- Selecting basil genotypes with resistance against downy mildew. Only the exotic basils were any good. I will resist the temptation to make Fawlty Towers jokes.
- High grain quality accessions within a maize drought tolerant core collection. Not so much a core collection, rather a set of local and exotic drought-tolerant varieties put together in the former Yugoslavia. Some of which turn out to have decent quality too.
- Diversity, genetic erosion and farmer’s preference of sorghum varieties [Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench] in North-Eastern Benin. Climate change, poor soils and striga are the main problems, according to farmers, and none of their current varieties will help much, apparently, which is why they are disappearing.
- Effects of Farm Size and On-Farm Landscape Heterogeneity on Biodiversity—Case-Study of Twelve Farms in a Swedish Landscape. Small farms = heterogeneous farms = biodiversity-rich farms.
- Identification and characterization of grapevine genetic resources maintained in Eastern European colletions. SSR revealed that of 1098 mainly Vitis vinifera accessions, 997 were indigenous to E. Europe, 101 were Western European cultivars, hybrids, rootstocks and new crosses; the 997 accessions were actually 658 unique cultivars, 54% of which were maintained in the countries of origin only.
- Extent of the genetic diversity in Lebanese olive (Olea europaea L.) trees: a mixture of an ancient germplasm with recently introduced varieties. Three genetic groups around the Mediterranean, most Lebanese material typical of the eastern group; monumental trees similar to Cypriot varieties. In other news, there’s a World Olive Germplasm Bank of Marrakech.
- Application of microsatellite markers for breeding and genetic conservation of herds of Pantaneiro sheep. Evidence of inbreeding means a proper genetic management scheme needs to be designed and implemented.
- Historical demographic profiles and genetic variation of the East African Butana and Kenana indigenous dairy zebu cattle. The only indigenous African dairy breeds, apparently, but with distinct genetic histories despite their similar distribution in Sudan and dairy use.
- Phylogenetic multilocus sequence analysis of native rhizobia nodulating faba bean (Vicia faba L.) in Egypt. Three species, and evidence of horizontal gene movement among them.
- Transcriptome profiling reveals mosaic genomic origins of modern cultivated barley. The Fertile Crescent and Tibet.
- Improving intercropping: a synthesis of research in agronomy, plant physiology and ecology. You can breed for it. Among other things.
Featured: Millet in E Africa
Lieven Claessens resolves the Great Millet Mystery:
In GYGA we use HarvestChoice’s SPAM crop distribution masks for our analysis. SPAM in turn uses FAO statistics to create spatially disaggregated maps of crop distribution. I looked in more detail to the FAOstat numbers and found out that their numbers for ‘millet’ are actually for all sorts of millets combined… So finger and pearl millet are combined, even with teff to my big surprise! Identity crisis? ;-) In GYGA we have used a generic model for both pearl and finger millet so they are combined in the analysis….
Bottom line: the GYGA results for “millet” are unusable. But it’s FAO’s fault.
Rosa Kambuou remembered
More appreciation of the late Rosa Naipo Kambuou and her work on the diversity of the Pacific’s crops, especially banana.
Another use for taro leaves
This is a new one on me. Hanging out on Instagram, I came across this photo by Bea Misa Crisostomo, self-confessed “plant bore.”
Had never heard of fermented taro leaves made into a patty like this. Apparently “anishi” is a Nagaland delicacy, and can be made from yam leaves too. Incidentally, “gabi” seems to be the word for taro in the Philippines, rather than India, where the word “aravi” is more commonly used. But there doesn’t seem to be any doubt that anishi is an Indian dish.
Outstanding Papers in Plant Genetic Resources 2014
…early this month the Crop Science Society of America (CSSA) has selected the paper ‘Improving Hierarchical Clustering of Genotypic Data via Principal Component Analysis’ for the 2014 award for ‘Outstanding Papers in Plant Genetic Resources’.
The paper is the result of a collaboration between Biometris and the Centre for Genetic Resources, the Netherlands (CGN): “The result of these two worlds meeting is influential science and efficiently managed germplasm.” Congratulations to Thomas Odong and his co-authors.