Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

November 25, 2013November 25, 2013

National Geographic launches “Year of Food”

Pretty interesting 20-minute talk from Dennis Dimick, National Geographic Magazine’s Executive Editor for the Environment. NatGeo will be launching a Year of Food in May 2014, and I’m guessing that some family farms will be involved. While I’m not a betting man, I’ll offer two wagers:

NatGeo will reach, and influence, more people than FAO.
NatGeo will not explain the difference between oca and potato.

In case you’re wondering, I do believe those are oca at 16’43” in.

Near the end, Dimick says “maybe we just need to grow more farmers”. Now there’s a thought …

November 23, 2013

Quinoa is dead, long live family farms

Yes indeedy. A new international year has begun, the International Year of Family Farming. Could be fun to keep a vague eye on, especially to see how it includes — or excludes — these family farmers. And do families who farm quinoa now get a second bite at the cherry of global awareness?

November 18, 2013October 8, 2013

Brainfood: Asian American horticulture, Salt resistant Vigna, Rubber dandelion, Biofortifying wheat, US apple cores, Central European barley, Swedish peas, Alpine dairy, CAP crap, MVP

Asian Germplasm in American Horticulture: New Thoughts on an Old Theme. The tap has sort of run dry.
Identification of salt resistant wild relatives of mungbean (Vigna radiata (L.) Wilczek). From 22 accessions of 7 species to 2 accessions of 2 species. Now for the hard part.
Available germplasm of the potential rubber crop belongs to a poor rubber producer, (Compositae–Crepidinae).
Cultivation of the Russian dandelion (Taraxacum koksaghyz) was no such thing, but taxonomy has the answer.
Biofortification strategies to increase grain zinc and iron concentrations in wheat. Not just about the breeding.
Diversity Captured in the USDA-ARS National Plant Germplasm System Apple Core Collection. Apple core? Seriously.
Genes for resistance to powdery mildew in European winter barley cultivars registered in the Czech Republic and Slovakia to 2010. There’s quite a few of them, some of them previously unknown. Oh those jammy breeders. And beer drinkers.
Genetic diversity in local cultivars of garden pea (Pisum sativum L.) conserved ‘on farm’ and in historical collections. Little connection between historical and current material, and genetic erosion both in genebanks and on farms.
Dairy systems in mountainous areas: Farm animal biodiversity, milk production and destination, and land use. The traditional, low-input systems are best for sustainability and biodiversity, but have low productivity, but geographic appellations for cheeses can make up for that.
The contribution of the EU Common Agricultural Policy to protecting biodiversity and global climate in Europe. Is, ahem, limited.
Can Big Push Interventions Take Small-Scale Farmers out of Poverty? Insights from the Sauri Millennium Village in Kenya. Greater productivity (due to seeds and fertilizers) compared to nearby villages does not translate into higher incomes. Well that’s awkward.

November 14, 2013November 14, 2013

Afghan farmers pull off a poppy hat trick

A tweet caught my eye the other week.

Buffet

40 Chances is the title of a project (and book) by Howard G Buffett, who has taken some interesting approaches to agriculture for development as he spends some of his dad’s money.

I don’t follow 40 chances, but our pal Jacob does. Our conversation is self-explanatory, if a little curt, and although I’m grateful to Jacob for opening my eyes to the point Buffett seems to be making — that there might be several diverse alternatives to poppies — nothing to write here about.

Then, a week later, I see an article in Foreign Policy explaining that Afghanistan’s harvest of opium in 2013 was 49 percent up on 2012. “This is the third consecutive year of increasing cultivation,” according to Jean-Luc Lemahieu, outgoing director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, which reported some numbers earlier this week. And the area under cultivation is up 36%.

Ah, the conflicts. Production is up, per hectare, but that’s a bad thing? Because drugs are bad. But only if they’re grown in Afghanistan. Not if they’re grown in Didcot, England, or Tasmania, or France, or Turkey, or India …

I’ve belaboured the point often enough here. There are well-thought out schemes for legalising Afghanistan’s poppy production. And as an aside, the US helped Turkey to transition to legal opiate production by guaranteeing to buy a 80% of its legal opium from India and Turkey.

So, just noting here that in case saffron, pistachios etc don’t work out either, there are alternatives.

November 11, 2013November 11, 2013

Brainfood: Mixtures and productivity, Pesticides and soil biota, Andean intensification, Turkish barley, Tomato size gene, Quinoa and environment, Banana improvement, Hybrid conservation, Allozymes

Changes in the Abundance of Grassland Species in Monocultures versus Mixtures and Their Relation to Biodiversity Effects. Monocultures are ok for productivity, but only initially.
Agricultural soils, pesticides and microbial diversity. mRNA and high-throughput sequencing show that pesticides affect nitrification rates and soil microbe community structure. Brave new world indeed.
Making Sense of Agrobiodiversity, Diet, and Intensification of Smallholder Family Farming in the Highland Andes of Ecuador. Want sustainable intensification? Look at the smaller enterprises.
Genetic variation of barley germplasm from Turkey assessed by chloroplast microsatellite markers. Little genetic similarity between wild relative and landraces in same geographic area.
A cytochrome P450 regulates a domestication trait in cultivated tomato. Single polymorphism controls fruit size.
Blossoming Treasures of Biodiversiy. 42. Quinoa – is the United Nations’ featured crop of 2013 bad for biodiversity? It can be.
From crossbreeding to biotechnology-facilitated improvement of banana and plantain. Quite some progress, despite few breeding programmes. Will it all go GE? Big temptation. I would have made more of the genebank collections, personally.
Perspectives on the conservation of wild hybrids. There’s more to it than science. Tell that to the banana breeders.
Revisiting protein heterozygosity in plants — nucleotide diversity in allozyme coding genes of conifer Pinus sylvestris. Those pre-DNA days weren’t a complete waste of time. That mean we can measure genetic erosion?