- Crop-to-wild gene flow in wild coffee species: the case of Coffea canephora in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. DNA bits diagnostic of domesticated coffee are finding their way into wild rainforest populations, but not all that much.
- The genome and population genomics of allopolyploid Coffea arabica reveal the diversification history of modern coffee cultivars. Diversity was already pretty low in pre-domestication wild arabica, and continued going downhill after that. Time to re-synthesize the crop, I say.
- Beyond the Orthodoxy: An Overview of the Potential of ‘Other’ Coffee Species for Crop Use and their Associated Challenges. All well and good, but don’t forget there’s more to coffee than just arabica and robusta.
- Advancing Coffee Genetic Resource Conservation and Exchange: Global Perspectives and Strategies from the ICC 2024 Satellite Workshop. Time to properly secure all coffee diversity in genebanks, and that includes sorting out ABS.
- Expanding the cacao group: three new species of Theobroma sect. Herrania (Malvaceae: Byttnerioideae) from the Western Amazon Basin. Plenty of “other” cacao species too, and more coming.
- Seed morphometrics unravels the evolutionary history of grapevine in France. There was wild-domesticate geneflow in early grapevines in France as well as in robusta coffee in the DRC, and you don’t need to trace bits of DNA to prove it.
- Characterization and analysis of a Commiphora species germinated from an ancient seed suggests a possible connection to a species mentioned in the Bible. Thousand-year-old seed is a distinct and possibly long-lost species of myrrh. Which ok is not a beverage but still vaguely liquid, at least initially.
- Sesame, an Underutilized Oil Seed Crop: Breeding Achievements and Future Challenges. Ok, since we’re doing liquid-producing crops, let’s include this review of sesame improvement. Lots of wild species to use. No word on wild-domesticate geneflow though.