- Implication of high variance in germplasm characteristics. Last week’s Brainfood focused on genomic variation. This week, in contrast, we look at phenotyping. But not old school phenotyping, oh no. This paper, for example, uses fancy-ish, but not especially expensive, imaging.
- High-throughput imaging of powdery mildew resistance of the winter wheat collection hosted at the German Federal ex situ Genebank for Agricultural and Horticultural Crops. This paper uses somewhat fancier, and possibly more costly, imaging. Vorsprung durch Technik.
- Low availability of functional seed trait data from the tropics could negatively affect global macroecological studies, predictive models and plant conservation. Even embryos in seeds can be phenotyped.
- Agroforestry Trees’ Architecture as Evidence of Domestication: Case of African Mango Tree in the Dahomey Gap, West Africa. I wonder if one could describe the shape of tree crowns from space? I hope not, this work sounded like fun…
- Diversidad biocultural de tomate nativo en Oaxaca, México. Phenotype is socially constructed in tomato too.
- Who Defines Fine Chocolate? The Construction of Global Cocoa Quality Standards from Latin America. Can you standardise a social construct such as the flavour of chocolate, and would it help farmers? Maybe.
- Douro wine-tourism engaging consumers in nature conservation stewardship: An immersive biodiversity experience. How to make money out of a socially constructed phenotype.
- Natural range, habitats and populations of wild peas (Pisum L.). We should get out of our labs and look for wild peas in the oases of the Sahara Desert, the subalpine communities of Georgia, and the Asir Mts of Yemen. But will we know them when we see them?