Brainfood: Wild melon dispersal, Fertile Crescent domestications, Angiosperm threats, Wild rice alliance, Wild potato leaves, Brassica oleracea pangenome, Wild Vigna nutrients

Frugivory by carnivores: Black-backed jackals are key dispersers of seeds of the scented !nara melon in the Namib Desert. Jackals pee on wild melon relatives and disperse their seeds, not necessarily in that order. Out of the Shadows: Reestablishing the Eastern Fertile Crescent as a Center of Agricultural Origins: Part 1. Go East, young archaeobotanists! …

Brainfood: US edition

Vulnerability of U.S. new and industrial crop genetic resources. More germplasm (especially wild relatives) and breeders are needed in the US of castor bean, gumweed, guar, guayule, kenaf, roselle, safflower, sesame, sunn hemp, rubber dandelion and Vernonia. Safeguarding Plant Genetic Resources in the U.S. But the conservation system itself has its challenges, due to climate …

Brainfood: Landrace threats, Heritage areas, Bean erosion, Rice restoration, Cassava redundancy, Commercialization, Peanut network, Podolian cattle

Towards a practical threat assessment methodology for crop landraces. Basically red listing for landraces. Preserving traditional systems: Identification of agricultural heritage areas based on agro-biodiversity. First places to apply the above? Genetic erosion within the Fabada dry bean market class revealed by high-throughput genotyping. Would have been nice to apply the above before doing this …

Brainfood: Archaeology edition

Early human selection of crops’ wild progenitors explains the acquisitive physiology of modern cultivars. The high leaf nitrogen, photosynthesis, conductance and transpiration of crops was already there in their wild relatives, the first farmers just happened to domesticate greedy plants. The impact of farming on prehistoric culinary practices throughout Northern Europe. When the first farmers …