Luigi Guarino – Page 310 – Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

October 10, 2017

Is data a bottleneck to PPP in conservation too?

Lawrence Haddad of GAIN has a blog post out on the “the data gaps that inhibit productive engagement between the public and the private spheres to advance nutrition.” It’s nicely summarized in a tweet.

What data gaps are holding back the public and the private from working together? See below. https://t.co/Z5IpFvlS8I pic.twitter.com/lmHhk9tCNl

— Lawrence Haddad (@l_haddad) October 10, 2017

Strikes me that many of the same things could be said about public-private partnerships in conservation of agricultural biodiversity too. Only more so.

October 10, 2017

Nibbles: Digital lettuce, Dutch seeds, Durian genome, Jackfruit 101, Ag origins, Palestinian watermelon, Pumpkin evolution, Wine trade

Dutch lettuce collection to be sequenced.
Ah yes, the Dutch are real seed visionaries.
Durian next?
Maybe jackfruit?
We should never have given up being hunter-gatherers.
But then we wouldn’t have watermelons. Or, later in the year, pumpkins.
Or wine.

October 9, 2017October 10, 2017

Reports galore for the CFS

It’s the time of year for major reports, I guess. Here’s what’s on the table:

HLPE. 2017. Nutrition and food systems. A report by the High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition of the Committee on World Food Security, Rome.
FAO. 2017. The State of Food and Agriculture 2017 — Leveraging food systems for inclusive rural transformation. FAO, Rome.
IPES-Food. 2017. Unravelling the Food–Health Nexus: Addressing practices, political economy, and power relations to build healthier food systems. The Global Alliance for the Future of Food and IPES-Food.

You can follow the discussion on all these and more on the webcast of the 44th session of the Committee on World Food Security.

Maybe we should just have stayed hunters and gatherers?

October 9, 2017October 2, 2017

Brainfood: Antioxidant adzuki, Sorghum gaps, Natural rubber diversity, Non-flying geese

Phytochemical distribution and antioxidant activities of Korean adzuki bean (Vigna angularis) landraces. A cluster of about 10% of 200 Korean landraces have higher antioxidant activity, and smaller seeds. Watch them take over the world.
Sorghum germplasm from West and Central Africa maintained in the ICRISAT genebank: Status, gaps, and diversity. Lots of gaps, but Nigeria isn’t one of them.
A century of guayule: Comprehensive genetic characterization of the US national guayule (Parthenium argentatum A. Gray) germplasm collection. The future of natural rubber is in Texas.
Contribution of both positive selection and relaxation of selective constraints to degeneration of flyability during geese domestication. Wild geese chased no longer due to strong selection on mitochondrial respiratory chain genes.

October 2, 2017October 2, 2017

Brainfood: Hot seeds, Diet diversity double, Finger millet GxE, Botanical gardens, CWR prebreeding double, Pathogen spread, Dog genomics, Cryo calculations, Biodiversity & productivity double, Movies & conservation

High-temperature stress during drying improves subsequent rice (Oryza sativa L.) seed longevity. Up to 45°C, because it triggers a stress protection mechanism.
Agricultural diversification and dietary diversity: A feminist political ecology of the everyday experiences of landless and smallholder households in northern Ghana. Production diversity at the farm level is necessary for dietary diversity, but not sufficient.
Critical review of the emerging research evidence on agricultural biodiversity, diet diversity, and nutritional status in low- and middle-income countries. Production diversity at the farm level has a small but consistent positive association with dietary diversity.
Exploiting Genetic Diversity for Adaptation and Mitigation of Climate Change: A Case of Finger Millet in East Africa. Some varieties are good everywhere, others only good in some places.
Ex situ conservation of plant diversity in the world’s botanic gardens. A third of all known plants, and half of endangered ones, are to be found in botanic gardens, but the tropics are under-represented.
Prebreeding Using Wild Species for Genetic Enhancement of Grain Legumes at ICRISAT. It’s a drag, but someone has to do it.
Wide crosses of durum wheat (Triticum durum Desf.) reveal good disease resistance, yield stability, and industrial quality across Mediterranean sites. Not such a drag after all.
Quantifying airborne dispersal routes of pathogens over continents to safeguard global wheat supply. Incredibly fancy maths says Yemen is the key.
Demographic history, selection and functional diversity of the canine genome. There’s a lot here, in particular the genes that were involved in early phenotypic differentiation from wolves, and evidence of continuous geneflow with wilds canids. But the thing that really got me is that humans and dogs show parallel evolution in the ability to process complex carbohydrates, associated with agriculture.
Probabilistic viability calculations for cryopreserving vegetatively propagated collections in genebanks. One Excel spreadsheet to rule all cryo.
Biodiversity effects in the wild are common and as strong as key drivers of productivity. Meta-analysis of observations in nature supports results of experimental work.
Biodiversity promotes primary productivity and growing season lengthening at the landscape scale. “…a large species pool is important for adaption to climate change.” An example of the above.
Considering connections between Hollywood and biodiversity conservation. Conservationists need to get out more.

1. Swapping maize for indigenous crops won’t fix African food systems designed around markets and policies that still favour a narrow range of crops.
2. Cassava is both a food security fallback and a commercial crop in Uganda, but disease, climate change and declining diversity make its conservation an increasingly urgent form of insurance. But what about the markets and policies?
3. When livestock and crops fail, Ugandan pastoralists draw on wild plants for food, underlining how much food-system resilience still sits outside the formal agricultural system, with its markets and policies.
4. The Morton Arboretum is using living collections and genetic research to help the threatened butternut tree cope with changing conditions.
5. Webinar discusses global approaches to seed provenancing and transfer zones, useful for anyone who wants to move native plants without moving the wrong genes. Butternut very interested.
6. San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance’s Frozen Zoo preserves genetic material of plant and animal species that may disappear, from DNA to cells to organisms. Butternut volunteers.
7. New Indian facility combines ex situ fish conservation with community aquaculture. Good model for much of the above?
Published on October 6, 2026