- The story of the bougainvillea has a bit of everything.
- The story of the cowpea as told by its DNA.
- The banana has a really complicated story.
- Untangling the story of nutrition indicators.
- Telling the story of why livestock is important.
- The deep story of citrus.
- Another chapter in the story of breadfruit in Jamaica.
- Debal Deb tells his story in NY.
Brainfood: Rice roots, Avocado genome, Sicilian greens, Mexican & Colombian cacao, US diversity, Cassava photosynthesis, Intense dairy, Bourbon, Grape rootstocks, Heirlooms, Ancient pastoralism, Onion polyploidy, Toxic compounds, Technology adoption
- Root anatomical traits of wild-rices reveal links between flooded rice and dryland sorghum. Mine the rice G genome for sorghum-like root traits.
- The avocado genome informs deep angiosperm phylogeny, highlights introgressive hybridization, and reveals pathogen-influenced gene space adaptation. 2 polyploidy events in its evolution; the Hass is Guatemalan introgressed into Mexican material, recently.
- Wild leafy plants market survey in Sicily: From local culture to food sustainability. You can cultivate and market them, but people do like collecting them from the wild themselves.
- A History of Cacao in West Mexico: Implications for Mesoamerica and U.S. Southwest Connections. Associated with the cult of the sun deity Xochipilli.
- Cacao breeding in Colombia, past, present and future. Breeders only recently turned to local material, and are now reaping the whirlwind. No word of the involvement of deities.
- The impact of agricultural landscape diversification on U.S. crop production. Maize and wheat yields increase with the number of agricultural land use categories in a region.
- Protein Cross-Interactions for Efficient Photosynthesis in the Cassava Cultivar SC205 Relative to Its Wild Species. Domesticated cassava is more C4 than its wild relatives.
- Routes to achieving sustainable intensification in simulated dairy farms: The importance of production efficiency and complimentary land uses. Not for the first time, crop-level diversity provides the win-win.
- Assessing the impact of corn variety and Texas terroir on flavor and alcohol yield in new-make bourbon whiskey. It’s the benzaldehyde.
- Genetic diversity and parentage analysis of grape rootstocks. 39% of the genetic background of 26 rootstocks derived from 3 accessions, admittedly of 3 different species.
- Pursuing the Potential of Heirloom Cultivars to Improve Adaptation, Nutritional, and Culinary Features of Food Crops. Look beyond yield.
- The Rise of Pastoralism in the Ancient Near East. Couldn’t have done so without sedentary communities.
- Polyploidy promotes species diversification of Allium through ecological shifts. Largely edaphic shifts, in fact.
- Assessing Specialized Metabolite Diversity in the Cosmopolitan Plant Genus Euphorbia L. Toxic diterpenoids are more structurally diverse where pressure from herbivores is strongest.
- Rethinking technological change in smallholder agriculture. Not so much adoption as propositions, encounters, dispositions and responses.
Brainfood: Mineral history, Tomato nutrients, Tomato breeding, Phenotyping plants, Restoration genomics, Green Revolution, Banana B, SPAM2005, Ancient Chinese wheat, Late blight, Sorghum seed size, N & stability, African cannabis, Brazil wheat, Wild safflower
- Mineral nutrient composition of vegetables, fruits and grains: The context of reports of apparent historical declines. Apparent being the operative word. This is a couple of years old but always worth recycling. (There’s also this Politico piece from a couple of years back on the “nutrient collapse.”)
- Phenolic composition and antioxidant properties of ex-situ conserved tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) germplasm. But there’s always room for improvement.
- Genetic Diversity and Population Structure of Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) Germplasm Developed by Texas A&M Breeding Programs. Plenty of diversity out there for it.
- Crop productivity as related to single-plant traits at key phenological stages in durum wheat. On isolated plants, only specific leaf weight and spike partitioning at anthesis were correlated with population yield.
- The potential of genomics for restoring ecosystems and biodiversity. From improved seed sourcing to gene editing for funky genotypes.
- Was the Green Revolution intended to maximise food production? No, apparently it was to encourage a move to commercial production in specific areas.
- Musa balbisiana genome reveals subgenome evolution and functional divergence. The starch synthesis pathway is more active than in the A-subgenome. There’s probably more, but that’s all I could understand.
- Pixelating crop production: Consequences of methodological choices. Crop prices and market access had little effect on the robustness of the SPAM2005 spatial production allocation model.
- Phylogenetic and population structural inference from genomic ancestry maintained in present‐day common wheat Chinese landraces. 3000 old wheat not dissimilar to current landraces in W China.
- Stacking three late blight resistance genes from wild species directly into African highland potato varieties confers complete field resistance to local blight races. But it’s GM so it doesn’t count, right?
- Genomic signatures of seed mass adaptation to global precipitation gradients in sorghum. Drought stress led to bigger grains.
- Nitrogen addition reduced ecosystem stability regardless of its impacts on plant diversity. Stability depends on more than just diversity. In grasslands.
- A brief agricultural history of cannabis in Africa, from prehistory to canna-colony. Decolonise the weed.
- Genetic Gain Over 30 Years of Spring Wheat Breeding in Brazil. 1.3% per year. Is it enough? Can it be sustained?
- The Use of Wild Relatives of Safflower to Increase Genetic Diversity for Fatty Acid Composition and Drought Tolerance. So transgressive.
Nibbles: Mango diversity, Feral hogs, OFSP, Synthetic kava, Linen, Posters, Pigeonpea pre-breeding, Breeding, Ancient yeast, European seeds
- Nevis has 44 kinds of mango, including Amory Polly, which could actually be Amrapali आम्रपाली.
- A twitter thread on “hogs, ferality, and race in American history.” If that doesn’t make you click nothing will.
- “Can sweet potatoes reduce widespread vitamin A deficiency in Africa?” Guess.
- The end of kava as we know it?
- Making linen.
- Better scientific posters? Here’s hoping.
- Pigenonpea pre-breeding lines hit the bigtime.
- Mapping fires from space. Part of an early warning system for crop wild relatives?
- Roundup of how some breeders are preparing crops for climate change.
- No expiration date on yeast.
- A couple of European crop diversity projects: DYNAVERSITY and ReSEED.
Brainfood: Food system, Ethiopian durum, Enset, Legume seeds, Salinity, Ryegrass genomics, Weeping lovegrass genomics, Pest occurrences, Golden Rice, Cattle origins, Pollinator & diversity, Production shocks, Production & diversity
- Transforming agricultural land use through marginal gains in the food system. A nudge here, a nudge there, pretty soon you’re talking about a revolution.
- Exploitation of diversity within farmers’ durum wheat varieties enhanced the chance of selecting productive, stable and adaptable new varieties to the local climatic conditions. Some landraces are pretty good.
- Enset in Ethiopia: a poorly characterized but resilient starch staple. Some local crops are pretty good.
- Market‐led options to scale up legume seeds in developing countries: Experiences from the Tropical Legumes Project. Ah yes, PPPs.
- Global mapping of soil salinity change. A billion hectares and increasing. We’re going to need all the above.
- Integrating a newly developed BAC-based physical mapping resource for Lolium perenne with a genome-wide association study across a L. perenne European ecotype collection identifies genomic contexts associated with agriculturally important traits. “Clearly this is not an end-point for L. perenne genomics…” Ok, call me when you get there.
- A high-quality genome of Eragrostis curvula grass provides insights into Poaceae evolution and supports new strategies to enhance forage quality. “Understanding and subsequently manipulating the genetic drivers underlying apomixis could revolutionize agriculture.” Ok, call me when you get there.
- Many unreported crop pests and pathogens are probably already present. Especially in China, India, southern Brazil and some countries of the former USSR.
- Compositional Analysis of Genetically Engineered GR2E “Golden Rice” in Comparison to That of Conventional Rice. Only difference is beta-carotene. But that was never the issue.
- Ancient cattle genomics, origins, and rapid turnover in the Fertile Crescent. aDNA shows origin from multiple populations, and separate introgressions from aurochs, then an influx of zebu bulls from the Indus Valley in the Bronze Age. Basically a Zeus-and-Europa scenario.
- Global agricultural productivity is threatened by increasing pollinator dependence without a parallel increase in crop diversification. Agricultural diversification going up weakly, possibly undermining pollinators, while proportion of pollinator-dependent crops increasing strongly.
- Food production shocks across land and sea. There are shock hotspots, and overall the frequency of shocks is going up. Whatever can be done?
- National food production stabilized by crop diversity. I wonder.
- The SDG of zero hunger 75 years on: Turning full circle on agriculture and nutrition. No longer just calories.