- WorldCuP: A database of checklists documenting the World’s Cultivated Plants and their distributions. Cool new database records 1,444,325 occurrences representing 91,358 accepted cultivated plant species across 2,718 regions in 156 countries. Geographic coverage is extensive but uneven, with notable gaps in parts of Africa, southwest and central Asia, and Oceania. Most of the taxa recorded are not in existing major crop and useful-plant databases.
- Integrating multiple disciplines to locate the origins of domestication of crops. Combining evidence from botany, biogeography, genetics, archaeology, linguistics, and history overturns the traditional Mesoamerican hypothesis for cacao origins, supporting domestication in western Amazonia, probably involving multiple events. Peach palm’s domestication is best placed in southwestern Amazonia. Cupuaçu remains unresolved. Now for the other 91,355 species.
- Plant Species Mentioned in Abrahamic Scriptures: Implications for Biodiversity and Traditional Agriculture and Horticulture. Olive, grapevine and fig, together with cereals such as wheat and barley, occur prominently across the three scriptural traditions examined, while date palm is particularly prominent in the Qur’an. Not clear whether scriptures qualify as checklists.
- Crop landrace conservation, status, challenges and motivations in Great Britain. A national inventory (checklist even) identifies 566 landrace populations maintained on farms by 197 growers, alongside 1,876 British-origin genebank accessions, representing a total of 1,201 distinct landraces. Cereal and vegetable landrace cultivation has gone up since 2004, but forage diversity is increasingly threatened. Climate change, labour shortages and lower yields are the main challenges reported by growers.
- An inventory, threat and conservation assessment of UK wheat landrace diversity. The UK currently has 27 wheat landrace varieties growing on more than 700 hectares, an increase in both variety numbers and cultivated area since 2009. Interviews with 50 farmers identify insufficient market demand and limited seed availability as key constraints. So, not climate change, labour shortages and lower yields.
- Strong differentiation between source and ex situ populations of rare plant species revealed by next-generation sequencing. Across four rare plant species, ex situ populations showed significant genetic differentiation from their wild sources despite only one generation in cultivation, while overall genetic diversity and inbreeding did not differ significantly. Unrepresentative seed collection, unconscious selection during propagation or genetic drift could explain the differences. Something to test on all those British landraces, labour permitting?
- Rethinking the vineyard of Santorini in a changing climate and preserving an historic wine region. Recommends a staged transition from vineyard recovery to ecological regeneration, prioritising soil organic matter, drought management and indigenous grapevine diversity. Sounds like lots of labour will be needed.
- Conservation dilemmas: Xylella fastidiosa and the future(s) of olive farming. In Puglia, disease management is pushing olive farming towards competing futures: intensive, mechanised production vs the preservation of ancient trees as cultural landscapes. The fate of traditional groves depends less on technical disease solutions than on whether markets, subsidies and labour arrangements make their continued care economically viable. Well that doesn’t sound promising. Maybe try prayer?