- A global-scale expert assessment of drivers and risks associated with pollinator decline. “Key findings: 1) risks to human well-being from pollinator decline are higher in the Global South; 2) there is a clear lack of knowledge about pollinator decline in Africa; 3) loss of managed pollinators (e.g. honey bees) is only a serious risk to people in North America.” That’s according to the main author Dr Lynn Dicks on Twitter.
- Agrochemicals interact synergistically to increase bee mortality. Stress on pollinators is more than the sum of its parts.
- Evolutionary innovations driving abiotic stress tolerance in C4 grasses and cereals. Major C4 crops need more stress.
- Deep scoping: a breeding strategy to preserve, reintroduce and exploit genetic variation. You may not need a separate pre-breeding programme to introduce new diversity into your breeding programme without wrecking it.
- Genomic resources for lupins are coming of age. Maybe we could have a pre-breeding programme now?
- Six new species of coffee (Coffea) from northern Madagascar. Including 4 really narrow endemics. I wonder what they taste like. Start evaluation and pre-breeding?
- Refugee camps and deforestation in Sub-Saharan Africa. Much, much less of an impact that you’d think.
- Suitability of root, tuber, and banana crops in Central Africa can be favoured under future climates. More than you’d have thought.
- Proportional sampling strategy often captures more genetic diversity when population sizes vary. Sample more than you normally would from bigger populations of rare wild species.
- Plant pathogen infection risk tracks global crop yields under climate change. Where yields go up, fungal/oomycete infection risk goes up; where yields go down, so does infection risk. Assemblages will change especially in temperate regions.
- Developments in Subsistence Practices from the Early Bronze Age through the Iron Age in the Southern Levant. From pigs, wild animals and emmer to zebu, camelids, and free-threshing wheats.
Nibbles: New Roots for Restoration Biology Integration Institute, Olive genebanks, Saving old grapevines
- New institute to restore ecosystems, including agricultural ones, gets money.
- Some olive-based ecosystems certainly need restoration, good thing there are genebanks.
- Sometimes, restoring ecosystems means digging up old grapevines and moving them down the road.
Did millet cause the Black Death?
The latest episode of the wonderful Ottoman History Podcast is about the Black Death. Or, rather, the Black Deaths. It’s an interview with Dr Monica H. Green, an historian of medicine specializing on the medieval period, who has brought together textual, archaeological and genetic evidence to question the dominant, Eurocentric — she calls it Boccaccian — narrative of the plague.
As she explains, prior outbreaks of plague in 13th-century Asia occurred at the edges of the ascendant Mongol Empire, roughly a century before the plague arrived in Western Europe. In our conversation, we learn how Green uncovered the new story of the “four Black Deaths” and in doing so, explore the historiography of the Black Death and how genetics, archaeology, and a fresh approach to textual sources have brought us to a deeper understand of one of history’s deadliest pandemics.
What’s this got to do with agrobiodiversity? Well, Dr Green summarized her findings in a tweet back in December (slightly modified for clarity):
- the Black Death started in the 13th, not the 14th Century
- it wasn’t just a Mediterranean or European phenomenon
- it originated with a spillover out of the marmot plagues reservoir in the Tian Shan mountains, leading to a Big Bang expansion in four directions
- it likely spread through the Mongol Empire via grain supplies
Whoa, grain supplies? Apparently.
In the foothills of the Tian Shan mountains, Mongol supply chains gathered up grain to feed their campaigning troops, particularly a kind of millet unique to the region. Sacks of grain were then transported to the fortresses and cities where the Mongols laid their greatest sieges between the 1210s and the 1250s, as far distant as Kaifeng in China and Baghdad in Persia. Something so insignificant as a few sacks of millet, into which a few plague-infected rodents crawled, might account for the worst scenes of human suffering the world has witnessed.
So much for that particular superfood. Whichever millet it is.
The baobab infographic we’ve been waiting for
The International Year of Fruits and Vegetables is as good an excuse as any for another baobab factsheet, and infographic.
Not that an excuse has ever been needed. Anyway, this particular latest example of the genre is courtesy of From Tree to Fork, and the first of many, it seems. No mention of using the fruit to make booze, though.
Nibbles: Seeds, Hazelnut double, Perry pears, Bananas in Puerto Rico
- Save food diversity, chef says.
- All well and good, but Nutella is driving hazelnut monoculture in Italy.
- Let them make wood vinegar!
- No doubt perry pears will be next for the monoculture treatment.
- Bananas are way ahead of pears, perry or otherwise.