Archaeology

March 15, 2019March 15, 2019

The wheat in Spain grows all over

The researchers were also able to group Spaniards into five genetic clusters. On a map, these groups form five strips running north to south. Those strips line up neatly with history.

I wonder if you’d get a similar pattern looking at crops, say wheat. There’s lots of material in genebanks to play around with.

LATER: Thanks to David Marshall for pointing out that work has been done on barley.

It just needs someone to compare the patterns now. And repeat for other crops.

March 11, 2019February 26, 2019

Brainfood: Forage seeds, Meat is murder, Medieval farming, Bean breeding, Moth bean genomics, Red List definitions, Amaranth domestication, Seed networks, Local adaptation, Social norms, Food demand, Grasspea future, Strawberry evolution, Maracuoccio

Medium-term seed storage of diverse genera of forage grasses, evidence-based genebank monitoring intervals, and regeneration standards. One size does not fit all.
Sustainability gridlock in a global agricultural commodity chain: Reframing the soy–meat food system. Divide and conquer.
Farm establishment, abandonment and agricultural practices during the last 1,300 years: a case study from southern Sweden based on pollen records and the LOVE model. Medieval Swedes got high.
A review of breeding objectives, genomic resources, and marker-assisted methods in common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.). Oh dear, a worldwide catalogue of germplasm needed.
Construction of genetic linkage map and genome dissection of domestication-related traits of moth bean (Vigna aconitifolia), a legume crop of arid areas. No word on whether a catalogue is needed.
Resources and opportunities for re-establishing Lathyrus cicera L. as a multipurpose cultivated plant. I’d try it. But do a catalogue first.
Ex situ seed banks and the IUCN Red List. When is extinct not extinct?
Convergent seed color adaptation during repeated domestication of an ancient new world grain. Grain amaranth selected 3 times independently from same wild precursor, but always for the same colour.
Modeling epidemics in seed systems and landscapes to guide management strategies: The case of sweetpotato in Northern Uganda. Spread of disease depends on where it starts. Watch out for places with lots of out-nodes.
A Molecular View of Plant Local Adaptation: Incorporating Stress-Response Networks. Adaptation here does not necessarily mean no adaptation there. Interesting for breeders?
Using social norms to encourage healthier eating. To get kids to eat broccoli, tell them their favourite youtuber does. Probably generalizable.
Nutrition Transition and the Structure of Global Food Demand. Lower growth in overall food demand than in the past, but a doubling of demand for animal calories.
Grass pea (Lathyrus sativus L.): orphan crop, nutraceutical or just plain food? Needs to shed its bad image.
Origin and evolution of the octoploid strawberry genome. All four parents tracked down.

February 26, 2019February 26, 2019

Nibbles: Homeric food, Two atlases, Cacao breeding, Smart foods, Lancet/EAT, Wild grapes, Landrace maize, Training breeders, Apios, Sustainable use, Cost of nutrition

Did Homeric heroes eat a lot of meat? The answer will surprise you. A thread.
Social food atlas to be launched.
Atlas of West African food systems already launched. Very different thing.
Saving chocolate through biotech.
What makes foods smart?
Pros and cons of the Lancet/EAT thing. And more.
Waking up the wine industry to the beauty grapevine wild relatives.
The magos of maize, from Mexico to the US, and back again.
Plant breeding training in Africa.
Pre-colonial North America: not wilderness, not dense forest, and not just the Three Sisters, lots of Apios too. Lots.
Food AND biodiversity.
Nutritious OR affordable.

February 25, 2019

Nibbles: Fox burials, Myammar genebank, Wild rice, Community genebanks, Breeding cowpeas & EAH bananas, Doherty pics, Pulque ecotourism, Tree diversity maps, Horizontal genes, Polish hop breeding

Did ancient Iberians domesticate foxes?
Myanmar genebank staff receive training in Australia.
Why genebanks are important. Though not so much for wild rice. No, not that wild rice, we’re talking Zizania here.
Genebanks can be community-friendly.
Improving cowpea and banana. Need genebanks for that.
Picturing genebanks.
Drinking for conservation.
Mapping tree diversity.
Some grasses steal genes from neighbours.
Polish hops for Polish beer.

February 7, 2019February 7, 2019

8000 years of agricultural history in two papers

A paper just out in Quaternary Science Reviews provides an overview of the first 3000 years of the spread of cultivated cereals around Eurasia, based on archaeobotanical evidence. The paper has some nice maps, but the press release has a really cool animated gif, which I had no hesitation in stealing.

via GIPHY

Here’s a quick summary:

Before 5000 BCE: farming communities used foothill, alluvial and catchment locations in different parts of Eurasia.
Between 5000-2500 BCE: crops move around, but remain ecologically constrained, with the Tibetan Plateau and the Asian monsoons separating east from west, and north from south.
Between 2500-1500 BCE: crops are taken to new thermal and hydrologic contexts, bringing previously isolated agricultural systems together.

And where are we now? Well, for that you need another new paper, this one in PLOS ONE: Regional and global shifts in crop diversity through the Anthropocene. As luck would have it, three phases here too, covering the past 50 years:

little change in crop diversity from 1961 through to the late 1970s
a 10-year period of sharp diversification through the early 1980s
“levelling-off” of crop diversification beginning in the early 1990s

No gif, alas, but there’s a little video accompanying the press release in which the author summarizes the results.

The title of that press release says it all really: “A small number of crops are dominating globally. And that’s bad news for sustainable agriculture.” Compare and contrast with the findings of Colin Khoury and friends from a couple of years back on the increasing homogeneity of global diets. Basically looking at the same data in a somewhat different way: pretty much the same result.