- Wild Origins of Macadamia Domestication Identified Through Intraspecific Chloroplast Genome Sequencing. One tree is the basis of the industry.
- The Israeli Palestinian wheat landraces collection: restoration and characterization of lost genetic diversity. Bringing it all back home.
- Using high‐throughput sequencing in support of a plant health outbreak reveals novel viruses in Ullucus tuberosus (Basellaceae). There’s always something…
- Plant health emergencies demand open science: Tackling a cereal killer on the run. …but openness will get us through it.
- Rapid evolution in plant–microbe interactions – a molecular genomics perspective. Until the next one.
- Understanding food systems drivers: A critical review of the literature. Spoiler alert: urbanization, raise in consumer income, population growth, attention paid to diet & health issues, technological innovations, intensification and homogenization of the agricultural sector, increase in frequency and intensity of extreme events, general degradation in soils and agro-ecological conditions, improved access to infrastructure and information, trade policies and other processes influencing trade expansion, internationalization of private investments, concerns for food safety. I guess diversity is in there somewhere.
- The origins of specialized pottery and diverse alcohol fermentation techniques in Early Neolithic China. So good, they invented fermentation twice.
- The Hoard of the Rings. “Odd” annular bread-like objects as a case study for cereal-product diversity at the Late Bronze Age hillfort site of Stillfried (Lower Austria). Unbaked, tarallini-like dried wheat/barley dough rings may have been used ritualistically. No, not like that.
- EviAtlas: a tool for visualising evidence synthesis databases. Everybody likes a map.
- Editorial: Improving the Nutritional Content and Quality of Crops: Promises, Achievements, and Future Challenges. A review of reviews of biofortification, and more.
- Fungal endophyte diversity from tropical forage grass Brachiaria. 38 fungi isolated from 9 Brachiaria species, but unclear if any are beneficial.
- Characteristics of maize cultivars in Africa: How modern are they and how many do smallholder farmers grow? Out of 500 samples in 13 countries, about half were in some way improved, covering about half of the surveyed planted area.
- QTL × environment interactions underlie adaptive divergence in switchgrass across a large latitudinal gradient. You can combine alleles which are locally advantageous in different places to get a
super-biofuel. - Reconstruction of ancestral genome reveals chromosome evolution history for selected legume species. The wild ancestor of peanut, pigeonpea, soybean, beans, mungbean, chickpea, lotus and medics was closest to wild peanuts. Maybe they can synthesize it?
Brainfood: Habitat restoration, ICRISAT proso, Mobile advice, Cowpea genome, Wheat resilience, World climate, Wheat biogeography, African durum, Microalgae, Gender, Iberian barley adaptation
- Indigenous Grasses for Rehabilitating Degraded African Drylands. Promising results, but it’s not easy.
- Variability in the Global Proso Millet (Panicum miliaceum L.) Germplasm Collection Conserved at the ICRISAT Genebank. Asian, European and mixed clusters, based on morphology. Out of over 800 accessions, 3 (IPm 2069, IPm 2076 and IPm 2537) are rich in grain Fe, Zn, Ca, and protein.
- Household-specific targeting of agricultural advice via mobile phones: Feasibility of a minimum data approach for smallholder context. A little household data goes a long way. Includes crop diversity info?
- The genome of cowpea (Vigna unguiculata [L.] Walp.). There’s a gene for multiple organ gigantism.
- Reduced response diversity does not negatively impact wheat climate resilience. The suggestion that the statistical methods used were faulty means wheat may not be as in trouble in Europe as a previous paper suggested.
- Evaluating WorldClim Version 1 (1961–1990) as the Baseline for Sustainable Use of Forest and Environmental Resources in a Changing Climate. Maybe not as good as it might be. But what’s the alternative?
- Worldwide phylogeography and history of wheat genetic diversity. Three groups, with one (the Asian genepool) hardly used in breeding.
- Durum Wheat (Triticum durum Desf.): Origin, Cultivation and Potential Expansion in Sub-Saharan Africa. From the Ethiopian highlands and Saharan oases to the mainstream?
- Global mapping of cost‐effective microalgal biofuel production areas with minimal environmental impact. The dry coasts of N and E Africa, the Middle East, and western S America. But how minimal is minimal?
- From women’s empowerment to food security: Revisiting global discourses through a cross-country analysis. The patriarchy is resourceful.
- Genetic association with high‐resolution climate data reveals selection footprints in the genomes of barley landraces across the Iberian Peninsula. Cold temperature, late‐season frost occurrence and water availability have driven landrace genetic differentiation.
Brainfood: Intensification, Yemen ag, Czech barley, Bangladesh community genebank, Agrobiodiversity Index, North American CWR, Israeli genebanks, Biofortified wheat, QDS, Collecting Miscanthus, Ethnobotany, NUS, Pecan diversity, Korean ponds, CWR gaps double, Salty rice
- Agricultural intensification, dietary diversity, and markets in the global food security narrative. Intensification is all well and good but it needs to be sustainable and nutrition-sensitive.
- Health, Seeds, Diversity and Terraces. Maybe evolutionary plant breeding can help with that.
- Identification of barley powdery mildew resistances in gene bank accessions and the use of gene diversity for verifying seed purity and authenticity. It’s difficult to deal with heterogeneous accessions.
- The USD 1,875.95 Seed Center. A serious-looking community seed bank in Bangladesh.
- Assessing agroecosystem sustainability in Cuba: A new agrobiodiversity index. Not same as the old index.
- North American Crop Wild Relatives, Volume 1. Volume 1?
- Ex-situ conservation strategies for endangered plants in the Israel Gene Bank. Not just crops, and not just conservation…
- The Institute of Evolution Wild Cereal Gene Bank at the University of Haifa. …and not even the only genebank in Israel.
- Assessing Genetic Diversity to Breed Competitive Biofortified Wheat With Enhanced Grain Zn and Fe Concentrations. Four translocations from rye and various Aegilops species have resulted in 8 biofortified bread wheat varieties after a decade of work. Compare and contrast with potatoes.
- Improving efficiency of seed system by appropriating farmer’s rights in India through adoption and implementation of policy of quality declared seed schemes in parallel. FAO’s Quality Declared Seed (QDS) system is the way to go.
- Collecting wild Miscanthus germplasm in Asia for crop improvement and conservation in Europe whilst adhering to the guidelines of the United Nations’ Convention on Biological Diversity. It can be done.
- Making friends in the field: How to become an ethnobotanist – A personal reflection. Yes, it can.
- Mainstreaming Underutilized Indigenous and Traditional Crops into Food Systems: A South African Perspective. Start by having researchers translate their findings for policy makers.
- Genotyping by sequencing (GBS) and SNP marker analysis of diverse accessions of pecan (Carya illinoinensis). Geographic patterning of genetic diversity and SNPs for dichogamy found.
- Trait-based evaluation of plant assemblages in traditional farm ponds in Korea: Ecological and management implications. Dumbeongs are carefully managed. Well there’s a shocker.
- Conservation gap analysis of crop wild relatives in Turkey. There still are some.
- An in situ approach to the conservation of temperate cereal crop wild relatives in the Mediterranean Basin and Asian centre of diversity. 10 locations would do.
- Molecular characterization and identification of new sources of tolerance to submergence and salinity from rice landraces of coastal India. 5 of 98 accessions had novel alleles.
Brainfood: Glaucous wheat, Iranian barley, Pigeonpea breeding, Automated peas, Bavarian crop diversity, Bean micronutrients, Wheat & CC, Introgression, Crossover, Decriminalizing landraces, Rationalizing Spain, Polish wheat
- Genetic Control of Glaucousness in Wheat Plants. Ok, good to know. Now what?
- Potential of Iranian wild barley (Hordeum vulgare ssp. spontaneum) in breeding for drought tolerance. Potential, potential, potential. Enough with the potential.
- Pigeonpea improvement: An amalgam of breeding and genomic research. “…very few genomic inputs…currently employed at ICRISAT.” Well, why not?
- Automated phenotyping for early vigour of field pea seedlings in controlled environment by colour imaging technology. How much money will be saved?
- Crop diversity and stability of revenue on farms in Central Europe: An analysis of big data from a comprehensive agricultural census in Bavaria. High prices for a few crops working against the effect of diversity on income stability.
- Screening common bean (P. vulgaris L.) germplasm for Fe and Zn biofortication. Almost there with the candidate genes. Almost. Compare and contrast with wheat.
- Climate change impact and adaptation for wheat protein. We’ll need better adapted varieties, but even they will not keep pace with grain quality demands.
- The extent of adaptive wild introgression in crops. Wild relatives are more than just crop ancestors.
- Unleashing meiotic crossovers in crops. It’s all in the RECQ4 gene.
- Decentralization and liberalization of seeds and plant genetic resources regulations in Europe: a Danish case study. If you want to grow and trade landraces, Denmark is your place.
- Plant genebanks: present situation and proposals for their improvement. The case of the Spanish Network. If you want to have a well-running national genebank system, on the other hand…
- Triticum polonicum L. as potential source material for the biofortification of wheat with essential micronutrients. Low strontium too.
Brainfood: Climate resilient crops, Food system limits, Phenotyping double, Sweet sorghum, Melon history, Paying4data, Beercalypse, Village chickens, Breeding 4.0, European maize, Brachiaria ROI
- Are agricultural researchers working on the right crops to enable food and nutrition security under future climates? No. Well, kinda.
- Options for keeping the food system within environmental limits. You need to pursue several. Including those discussed above, presumably.
- Deep Learning for Plant Stress Phenotyping: Trends and Future Perspectives. 3D CNN architectures applied to hyperspectral imaging is the future, apparently.
- Dealing with multi‐source and multi‐scale information in plant phenomics: the ontology‐driven Phenotyping Hybrid Information System. You’re going to need a fancy system to keep track to the data from the above.
- Sweet Sorghum Originated through Selection of Dry, a Plant-specific NAC Transcription Factor Gene. Could be applied to other cereals?
- Repeated domestication of melon (Cucumis melo) in Africa and Asia and a new close relative from India. Once was not enough.
- Paying for Digital Information: Assessing Farmers Willingness to Pay for a Digital Agriculture and Nutrition Service in Ghana. Cheaper is better. There’s a shocker. Oh, and women are more careful with their money.
- Decreases in global beer supply due to extreme drought and heat. 32% decrease in consumption in Argentina, 193% increase in price in Ireland. But clearly the authors have never heard of sorghum beer.
- The role of local adaptation in sustainable production of village chickens. Location, location, location.
- On the Road to Breeding 4.0: Unraveling the Good, the Bad, and the Boring of Crop Quantitative Genomics. Beyond breeding on predicted phenotypes, it’s sort of breeding for predicted environments.
- Maize yields over Europe may increase in spite of climate change, with an appropriate use of the genetic variability of flowering time. You don’t even need Breeding 1.0, if you deploy existing diversity optimally.
- Got forages? Understanding potential returns on investment in Brachiaria spp. for dairy producers in Eastern Africa. Definitely worth a flutter.