Luigi Guarino

October 26, 2026October 26, 2026

Wild silk found in the archives

Readers will be familiar with the domesticated silkworm, Bombyx mori, munching mulberry leaves, and only mulberry leaves, and obligingly spinning the fine thread that has dressed the rich for millennia. But how many of you know about alternative, wild sources of silk? Quite a few, perhaps, if you’ve been following us for a while and your memory is better than mine.

Because, as it turns out, though I’d totally forgotten about it, we’ve blogged about this a few times before. I linked to silk-making in the drylands of Mwingi in Kenya back in 2007, which I followed up the following year. And Jeremy also chipped in, twice in fact.¹ Wild silk was one of our most popular topics at the time, if comments are anything to go by.

Anyway, this trip into the archives was prompted by a recent piece in The Hindu about how the Central Sericultural Germplasm Resource Centre (CSGRC) in Hosur has been teaching students at the Forest College and Research Institute of Tamil Nadu Agricultural University all about non-mulberry sericulture. Apparently as part of the “exploration of opportunities for integrating forest-based silk production into forestry ecosystems.”

The best introduction to the beauty and diversity of wild silks I’ve found is the website of the Florida Museum’s wonderful collection. But no doubt there are other useful resources out there on this fascinating subject.

October 26, 2026October 24, 2026

Brainfood: Ancient Madagascar cattle, American bison, Tibetan yaks, Korean silkworms, European cattle genomic selection, Slovenian cattle footprint, Nigerian ponds, African swine fever in Asia

Past rapid spread of introduced livestock coincided with vegetation clearance on Madagascar. Ancient sheep, goat and cattle bones show livestock racing across the island about 1,200 years ago, in step with forest clearance and the loss of elephant birds and pygmy hippos. People had arrived long before, so hunting alone is an insufficient culprit. Also I can’t imagine pygmy hippos being all that nice to eat.
Paleogenomic insight into the collapse, recovery, and management of American bison. 115 ancient and 45 modern genomes show that past bison populations were widely connected, which means that today’s herds, while more fragmented, retain more diversity than was feared. Also, many modern bison lack the cattle ancestry long assumed to be ubiquitous, but wood bison do carry plains bison ancestry from 1920s translocations. So, swings and roundabouts.
Whole-genome resequencing reveals genetic diversity, population structure, and selection signatures in tibetan yak. Three recently recognised Xizang populations (Chawula, Jila and Niangya) prove genetically richer than many others and cluster with Yushu and wild yak. Selection signals turn up at coat colour genes such as MC1R and at candidates for meat production. Has anyone done selection signals in bison?
Selection of a phenotypic and functional core set for South Korean silkworm genetic resources, Bombyx mori (Lepidoptera: Bombycidae). A core set is distilled from a larger collection on multiple morphological, physiological and quality criteria, a manageable shortlist so the genebank’s holdings can be more easily used rather than merely admired. What would a core collection for the bison look like, I wonder?
Impact of genomic selection on genetic diversity in 5 local European cattle breeds. Genomic selection uses DNA information from across an animal’s genome to predict its breeding value, allowing breeders to select animals likely to pass desirable traits to their offspring earlier and more accurately than relying on observed characteristics or pedigree alone. But can it be bad for genetic diversity if applied to a small local breed? Well, it shortened sire generation intervals and evened out top-sire contributions, but inbreeding rose in two breeds and fell in three. Genetic management mattered more than genomic selection, so the lesson is to monitor, and adjust as needed. Possibly relevant to the bison?
Adoption of support tools for biodiversity conservation: a mixed-methods analysis of ecosystem services awareness among Slovenian cattle farmers. Livestock farmers who are younger and with more positive attitudes to biodiversity and the European Green Deal are more likely to adopt biodiversity-supporting practices. Knowing this could have saved many pigmy hippos 1,200 years ago in Madagascar.
A national fish pond dataset for Nigeria generated using automated detection and segmentation. A segmentation model run over imagery, with a Random Forest classifier filtering the candidates, yields an openly released map of aquaculture production that was previously hard to see, let alone manage.
Pathways to recover Asian wild pigs from African swine fever. Since 2018 the virus has caused huge mortality in naive wild pig populations, and the authors set out eight priority actions, with early-warning surveillance, captive breeding and emergency financing the ones that can’t wait. Free-ranging domestic pigs and thin biosecurity at the wildlife-livestock interface keep kind of bring us back to where we began on Madagascar.

October 23, 2026

Getting to the hub of seed saving

It seems every new website these days is a hub or an academy. The latest example that has come across my desk is the Seed Knowledge Hub developed by the Erasmus+ project Seeds of Growth: Strengthening Community Seed Banks and Sustainable Seed-Saving Practices in Europe.

The Hub brings together guides, technical manuals, case studies and policy materials on seed saving and cultivated diversity. What was included into it was decided on the basis of a capacity gap analysis that reached 868 people across Europe and collected 140 responses from seed savers, community seed bank managers and seed librarians.

You can subscribe to keep up to date.

October 21, 2026October 21, 2026

Nibbles: Standing variation, Indigenous dogs, Austrian apples, Jordanian olive oil, Island foods

Ancient farmers didn’t have to wait for the genetic diversity that made domestication possible. They selected from variation already present in wild plants, including the ancestors of rice and maize. Domestication was as much about spotting (or happening upon) useful differences as creating new ones.
English colonists in America called Indigenous dogs “wolves,” revealing as much about colonial perceptions as about the animals themselves. This history of Indigenous dogs shows how unfamiliar animals were classified through peculiarly European ideas about wildness.
Austria is bringing forgotten apple varieties back to life. Saving old varieties in genebanks is one thing: getting people to grow, sell and eat them is another, but it can be done. Or at least tried.
Jordan’s olive-oil heritage centres on traditional varieties such as Nabali and ancient Rumi trees, but most production is consumed locally, leaving exports limited and making provenance, cultivar and harvest date important indicators for buyers. Compare and contrast with Austrian apples.
Small island developing states have distinctive food cultures and ingredients, but face particular challenges in building sustainable and resilient food systems. FAO’s A Taste of SIDS explores the connections between island food, biodiversity and culinary heritage. Nice to see diversity within crops considered, though a few local variety names would have been nice.

October 20, 2026October 21, 2026

Plant Cuttings regrows

We used to link quite a bit to Plant Cuttings, Nigel Chaffey’s monthly column in the international scientific journal Annals of Botany. It was also shared on Botany One, a weblog run by the publisher of the journal. Here’s an example of one of our shoutouts, from 16 years ago no less.

Dr Chaffey always had something interesting to say, and following his column was a great pleasure. So I thought it was a real pity when it came to an end in 2019, after about a decade.

It turns out, though, that Plant Cuttings continues. A random post on social media linking to Dr Chaffey’s latest piece, a review of what sounds like an excellent book on basketry, led me to the current incarnation. You can subscribe to it, which I have done, and of course explore the archive of the column at Botany One.