- Using a discrete choice experiment to elicit the demand for a nutritious food: Willingness-to-pay for orange maize in rural Zambia. Farmers say they’ll pay, if they have information about nutrition, and it doesn’t matter how you serve that information. Gotta love economics.
- Historical genomics of North American maize. No orange maize here, but clear evidence of decreasing genetic diversity in parental lines.
“Am I going to have to fight my Audi for lunch?”
The Colbert Report
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Watch this for two reasons:
- It explains briefly and in an easy-to-understand way just some of the ramifications of the drought in the US. Note that the downside is almost all the result of using corn as feed for intensive livestock production.
- It is a masterclass on how to communicate simply and directly.
Major kudos to Bruce Babcock.
P.S. What would happen to prices if Colbert’s Audi was not a competitor for corn?
Berry-Go-Round comes around again
Danny Chamovitz is hosting the latest Berry-Go-Round blog carnival at The Daily Plant. Lots of cool stuff, go see for yourself.
Mexican maize biodiversity documented
Via El Cuexcomate, news that CONABIO now has information on the maize races of Mexico on its website, including photos and distribution maps. It’s all part of a huge project to document native maize diversity (including the wild relatives) which was stimulated by fears 1 about the influx of GM maize. And since we’re on the subject of maize, today also saw an informative post on pellagra, complete with very dramatic illustrations.
Sudanese sorghum by the numbers
The Plant Genetic Resources Unit of the Agricultural Research Corporation (ARC) of Sudan has just published a catalog of its sorghum collection. It mainly contains reams of characterization data, which of course will be easier to explore in their digital form, but it’s always good to have illustrations to go with the numbers. Would be great to see the data eventually make their way to Genesys.
