Nibbles: Information, Domestication, Cats, Conference, Gunpowder gardening, Policy advice, Potatoes, Ancient vineyards, New UG99, Bovine emissions, Cacao ants, Palaeo-diet, Bloody quinoa, Tokyo’s honey, Urban biodiversity, Ilex, Conifers

Wow! Just wow. Big Picture Agriculture has launched an incredibly useful website. Chromosomes, crops and superdomestication, a slideshare presentation by Pat Heslop-Harrison. Cats, domesticated? Not as far as I’m concerned. Still, Ancient Chinese cats ate rats, leading to their domestication. Independent plant breeders, a conference just for you. Great ammunition for the lazy gardener. IBPES …

Nibbles: Ug99, Heirloom & wild tomatoes, Opium, Healthy flavours, Quinoa descriptors, Wild yak community conservation, Phenotyping facility, Tree app, ABS & EU, C4, Barley in Ethiopia, Chinese coffee

Not totally wild genes protect wheat from Ug99. Not really wild Texas Wild tomato brings Texan back to gardening. These in Peru are wild though. Speaking of gardening, here’s Michael Pollan on his struggles with opium. Wild, healthy fruit flavours becoming more popular on the soft drink market, but not clear to what extent they …

UG99 resistant varieties

In case you’re not following the discussion here on knowledge management, here’s a map of the wheat varieties resistant to UG99. If you use Google to search for images of “UG99 resistance” it is right up there, near the top, and several versions are available…

Nibbles: Plant breeding book, Ug99, NGS, Monitoring, Genetic diversity and productivity, Adaptive evolution, Amaranthus, Nabhan, Herbarium databases, Pepper, Shade coffee and conservation, Apples, Pathogen diversity, Phytophthora

Book on history of plant breeding reviewed. Rust never sleeps. Ask not what next generation sequencing can do for you. Long-term datasets in biodiversity research. Nothing about genetic diversity though. Bummer. And genetic diversity is important, is it? Yep, it increases productivity, at least in Arabidopsis. No evidence of adaptive evolution in plants. What? Surely …