential-Oil Characterization in situ and ex situ of Wild Biotypes of Oregano Collected in the Campania Region (Southern Italy). Both nature and nurture play a role. Look for high glandular and stomatal density.
Diversity characterization and association analysis of agronomic traits in a Chinese peanut (Arachis hypogaea L.) mini-core collection. Can it really be down to just 15 alleles?
Assessment of molecular diversity and population structure of the Ethiopian sorghum [Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench] germplasm collection maintained by the USDA–ARS National Plant Germplasm System using SSR markers. High diversity, no structure, much duplication, little passport data.
Crossability patterns within and among Oryza series Sativae species from Asia and Australia. Some easy, some difficult, all interesting.

November 30, 2013November 29, 2013

Rose Revolution

So one of the many new things I learned during my recent trip to India, and which I thought would make a nice piece here, was that Indian breeders are hard at work improving ornamental flowers in general, and the rose in particular. Now, as luck would have it, ICAR has just posted something about this on its Facebook page, so I don’t even need to think of anything clever to write about it. I love it when that happens.