- Introducing a New Breed of Wine Yeast: Interspecific Hybridisation between a Commercial Saccharomyces cerevisiae Wine Yeast and Saccharomyces mikatae. The future of wine?
- Breeding systems, hybridization and continuing evolution in Avon Gorge Sorbus. You had me at “Avon Gorge, Bristol, UK, is a world ‘hotspot’ for Sorbus diversity.”
- Taro leaf blight — A threat to global food security. Yes, but we have the technology…
- Agromorphological characterization of Sesamum radiatum (Schum. and Thonn.), a neglected and underutilized species of traditional leafy vegetable of great importance in Benin. Yes, but we need the technology…
- Phenoscope: an automated large-scale phenotyping platform offering high spatial homogeneity. Somebody mention technology?
- An Inventory of Crop Wild Relatives of the United States. More than you’d think.
- Empirical Test of an Agricultural Landscape Model. The Importance of Farmer Preference for Risk Aversion and Crop Complexity. It’s not just about profit. At least in the UK.
- Using citizen scientists to measure an ecosystem service nationwide. Bullshit. No, really, it’s about the decomposition of cow pats.
- Intragenesis and cisgenesis as alternatives to transgenic crop development. Spingenesis.
- Managing biodiversity rich hay meadows in the EU: a comparison of Swedish and Romanian grasslands. Both need more input from local knowledge.
- Mediterranean Hedysarum phylogeny by transferable microsatellites from Medicago. Wait, Sulla? What happened to Hedysarum?
- Polymorphic microsatellite markers in pineapple (Ananas comosus (L.) Merrill). And?
Brainfood: Forest restoration, Vegetable diversity, Intensification costs, Community forests, Baja oases, Nigerian foods, European wetlands, Landscape diversity & resilience, European conservation prioritization
- Can Ficus Sp. Forests Be Restored Through Vegetative Propagation? Yes. But with the reduced genetic diversity and all, for how long?
- A qualitative assessment of diversity and factors leading to genetic erosion of vegetables: a case study of Varamin (Iran). Species richness only, settle down. But, pace the title, quantitative.
- Agricultural intensification escalates future conservation costs. Because of higher land rents. Just can’t win.
- Common property protected areas: Community control in forest conservation. They can work.
- Baja California peninsula oases: An agro-biodiversity of isolation and integration. Both too much and too little isolation are bad.
- Cultivated, caught, and collected: defining culturally appropriate foods in Tallé, Niger. …and integrating them into development.
- Wetlands in Europe: Perspectives for restoration of a lost paradise. Down to 20% and counting. Someone should count the crop wild relatives in them.
- Economic Resilience and Land use: The Cocoa Crisis in the Rio Cachoeira Catchment, Brazil. Diverse land use means more resilience.
- Priorities for biodiversity monitoring in Europe: A review of supranational policies and a novel scheme for integrative prioritization. Yeah, but doesn’t integrate crop wild relatives, does it?
Brainfood: Carrot domestication, Nigerian diets, Rotations & ecosystem services, Bangladeshi diets, Maize breeding sites, Olives and climate change, Mixtures and invertebrates, Genebank information systems
- Genetic structure and domestication of carrot (Daucus carota subsp. sativus) (Apiaceae). Origin in Central Asia, but no genetic bottleneck (sic).
- Data collection and assessment of commonly consumed foods and recipes in six geo-political zones in Nigeria: Important for the development of a National Food Composition Database and Dietary Assessment. Nigerians eat a lot of soup.
- The integration of crop rotation and tillage practices in the assessment of ecosystem services provision at the regional scale. Good trick if you can do it.
- Nutritional composition of minor indigenous fruits: Cheapest nutritional source for the rural people of Bangladesh. If only the rural people knew about this.
- Effectiveness of selection at CIMMYT’s main maize breeding sites in Mexico for performance at sites in Africa and vice versa. Is high. Phew.
- Olive trees as bio-indicators of climate evolution in the Mediterranean Basin. Olives in Germany by 2100?
- Crop genetic diversity benefits farmland biodiversity in cultivated fields. Mixed wheat fields better for soil invertebrate biodiversity than fields with single varieties.
- IT background of the medium-term storage of Martonvásár Cereal Genebank resources in phytotron cold rooms. The interesting thing is that the system links genebank data with breeders’ data. Don’t see that a lot.
Brainfood: Gender and agrobiodiversity, Insect diversity, Contests and agrobiodiversity, Chinese rice breeding, Wheat origins, Historic abundance, History and conservation
- Governance of seed and food security through participatory plant breeding: Empirical evidence and gender analysis from Syria. Women are important.
- Comparison of pollinators and natural enemies: a meta-analysis of landscape and local effects on abundance and richness in crops. Both can be managed at the same time.
- Biodiversity and recipe contests: Innovative socioecological approaches to capture ecological knowledge and conserve biodiversity in Arunachal Pradesh. Women are important.
- Rice breeding in the post-genomics era: from concept to practice. China is where it’s at.
- SNPing Aegilops tauschii genetic diversity and the birthplace of bread wheat. Caspian Iran is where it’s at.
- Inferring recent historic abundance from current genetic diversity. It might actually be possible to infer historic abundance from the genetics of contemporary samples only, which seems kinda awesome.
- Europe’s other debt crisis caused by the long legacy of future extinctions. The current conservation status of vascular plants in Europe reflects the situation in 1900. Can’t help thinking this should be mashed up with the one above.
- Low genetic diversity and significant structuring in the endangered Mentha cervina populations and its implications for conservation. Low only at population level, so must conserve multiple populations. Which one would probably have done anyway, but now at least we know which.
Brainfood: Viruses, Allium genomic size, Acacia adaptation, Local carp, Chinese onions, Bull genetic info, Ecosystem services, Sahelian ag
- New threats to endangered Cook’s scurvy grass (Lepidium oleraceum; Brassicaceae): introduced crop viruses and the extent of their spread. Introduced crop virus threatens endemic.
- Role of adaptive and non-adaptive mechanisms forming complex patterns of genome size variation in six cytotypes of polyploid Allium oleraceum (Amaryllidaceae) on a continental scale. It’s not the environment.
- Evolution and ecology meet molecular genetics: adaptive phenotypic plasticity in two isolated Negev desert populations of Acacia raddiana at either end of a rainfall gradient. It’s the environment.
- Using biodiversity to valorise local food products: the case of fish ponds in a cultural landscape, their biodiversity, and carp production. It could work, if only people liked to eat carp and knew what biodiversity was.
- Phenotype and genetic diversity in potato onion cultivars from three provinces of northeast China. In other news, there’s something called a potato onion. Otherwise, this is actually a deeply boring paper.
- The value of genetic information to livestock buyers: a combined revealed, stated preference approach. Low to none, for now.
- Ecosystem Services. Latest issue includes a bunch of interesting reviews, and an editorial summarizing each in like a paragraph. Great service, great value. See what I did there?
- Scientific documentation of crop land changes in the Sahel: A half empty box of knowledge to support policy? There is no data, not really.