Category: Biotechnology

• An In Vitro–Ex Vitro Micropropagation System for Hemp. Hope it doesn’t drive down diversity, man.
• The genomes of ancient date palms germinated from 2,000 y old seeds. Interesting, sure, but let’s not call it “resurrection genomics,” shall we?
• Interpreting Diachronic Size Variation in Prehistoric Central Asian Cereal Grains. Parallel increases in size among different lineages at the edge of distributions.
• The first comprehensive archaeobotanical analysis of prehistoric agriculture in Kyrgyzstan. The above in context. Both summer and winter crops grown.
• The influence of ancient herders on soil development at Luxmanda, Mbulu Plateau, Tanzania. 3000 year old encampments still have richer soils. They must have been hotbeds of domestication, surely. Did they have the same things in Central Asia?
• Mass-kill hunting and Late Quaternary ecology: New insights into the ‘desert kite’ phenomenon in Arabia. I bet they had these things in East Africa and Central Asia too.
• Eight generations of native seed cultivation reduces plant fitness relative to the wild progenitor population. Evolution comes at you fast.
• Attaining the promise of plant gene editing at scale. Factor in gene editing with RNA viruses and developmental regulators, and it will come at you faster still. And no, absolutely nothing will go wrong, you wuss.
• Making Hybrids with the Wild Potato Solanum jamesii. But why fiddle about with bridging species and stuff when you can edit?
• Tomato Landraces Are Competitive with Commercial Varieties in Terms of Tolerance to Plant Pathogens—A Case Study of Hungarian Gene Bank Accessions on Organic Farms. Who needs editing?
• Edible mycorrhizal fungi of the world: What is their role in forest sustainability, food security, biocultural conservation and climate change? 970 of them!