Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

September 25, 2012September 25, 2012

Follow the root and tuber conference…

Ongoing session on Roots, Tubers and Bananas at #ISTRC conf in #Abeokuta #rtb

— RootsTubersBananas Breeding (@RTB_CGIAR) September 25, 2012

…and send us the juicy bits, of course!

LATER: Here’s the live webcast.

LATER STILL: No, wait…

Over 200 scientists from 33 countries attending the 16th ISTRC International symposium on root and tuber crops,lets use #ISTRC16 for tweets!

— NRI (@NRInstitute) September 25, 2012

September 25, 2012September 25, 2012

Accessing mutant barley

A post over at Plantwise reminded me that I wanted to link to an IAEA video on the mutation-breeding of the Peruvian barley variety called Centenario. Simply because it’s an interesting story, reasonably well told.

Alas, the mutants involved do not seem to feature in the FAO/IAEA Mutant Germplasm Repository Database. If they did, they would be available from the Multilateral System of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture.

LATER: It has been pointed out to me that Centenario does feature in a different database maintained by the FAO/IAEA Joint Division. That’s not the stuff in the International Treaty, though.

September 24, 2012September 24, 2012

Brainfood: Organic ag, Garlic conservation costs, Spelt malting, Wild rice genetics, Diversity and ecosystem function, Old late blight, Urbanization and biodiversity, Seed laws, DNA from herbaria, Fruit & veg & school, Quinoa bars, Maize introgression

Organic vegetable farms are not nutritionally disadvantaged compared with adjacent conventional or integrated vegetable farms in Eastern Australia. Something for the next meta-analysis.
Comparing costs for different conservation strategies of garlic (Allium sativum L.) germplasm in genebanks. It depends.
Malting process optimization of spelt (Triticum spelta L.) for the brewing process. You can make a decent beer from spelt. Can I do the evaluation?
Genetic differentiation of Oryza ruffipogon [sic] Griff. from Hainan Island and Guangdong, China Based on Hd1 and Ehd1 genes. It’s different, because of different ecology.
Plant species diversity and genetic diversity within a dominant species interactively affect plant community biomass. In other words, the higher the genetic diversity within the dominant species, the further the effect of species diversity on biomass goes from negative to positive. Bottom line is that you have to consider multiple diversity levels in relating biodiversity to ecosystem functioning. At least in this ecosystem.
Evidence for presence of the founder Ia mtDNA haplotype of Phytophthora infestans in 19th century potato tubers from the Rothamsted archives. “…the founder Ia mtDNA haplotype survived in potato tubers after 1846 and was present over 30 years later in the UK.”
Global forecasts of urban expansion to 2030 and direct impacts on biodiversity and carbon pools. Urban area to triple, affecting important biodiversity hotspots. Biggest surprise to me was Turkey. Gotta be a lot of CWRs there that are going to be threatened by urbanization. But I guess this is good news for urban agriculture?
Seed Governance at the Intersection of Multiple Global and Nation-State Priorities: Modernizing Seeds in Turkey. Developing countries are opting for laws that favor commercialization and privatization because they’re buying into the currently dominant paradigm of what agricultural development means. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t. And if my aunt had wheels she’d be a bus.
DNA Damage in Plant Herbarium Tissue. There isn’t enough of it to matter.
Systematic review and meta-analysis of school-based interventions to improve daily fruit and vegetable intake in children aged 5 to 12 y. Fruit yes, veggies no.
Use of cereal bars with quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa W.) to reduce risk factors related to cardiovascular diseases. Only 22 young(ish) subjects, but promising.
The Genomic Signature of Crop-Wild Introgression in Maize. The wild relative has helped the cultigen to adapt to highland Mexico.

September 21, 2012September 21, 2012

A little something for the weekend.

Lawrence Haddad, of the Institute for Development Studies in the UK, has an interesting post up on Trying to work across the health-development divide. I’ve no intention of trying to summarise here, just pointing it out as sharing insights into some of the real difficulties of working on, say, agricultural biodiversity and diet. Likewise, Science magazine has a special on Disease Prevention that includes non-communicable diseases associated with nutrition.

September 21, 2012September 21, 2012

A London botanical garden in trouble

It sounds as though the botanical garden of the South London Botanical Institute may be threatened by development. According to BGCI the garden has a particularly important collection of Rubus. The institute’s website mentions a Medicinal Border, Gerard’s Border, a Southern Hemisphere Area, and also that

British natives, ferns, scented plants, drought tolerant plants, monocots and unusual vegetables are also represented.

So some agricultural biodiversity is involved here, though I do not know to what extent the “unusual vegetables” and Rubus species, say, are to be found in other genebanks and botanical gardens. In any case, if you think losing this garden would be a bad idea, you can sign a petition. Fingers crossed.