Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

September 6, 2011

A jute renaissance?

According to the BBC, there’s a resurgence of jute cultivation in Bangladesh.

It’s not that long ago that the International Jute Organization could think it worthwhile to support, of all things, a herbarium survey of the wild relatives of the crop. I also seem to remember a very comprehensive germplasm collecting mission in Kenya in the 1980s, organized by the then IBPGR and funded by the IJO, though I can find no evidence of it. There is some germplasm in the international system, though not nearly as much as in national genebanks in Bangladesh and India. In fact, I seem to remember that the collection at the Bangladesh Jute Research Institute had some kind of international status at one point. I wonder if those heady days will now return?

September 5, 2011January 22, 2014

Brainfood: Community forestry, Chinese Paleolithic, Peanut wild relatives, Pepper taxonomy, Fruit tree domestication, Allelopathy, Olive evaluation

Back to basics: Considerations in evaluating the outcomes of community forestry. You don’t need fancy indicators.
Plant exploitation of the last foragers at Shizitan in the Middle Yellow River Valley China: Evidence from grinding stones. Remains of starch and patterns of wear on grinding stones show that Paleolithic people in China used a lot of plants, in a lot of ways.
Phenotypic diversity and identification of wild Arachis accessions with useful agronomic and nutritional traits. Our friends at ICRISAT identify the top 20 wild peanut accessions.
Taxonomy and genetic diversity of domesticated Capsicum species in the Andean region. AFLPs and SSRs clarify some taxonomic issues, but show high diversity not just in Bolivia, the putative centre of origin. No top 20 though.
From forest to field: Perennial fruit crop domestication. They’re like annuals in some respects, different in others. Perhaps most interestingly, their domestication bottleneck wasn’t so much of one.
Allelopathic potential of Triticum spp., Secale spp. and Triticosecale spp. and use of chromosome substitutions and translocations to improve weed suppression ability in winter wheat. Low in wheat, but high in some rye accessions, and transferrable.
Genotyping and evaluation of local olive varieties of a climatically disfavoured region through molecular, morphological and oil quality parameters. Eight minor varieties could be less so.

September 4, 2011September 4, 2011

Rupestrine Roman agrobiodiversity

Rupestrine Roman agrobiodiversity, a photo by luigig on Flickr.

Capparis on this occasion. But I’ve also seen figs, pomegranate and assorted crop wild relatives growing on walls. Time for a serious survey?

September 2, 2011September 2, 2011

Chile Pepper Fiesta 2011

Chile Pepper Fiesta 2011, a set by Brooklyn Botanic Garden on Flickr.

Looks like fun…

September 1, 2011September 1, 2011

UK genebank on BBC Radio 4

Mike Ambrose manages the UK’s largest seed collection based at the John Innes Centre in Norwich.

With a collection of 25,000 seeds from around the world, he tells Caz how looking into the past helps meet the ‘wish-list’ criteria of plant breeders today.

That’s from the Programme Details for this morning’s Farming Today, on BBC Radio 4. I’m sure they have more than 25,000 seeds, but that’s just a quibble. ¹ Did Mike Ambrose really say that the John Innes genebank has seen a 7% year-on-year increase in requests for seed? How much of that went to farmers, I wonder, rather than to breeders.