Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog – Agrobiodiversity is crops, livestock, microbes, pollinators, wild relatives …

September 22, 2018September 19, 2018

First Annual Crop Wild Relatives Week kicks off

That’s thanks to the Crop Science Society of America.

The Crop Science Society of America is proud to host Crop Wild Relatives Week on September 22 – 29, 2018, to celebrate the contribution that these humble and hearty plants have made to increasing food security around the world. The collections of plants; the work being done to collect, conserve, characterize, and use them; and the importance of continuing to do so will be highlighted in blogs, web stories, and infographics. Online resources for anyone interested in learning more crop wild relatives can be found (https://www.crops.org/crop-wild-relative). In addition, new stories and resources will be added to the site on an ongoing basis, including educational materials for educators and parents of K-12 kids, our future scientists.

Let the fun begin!

September 19, 2018

The 2017 Frank Meyer Medal for Plant Genetic Resources Lecture is online

It’s by USDA’s Peter Bretting, of course, who aptly quotes Kurt Vonnegut in his discussion of Stewards of Our Agricultural Future: “Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.”

Experienced PGR stewards must not only successfully manage PGR, the green line that stands between humanity and calamity, but also serve as leaders to mentor those who recently became or will soon become the PGR stewards of our agricultural future. It is a collective responsibility for all of us, regardless of our job title, career stage, or intrinsic talents, to provide such leadership and thereby begin to erase that “flaw in the human character.”

September 17, 2018

The need for seed

Next year’s ISTA Seed Symposium, on 26-28 June 2019, has a conservation-themed session that looks unmissable:

Session 2: Ensuring seed quality for future generations. Genetic resources, Habitat restoration, Post-harvest handling, Long-term storage, Moisture content and Equilibrium relative humidity, Desiccation tolerance and recalcitrance, Seed longevity, Maintaining the seed quality of non-crop species.

It’ll be in Hyderabad, and you can save a bit of money by booking early.

September 17, 2018

Brainfood: Social media, Wheat double, Apple diversity, Land use change theory, Land use change praxis, Intensification, Ag metrics

How Do Young Adults Engage With Science and Research on Social Media? Some Preliminary Findings and an Agenda for Future Research. Facebook, not Twitter. So I’m doing it all wrong? Any young adults reading this and want to tell me how I’m doing?
Genetic dissection of grain zinc concentration in spring wheat for mainstreaming biofortification in CIMMYT wheat breeding. Two interesting regions on different chromosomes.
Harnessing genetic potential of wheat germplasm banks through impact-oriented-prebreeding for future food and nutritional security. Not just Zn.
Genetic analysis of a major international collection of cultivated apple varieties reveals previously unknown historic heteroploid and inbred relationships. The deep history of the justly famous UK collection.
Middle-range theories of land system change. Towards a Grand Unified Theory. But do we need one?
Classifying drivers of global forest loss. Commodities, basically. But what’s the good of that without a theory?
The environmental costs and benefits of high-yield farming. Theory shtheory: measure externalities.
Beyond Calories: A Holistic Assessment of the Global Food System. Micronutrients get lost disproportionately badly along the supply chain. How’s that for a theory?

September 10, 2018September 11, 2018

Brainfood: Campesino maize, DELLA proteins, CC response, Nematodes, Collection duplication, Epidemics

Evolutionary and food supply implications of ongoing maize domestication by Mexican campesinos. Effective population of 500 million plants potentially feeds 50 million people.
Modulating plant growth–metabolism coordination for sustainable agriculture. Short AND sweet.
Cracking the Code of Biodiversity Responses to Past Climate Change. Quite a bit of adaptation, not just migration and extinction.
Plant-Parasitic Nematodes and Food Security in Sub-Saharan Africa. The greatest biotic threat to productivity on the continent, and probably going to get worse.
Efficient curation of genebanks using next-generation sequencing reveals substantial duplication of germplasm accessions. Out of 1143 accessions of a wild wheat in 3 collections, 564 are unique.
Emerging plant disease epidemics: Biological research is key but not enough. Not just about the money.

Brainfood: Campesino maize, DELLA proteins, CC response, Nematodes, Collection duplication, Epidemics (1)
- Dave Wood: Maize in Mexico: This is an odd paper. It claims: `... it is likely that different alleles are being favoured…
Heritage cereals anyone? (1)
- Luigi Guarino: Jeremy is too modest to link to his monumental series of short daily podcasts on wheat and bread, but I…
Nibbles: Lad spuds, Assisi olives, Amazing maize art, Wild tea, Peruvian alpaca, TR4, Seed banks, Space Seed Force, Embrapa sweetpotato, ITPGRFA (1)
- Dave Wood: Seed Treaty Luigi, you say: “ … if you use material from the MLS to create a new crop…