- Genetic structure of the Canarian palm tree (Phoenix canariensis) at the island scale: does the “island within islands” concept apply to species with high colonization abilities? High dispersal ability doesn’t always lead to high connectivity among populations.
- Uncertainties of potentials and recent changes in global yields of major crops resulting from census- and satellite-based yield datasets at multiple resolutions. Average overall annual yield increases of about 1.5% for maize, rice, wheat and soybean for 1981 to 2008 are uncertain and probably not sufficient.
- Indigenous underutilized vegetables for food and nutritional security in an island ecosystem. People in the the Andaman and Nicobar Islands eat a lot of different vegetables. Interestingly, most are perennial and a quarter are wild.
- Knowledge Loss and Change Between 2002 and 2017—a Revisit of Plant Use of the Maasai of Sekenani Valley, Maasai Mara, Kenya. But for how long will the above be true?
- Use of grass seed resources c.31 ka by modern humans at the Haua Fteah cave, northeast Libya. Including wild wheat relative(s).
- Soybean PI 675847 A as a new source of salt tolerance. But it can’t be the only one, surely?
- The carob tree at the crossroad of domestication center and refugia hypotheses. Out of the west, surprisingly.
- Pesticidal Plant Extracts Improve Yield and Reduce Insect Pests on Legume Crops Without Harming Beneficial Arthropods. Worth a try.
- Genome-wide selection footprints and deleterious variations in young Asian allotetraploid rapeseed. Asian rapeseed derived from European, diverged, introgressed, split into 2 groups.
- Essential amino acids: master regulators of nutrition and environmental footprint? If you take essential amino acids into account, livestock production doesn’t seem such a bad idea after all.
- Parallel selection on a dormancy gene during domestication of crops from multiple families. Cloned soybean dormancy gene also showed evidence of selection during domestication in rice and tomato.
- Two Likely Auto-Tetraploidization Events Shaped Kiwifruit Genome and Contributed to Establishment of the Actinidiaceae Family. And you can thank them for the high vitamin C content.
- Hydraulic diversity of forests regulates ecosystem resilience during drought. More diverse forests better at coping with dry spells.
Average overall annual yield increases of about 1.5% for maize, rice, wheat and soybean for 1981 to 2008 are uncertain and probably not sufficient. Yet, global markets are not encouraging increased production with ever lower prices paid to farmers.
That’s the invisible hand for you.
Grass seed resource c.31ka.
This claims “modern humans had the capacity to identify large-seeded grasses as a potential food source…”. This is obviously so as the wild ancestors of the first Old World cereals all had large seed (in the top 1% of all grasses). But these wild ancestors also were a) found in monodominant vegetation (easy to harvest); b) all had long straight awns (less than 1% of all grasses). This last feature of grassland vegetation can be recognized from at least 500m away – about the same distance a modern pub sign can be identified.
Me again: On my point b) I’ve just noticed that theirTable 4 lists eight species of Aegilops currently found in their study area. Two of these “can be found in massive stands” and one other “sometimes in large stands”. This ability of Aegilops spp. to grow as monodominants was the basis of the 1967 “A wild wheat harvest in Turkey” paper by Jack Harlan. To my mind it explains cereal domestication and also validates cereal monocultures but no doubt will continue to be ignored by present-day `agroecologists’.