Luigi Guarino

May 3, 2021

Is Big Agriculture Best?

Jeremy’s latest newsletter out, and he has a challenge for you.

Bursting my own self-reinforcing bubble, as, in fact, I often do, I forced myself to read this fascinating article in Foreign Policy. If only they had phrased the headline as a question – Is Big Agriculture Best? – it would have met my expectations even more perfectly. Let’s just say that I disagree, but not entirely.

My biggest problem with the piece is what it omits on the negative side, and those are well-enough known that in all honesty I cannot be bothered to go through with a point by point rebuttal. And yet, there is precisely one conclusion in the piece with which I wholeheartedly agree.

See if you can find it. Answers by email, please. No prizes though.

May 3, 2021July 13, 2021

Brainfood: Lettuce, Little millet, Finger millet, Rice, Maize, Apple, Brassicas, Onions, Grapevine, Tomato, Sheep, Species diversity, Genetic diversity

Whole-genome resequencing of 445 Lactuca accessions reveals the domestication history of cultivated lettuce. Originally domesticated in the Caucasus, for oil, and then a long, slow wander westward. But so much more to it…
Variability and trait‐specific accessions for grain yield and nutritional traits in germplasm of little millet (Panicum sumatrense Roth. Ex. Roem. & Schult.). From 200 accessions to 5 both high yielding and rich in Ca.
Genomic and phenotypic characterization of finger millet indicates a complex diversification history. Wait, East Africa is the least genetically diverse area?
Portrait of a genus: the genetic diversity of Zea. There has been convergent adaptation in high altitude teosinte and high latitude (temperate) maize.
Genetic diversity of African wild rice (Oryza longistaminata Chev. et Roehr) at the edge of its distribution. The Ethiopian material is special.
Candidate genes and signatures of directional selection on fruit quality traits during apple domestication. Fruit colour and taste genes lose diversity during domestication.
The Evolutionary History of Wild, Domesticated, and Feral Brassica oleracea (Brassicaceae). B. cretica is the closest wild relative.
Brassica rapa domestication: untangling wild and feral forms and convergence of crop morphotypes. The truly wild stuff comes from the Caucasus, Siberia and … Italy. But it all goes back to turnips in the Hindu Kush.
‘Neodomesticates’ of the Himalayan allium spices (Allium species) in Uttarakhand, India and studies on eco-geography and morphology. Gotta know your onions.
Multiple independent recombinations led to hermaphroditism in grapevine. The switch from dioecious to hermaphroditic flowers happened two times in the last 6000 years, but before domestication.
Revitalization of the Greek Vitis database: a multimedia web-backed genetic database for germplasm management of Vitis resources in Greece. Welcome back!
Participatory Plant Breeding and the Evolution of Landraces: A Case Study in the Organic Farms of the Collserola Natural Park. From 80 plants of the Mando tomato landrace to over 2000.
Evidence for early dispersal of domestic sheep into Central Asia. Sheep were being kept in the Ferghana Valley 3000 years earlier than thought.
A metric for spatially explicit contributions to science-based species targets. Sustainable crop production and forestry in Indonesia, Colombia, Mexico, Madagascar and Brazil would make a hell of a difference.
Conserving intraspecific variation for nature’s contributions to people. Oh good, I’m glad somebody thought of this.

April 30, 2021May 31, 2021

Illustrating the diversity of Indian mangoes

The Hindustan Times had a nice short piece recently on the diversity of mango in India.

Students of the participating schools recorded over 200 varieties of mangoes from about 60 locations in the Western Ghats. A study of these varieties has been done by CEE with IISER, Pune, to understand how distinct these popular varieties are at the genetic level.

Having large varietal diversity in a crop makes it possible to choose or develop varieties that can withstand climate change impacts. Different varieties are able to tolerate drought, high rainfall or extreme heat conditions, or pest attacks.

I just wish I could get hold of a high quality version of the poster used to illustrate the article.

LATER: And here’s another illustration of Indian mango diversity!

Mango Map of India. Photo courtesy @thebetterindia #mangoes pic.twitter.com/pswtPmSMVb

— India in Madagascar & Comoros (@IndembTana) May 29, 2021

April 30, 2021

Nibbles: Evidence, Agroecology, Iconography, Cryo

Educational materials for conservation.
Seminar on agroecology next week by Professor of Agroecology Steve Gliessman.
Why is there a citron in Van Eyck’s Ghent altarpiece?
APPS Special Issue Call for Papers: “Meeting the Challenge of Exceptional Plant Conservation: Technologies and Approaches.”

April 29, 2021April 29, 2021

Citizens map crops and their wild relatives

Our friend and occasional contributor Colin Khoury has made a “project” on iNaturalist focusing on the crop wild relatives found in the USA.

iNaturalist collates and manages citizen science observations of living things, with a machine learning algorithm helping with species identification. If the observation you document on your phone app gets verified by two other people, it’s rated as “Research Grade,” and included in GBIF.

Colin also had a go at pulling together observations on major food crops, though there’s no way of including only observations of cultivated material. This is a map of tepary beans (Phaseolus acutifolius), for example.

Cool, no? Join in! There’s only one observation of Bambara groundnut. Surely we can do something about that.