- Characterizing the allopolyploid species among the wild relatives of soybean: Utility of reduced representation genotyping methodologies. Allopolyploids are more than the sum of their diploid progenitors, but also less.
- Genetic Diversity within a Global Panel of Durum Wheat (Triticum durum) Landraces and Modern Germplasm Reveals the History of Alleles Exchange. Modern varieties have a lot of rare alleles, and Ethiopian landraces may be the results of a separate domestication. But I’m not sure you can call this a core collection. Incidentally, genotyped by 35K Affymetrix Axiom wheat breeders array1 at TraitGenetics (Gatersleben, Germany).
- Genome Wide Association Study to Identify the Genetic Base of Smallholder Farmer Preferences of Durum Wheat Traits. Farmers know what they’re talking about. No word on any overlap with above. Incidentally, genotyped on the Infinium 90K wheat chip at TraitGenetics (Gatersleben, Germany). There’s a coincidence!
- The role of livestock intensification and landscape structure in maintaining tropical biodiversity. If we want to keep more livestock while maintaining biodiversity, we should spare forests and avoid using agrochemical inputs. Assuming that dung beetles can stand in for tropical biodiversity as a whole.
- Organic farming enhances soil microbial abundance and activity — A meta-analysis and meta-regression. Especially legumes in crop rotations and organic inputs.
- Identification of promising sources for fodder traits in the world collection of pearl millet at the ICRISAT genebank. From over 300 to about a dozen.
- Genetic Diversity and Population Structure of Brachiaria Species and Breeding Populations. Fancy molecular markers agree with morphology.
- Bottlenecks in the PGRFA use system: stakeholders’ perspectives. Need better policies, capacity and access.
- Solanum jamesii: Evidence for Cultivation of Wild Potato Tubers by Ancestral Puebloan Groups. But does it make good chips?
- Resistance to Sclerotinia sclerotiorum in wild Brassica species and the importance of Sclerotinia subarctica as a Brassica pathogen. Thanks to the U. of Warwick genebank.
- Genetic changes in a novel breeding population of Brassica napus synthesized from hundreds of crosses between B. rapa and B. carinata. Any of them resistant to Sclerotinia?
Separate domestication of durum wheat in Ethiopia? Interesting to know as to just which Triticum species it was domesticated from. Are there any in Ethiopia?
More info from the paper:
Indeed an interesting theory. We were coming to a very similar conclusion on our previous paper but we did not have full geographic representation. The diversity of Ethiopian durum wheat at the molecular level is stunning.
Thanks Luigi – I think the `secondary centre of diversity’ is a bit of a side issue: very obviously Ethiopia is such for several or even many crops. The `separate domestication’ is the key. Emmer itself seems to have been domesticated from the wild several times in different places, but this is different – a distinct crop (free-threshing one-seeded emmer?) being `domesticated’ – perhaps not the right word – from different populations of an existing domesticate. No reason at all why it shouldn’t happen.
Van Slageren has the lot as sub-species of Triticum turgidum – subsp. dicoccoides as wild emmer; subsp. dicoccon as cultivated emmer; and subsp. durum as durum. Naked barley is probably similar. I suppose it depends on taxonomic rank and just what is the level of domestication – about which I argue that `normal’ barley is hardly domesticated at all, with invested seed and vicious seed-burying awns (I got a barley awn-base penetrating under my tongue and there for two weeks once. Agony). Interesting and nice to see a lot more effort going into Ethiopian germplasm.
Genome Wide Association Study to Identify the Genetic Base of Smallholder Farmer Preferences of Durum Wheat Traits. Farmers know what they’re talking about. No word on any overlap with above. Incidentally, genotyped on the Infinium 90K wheat chip at TraitGenetics (Gatersleben, Germany). There’s a coincidence!
They were completely separate study and were not aware of it until it came out. The use of the same platform is truly a pure coincidence.
I think a little bit more coordination across the CGIAR on this kind of issue would be useful. It would have meant that the studies would have been more comparable. And who knows, maybe a lower price might have been negotiated.
And maybe that lower cost would have compensated the cost of coordination.
Maybe.
Maybe. The first time.