- Developing genetic resources for pre-breeding in Brassica oleracea L.: an overview of the UK perspective. Genebanks will set you free.
- Competitive underutilized crops will depend on the state funding of breeding programmes: an opinion on the example of Europe. Divert some subsidies paid directly to farmers to a Europe-wide breeding programme devoted to NUS.
- Analysis of average standardized SSR allele size supports domestication of soybean along the Yellow River. The middle part, to be precise, where it loops north.
- Bambara nut: A review of utlisation, market potential and crop improvement. Need some functioning value chains, for pity’s sake. That’s why previous promotion efforts failed miserably. Not because they’re, well, not that great a crop? In fact they’re drought-tolerant, tasty, nutritious; but difficult to process, prepare. So do market research to inform breeding.
- State-of-the-art of the Jatropha curcas productive chain: From sowing to biodiesel and by-products. Value chains? You want value chains? I’ve got a state-of-the-art one right here.
- Validation of an allele-specific marker associated with dehydration stress tolerance in a core set of foxtail millet accessions. The marker explains about 27% of total variation in dehydration tolerance in a core collection, which is apparently pretty good.
Featured: The truth about crop mapping
Jawoo Koo has the lowdown on that decision to use the SPAM crop maps for the yield gap atlas rather than, as it turns out, MIRCA2000’s:
The workshop organizer distributed MIRCA’s crop distribution maps to each country expert and asked for feedback on whether the maps adequately represented where the crops are (or aren’t) in terms of harvested area. Reviewing all the feedback comments and comparing the results against the SPAM data, the organizers established that “… In nearly all cases, the SPAM maps were more consistent with the feedback we received from the GYGA agronomists at the workshop.”
There are caveats, though. Read the full story.
The poetry of Erna Bennett
There’s an obituary of Erna Bennett by Peter Hanelt, Helmut Knüpffer and Karl Hammer of the Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research (IPK), Gatersleben, Germany in the latest Genetic Resources and Crop Evolution. It reveals a side of Erna that was new to me:
In Erna’s own words, her life was devoted to “science, politics and poetry”. The particular circumstances determined which of these aims dominated in a given life period, but always all of them interfered with each other. Her very successful role in science is obvious. With respect to her political activities, her major regret was that they did not bear more fruit (Jackson 2012). Her passion for poetry is possibly only known to smaller circles. Several of her own poems were successful in poetry contests. Knowledge of foreign languages (she spoke fluently English, Greek, Italian, could understand German and Spanish) facilitated her access to foreign literature and allowed her to understand it in its original form. Erna admired, among others, the poems of Pablo Neruda, and she transferred this special taste to some of us. Motives of her own verses, especially from the last years of her life, were severe disagreements with actual political developments. In her article “Translating Poetry” (Bennett 2002c), she reflected about poetry translations: “Where the music is dominant in the original work, as in the ancient sagas and epic poems, the translator rightly concentrates on the music.”
Contact Helmut Knüpffer for a reprint.
Brogdale celebrates its Diamond Jubilee
Tom La Dell, joint director of Brogdale Collections, has a piece in the Fruit Forum pointing out that this year is not just the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, but Brogdale fruit collection’s as well.
Public access to the Defra owned National Fruit Collection is managed by Brogdale Collections (at no cost to Defra) and we are expanding what we offer in everything about fruit from the history of the varieties and the way fruit was grown (mostly in gardens) to the future, the development of new varieties and why people would be wise to eat more fruit for their own health, especially in Britain.
Rejoice! No word on what the charges might be for getting hold of germplasm. Ah, but:
Verified trees became important for breeding new varieties and the Collection is now part of the international community of The International Treaty of Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation.
Forests and Trees: Serving the People of Africa and the World
There’s a big forestry meeting going on in Nairobi, with that title. You can see photos. IISD are on it, of course. And ICRAF and others are twittering up a storm.
No matter how much you market it, people have to see value for your product in order to use it. – Onsango KEFRI #ForestPolicy
— CIFOR-ICRAF (@CIFOR_ICRAF) June 28, 2012
How is agriculture being presented? As the enemy, as usual? Or is the “landscape approach” rhetoric gaining purchase? Anyone want to share their impressions with us?