- Bending the curve of terrestrial biodiversity needs an integrated strategy. Meaning: (i) sustainable agricultural intensification, (ii) trade, (iii) less food waste, (iv) more plant-based human diets, and (v) more and better protected areas.
- The carbon opportunity cost of animal-sourced food production on land. See (iv) above.
- Just ten percent of the global terrestrial protected area network is structurally connected via intact land. See (v) above.
- Cropland expansion in the United States produces marginal yields at high costs to wildlife. See (i) above.
- A cultivated planet in 2010 – Part 1: The global synergy cropland map. Gotta know where the cropland is before you can do (i) above.
- Advances in plant phenomics: From data and algorithms to biological insights. Fancy maths can really help with (i) above.
- Retrospective Quantitative Genetic Analysis and Genomic Prediction of Global Wheat Yields. Different fancy maths shows that CIMMYT’s Obregon wheat testing site can really help with (i) above.
- Diversity analysis of 80,000 wheat accessions reveals consequences and opportunities of selection footprints. Here’s some stuff that wheat breeders can use to develop new materials to test at Obregon using phenomics, genomics and fancy maths.
- First report on cryopreservation of mature shoot tips of two avocado (Persea americana Mill.) rootstocks. This should help with (iv) above. Eventually, work with me here.
- Bread and porridge at Early Neolithic Göbekli Tepe: A new method to recognize products of cereal processing using quantitative functional analyses on grinding stones. Ahem. Well… No, sorry, I got nothing.
Nibbles: Rematriation, Tanzanian bananas, Persea cryo, Urbanization
- Seeds going home, thanks to the Indigenous Seed Keepers Network and others.
- Matooke gets its first hybrids.
- Avocado gets its first solid cryo protocol.
- The agricultural challenges and opportunities of African urbanization. No word on the fact that more and more ag will be urban ag. Or on what it will all mean for crop diversity.
Welcome to the world, Kurt
What can you do about inbreeding in a small population of a species that nearly went extinct? Well, if the species is Przewalski’s horse, one thing you can do is inject some new diversity into the genepool by cloning a genetically very distinct stallion whose cells you happened to put in liquid nitrogen forty years ago. The whole amazing story is on the website of the Revive & Restore project.
This is huge. The first cloning for conservation.
It's a male Przewalski's horse ("shuh-VAL-ski") from 40 years ago, now revived to help enrich the genomes of the whole wild population.
Thanks to San Diego Zoo, ViaGen, and Revive & Restore https://t.co/zLy7A4xtvi pic.twitter.com/ZiFLByHtXq
— Stewart Brand (@stewartbrand) September 5, 2020
The new foal’s name is Kurt. Why?
Kurt is named in honor of Dr. Kurt Benirshke, a geneticist at the San Diego Zoo who in 1975 had a prescient idea. Dr. Benirshke began what is now the Frozen Zoo, collecting and cryopreserving the cell lines of endangered species and safely storing away genetic diversity before it was lost. At the time the collection was a bet on cloning and reproductive technologies that did not yet exist. Nearly fifty years later, with the partnership of San Diego Zoo Global Frozen Zoo, Revive & Restore, and ViaGen Pets and Equine, Dr. Benirschke’s plans are quite literally coming to life.
h/t Beth Shapiro.
LATER: A bit more background on Przewalski’s horse just out.
Nibbles: Horse cloning, Fish genes, Breeding manuals, Capsicum podcast
- Boffins clone Przewalski’s horse.
- Boffins start fish genebank. Cloning next?
- Boffins deconstruct the breeders’ equation. Apply to fish next?
- Boffin (and Jeremy) discusses how the chilli pepper got to China. Goes well with fish. The pepper, not the podcast.
Brainfood: Millet yields, Millet review, Taro genome, Salty sunflower, WorldVeg network, Phylorelatives, Bovine domestication, Diet quality, Nutrition metrics, Aztec diets, Complementary conservation, Post-2020, Climate change breeding
- Using remote sensing to assess the effect of trees on millet yield in complex parklands of Central Senegal. Tree cover in the landscape of up to 35% increases pearl millet yields.
- Genetic and genomic resources for improving proso millet (Panicum miliaceum L.): a potential crop for food and nutritional security. All that’s missing is the investment. And, possibly, the trees.
- A high-quality genome of taro (Colocasia esculenta (L.) Schott), one of the world’s oldest crops. Has benefitted from two whole-genome duplications. Now that this investment has been made, I expect to see the crop take off. And here’s a blast from the past on this subject.
- Key traits and genes associate with salinity tolerance independent from vigor in cultivated sunflower. There is a way to increase yield under salinity stress without affecting yield under more benign conditions. Millets and taro should take note.
- Sustainable Cucurbit Breeding and Production in Asia Using Public–Private Partnerships by the World Vegetable Center. WorldVeg presents improved lines and F1 hybrids of bitter gourd (Momordica charantia), tropical pumpkin (Cucurbita moschata), ridge gourd (Luffa acutangula) and sponge gourd (Luffa cylindrica) to private sector breeders at Crop Field Days. Everybody wins. But are there any private sector breeders of millets and taro to take note?
- Crop Wild Phylorelatives (CWPs): phylogenetic distance, cytogenetic compatibility and breeding system data enable estimation of crop wild relative gene pool classification. Predicting crossability of a crop with its wild relatives from whatever data is on hand.
- Evolution and domestication of the Bovini species. They’ve been very promiscuous, and the results can be summarized in one illustration.
- Defining diet quality: a synthesis of dietary quality metrics and their validity for the double burden of malnutrition. Seven dietary metrics out there, none of them perfect.
- Assessing nutritional, health, and environmental sustainability dimensions of agri-food production. Here’s how to make nutrition and health metrics better. Maybe these guys should get together with the above?
- Aztec diets at the residential site of San Cristobal Ecatepec through stable carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis of bone collagen. The men drank more pulque than the women. I wonder if 500 years from now they’ll be judging us like this.
- The unique role of seed banking and cryobiotechnologies in plant conservation. Good summary of the different ex situ approaches available for plants, none of them perfect. The existence of an Exceptional Plant Conservation Network and a Project Baseline for seed genebanks was news to me.
- Making the post-2020 global biodiversity framework a successful tool for building biodiverse, inclusive, resilient and safe food systems for all. The CBD needs to learn to love mixed, diverse agricultural landscapes. And genebanks, natch. Maybe it should invest in dietary metrics.
- The Role of Genetic Resources in Breeding for Climate Change: The Case of Public Breeding Programmes in Eighteen Developing Countries. Business as usual, except more intense. Oh, and perhaps more use of landraces. No word on dietary metrics.
