- Increases in crop pests caused by Wasmannia auropunctata in Solomon Islands subsistence gardens. Law of Unintended Consequences takes its toll. Or does it? Discussion at Pestnet suggests the Little Fire Ant may not have been introduced as a biological control agent as suggested by the paper.
- A Social-Ecological Analysis of Diversified Farming Systems: Benefits, Costs, Obstacles, and Enabling Policy Frameworks. Special issue of Ecology and Society on DFS. That would be Diversified Farming Systems. Bottom line is that you need to understand both their ecology and their politics to make sense of them, and make them work for you.
- Morphological diversity in breadfruit (Artocarpus, Moraceae): insights into domestication, conservation, and cultivar identification. 221 accessions provide exactly those insights.
- The original features of rice (Oryza sativa L.) genetic diversity and the importance of within-variety diversity in the highlands of Madagascar build a strong case for in situ conservation. Farms are more diverse than villages, which are more diverse than regions, so it may not take that much to conserve a lot of diversity in situ.
- More rapid and severe disease outbreaks for aquaculture at the tropics: implications for food security. Driven by environmental factors, and will get worse with climate change. Strangely, breeding for resistance, and genetic diversity in general, not mentioned.
- Cultivation of Domesticated Rice Alters Arthropod Biodiversity and Community Composition. Wild rice fields have different, less diverse arthropod communities.
- Quantifying habitat-specific contributions to insect diversity in agricultural mosaic landscapes. Some of the different bits of diverse landscapes in Switzerland have unique insects, which is apparently not the case in other places.
- Synergistic effects of non-Apis bees and honey bees for pollination services. And you do need lots of different insects, at least for pollination.
- Earth observation: overlooked potential to support species reintroduction programmes. Translocation and introductions are fraught, but if you still want to do them…
- An improved model to predict the effects of changing biodiversity levels on ecosystem function. Basically, the contribution of species 1 with relative abundance A and species 2 with relative abundance B to ecosystem function is AxB to the power of θ. Can it be extended to ecosystem services, I wonder?
- Pinot blanc and Pinot gris arose as independent somatic mutations of Pinot noir. So that’s where they came from. Insights into “[o]enological aptitude”.
- Divergent pattern of nuclear genetic diversity across the range of the Afromontane Prunus africana mirrors variable climate of African highlands. Sheds light on the history of Afromontane regions.
Brainfood: Barley phylogeny, Strawberry smell, C4, European tree sap, Conservation anthropology, Seed systems, Profitability of diversity, Wheat breeding, Rice breeding, Forest conservation, Neolithic transition, Forest ecosystem services, Diversity and area
- Phylogenetic analysis in some Hordeum species (Triticeae; Poaceae) based on two single-copy nuclear genes encoding acetyl-CoA carboxylase. Divides up the Africa/Asia and American clades, but not perfectly.
- Journeys through aroma space: a novel approach towards the selection of aroma-enriched strawberry cultivars in breeding programmes. Breed a better smelling strawberry in this way, and the world will beat a path to your door.
- Strategies for engineering C4 photosynthesis. More than one way to skin a cat. But is it worth doing if you don’t eat cats?
- Uses of tree saps in northern and eastern parts of Europe. Not what it used to be.
- Resequencing rice genomes: an emerging new era of rice genomics. Maybe. But it would have been better if they had sequenced something other than Nipponbare originally.
- Toward conservational anthropology: addressing anthropocentric bias in anthropology. “Traditional practices” not always all that great.
- Seed exchange networks for agrobiodiversity conservation. A review. Farmers have to be “well connected” for conservation to work. But nobody really knows what that means.
- Landscape diversity and the resilience of agricultural returns: a portfolio analysis of land-use patterns and economic returns from lowland agriculture. Higher gross margin related positively to greater variance, negatively to diversity, in lowland UK, up to 12000 ha.
- Marker-assisted development and characterization of a set of Triticum aestivum lines carrying different introgressions from the T. timopheevii genome. Getting resistance out of wild relatives and into crops.
- Physical localization of a novel blue-grained gene derived from Thinopyrum bessarabicum. Getting blue pigments out of a wild relative and into wheat.
- Improvement of two traditional Basmati rice varieties for bacterial blight resistance and plant stature through morphological and marker-assisted selection. Getting blight resistance out of an improved variety to improve traditional ones.
- Maintaining or Abandoning African Rice: Lessons for Understanding Processes of Seed Innovation. Farmers play an important role in adopting and developing new varieties shock.
- Dynamic Conservation of Forest Genetic Resources in 33 European Countries. It happens.
- The impact of the Neolithic agricultural transition in Britain: a comparison of pollen-based land-cover and archaeological 14C date-inferred population change. Pollen and archaeology agree on dates, the rest is history.
- Higher levels of multiple ecosystem services are found in forests with more tree species. Swedish production forests, anyway. And more. And more.
Brainfood: Climate in Cameroon, Payments for Conservation, Finger Millet, GWAS, Populus genome, miRNA, C4, Cadastres, Orange maize, Raised beds, Contingent valuation, Wild edibles, Sorghum genomics, Brazilian PGR, Citrus genomics
- Climate and Food Production: Understanding Vulnerability from Past Trends in Africa’s Sudan-Sahel. Investment in smallholder farmers can reduce vulnerability, it says here.
- An evaluation of the effectiveness of a direct payment for biodiversity conservation: The Bird Nest Protection Program in the Northern Plains of Cambodia. It works, if you get it right; now can we see some more for agricultural biodiversity?
- Finger millet: the contribution of vernacular names towards its prehistory. You wouldn’t believe how many different names there are, or how they illuminate its spread.
- Genome-Wide Association Studies. How to do them. You need a platform with that?
- Revisiting the sequencing of the first tree genome: Populus trichocarpa. Why to do them.
- Exogenous plant MIR168a specifically targets mammalian LDLRAP1: evidence of cross-kingdom regulation by microRNA. “…exogenous plant miRNAs in food can regulate the expression of target genes in mammals.” Nuff said. We just don’t understand how this regulation business works, do we.
- Anatomical enablers and the evolution of C4 photosynthesis in grasses. It’s the size of the vascular bundle sheath, stupid!
- Land administration for food security: A research synthesis. Administration meaning registration, basically. Can be good for smallholders, via securing tenure, at least in theory. Governments like it for other reasons, of course. However you slice it, though, the GIS jockeys need to get out more.
- Genetic Analysis of Visually Scored Orange Kernel Color in Maize. It’s better than yellow.
- Comment on “Ecological engineers ahead of their time: The functioning of pre-Columbian raised-field agriculture and its potential contributions to sustainability today” by Dephine Renard et al. Back to the future. Not.
- Environmental stratifications as the basis for national, European and global ecological monitoring. Bet it wouldn’t take much to apply it to agroecosystems for agrobiodiversity monitoring.
- Use of Contingent Valuation to Assess Farmer Preference for On-farm Conservation of Minor Millets: Case from South India. Fancy maths suggests farmers willing to receive money to grow crops.
- Wild food plant use in 21st century Europe: the disappearance of old traditions and the search for new cuisines involving wild edibles. The future is Noma.
- Population genomic and genome-wide association studies of agroclimatic traits in sorghum. Structuring by morphological race, and geography within races. Domestication genes confirmed. Promise of food for all held out.
- Response of Sorghum to Abiotic Stresses: A Review. Ok, it could be kinda bad, but now we have the above, don’t we.
- Genetic resources: the basis for sustainable and competitive plant breeding. In Brazil, that is.
- A nuclear phylogenetic analysis: SNPs, indels and SSRs deliver new insights into the relationships in the ‘true citrus fruit trees’ group (Citrinae, Rutaceae) and the origin of cultivated species. SNPs better than SSRs in telling taxa apart. Results consistent with taxonomic subdivisions and geographic origin of taxa. Some biochemical pathway and salt resistance genes showing positive selection. No doubt this will soon lead to tasty, nutritious varieties that can grow on beaches.
Brainfood: Beans, Pollinator decline, Wheat mixtures, Outcrossing
- Multiple origins of the determinate growth habit in domesticated common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris). Bush beans happened often, maybe even the seven times other evidence suggests.
- Detecting Insect Pollinator Declines on Regional and Global Scales. Will cost you $2 million.
- Mixtures of genetically modified wheat lines outperform monocultures. Neat; the mixture components differed only in their pathogen resistance traits.
- Plant chemistry underlies herbivore-mediated inbreeding depression in nature. Herbivores probably good for outcrossing.
Brainfood: Core collections, Romanian pigs, Commons, Valuation, Biofortification, Yam characterization, Pompeii diet, Rice grain genetics
- Maximizing genetic differentiation in core collections by PCA-based clustering of molecular marker data. It works. In simulations, to be fair.
- Study of rare traditional pork breeds concerning the aspect of biodiversity conservation. Mangalitsa is what you want, apparently.
- Open Variety Rights: Rethinking the Commodification of Plants. A “protected commons”? Sounds a bit like the ITPGRFA to me.
- Natural and cultural heritage in mountain landscapes: towards an integrated valuation. Yeah, but does your cultural heritage include things like agricultural biodiversity?
- Fortifying plants with the essential amino acids lysine and methionine to improve nutritional quality. Conventional breeding hasn’t worked. But has it been for want of trying? Just askin’.
- Genetic and phenotypic diversity in a germplasm working collection of cultivated tropical yams (Dioscorea spp.). Relationships among species, synonyms, duplicates, yada yada.
- Roman food refuse: urban archaeobotany in Pompeii, Regio VI, Insula 1. Romans ate a Mediterranean diet. Still no cure for cancer.
- Genetic bases of rice grain shape: so many genes, so little known. Why bother? Just askin’.