- 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’.
Brainfood: Bumper bonanza, Old peas, Irrigated meadows, Cereal mashes, Medicinal plants, Diversity and production, Millet gaps, Seed ageing, Flax core
- First off — a pretty big deal. Taylor & Francis have made a bunch of papers related to sustainable agriculture freely available, but only until the end of December. Happy whatever holiday won’t offend you.
- Twentieth-century changes in the genetic composition of Swedish field pea metapopulations. Metapopulations have become isolated populations. In genebanks.
- Effects of different irrigation systems on the biodiversity of species-rich hay meadows. Change from the traditional irrigation system has affected biodiversity levels, but not a huge amount.
- Research regarding the use of wheat biodiversity for obtaining some cereal-based fermented mashes. Let’s go straight to what we need to know here: the best mash come from spelt wheat. Oh, to be the one doing the organoleptic characterization.
- Cultivation and high capitalization of medicinal and aromatic plants in the Romanian-Bulgarian cross-border region. If you’re really interested, there’s a database that brings it all together.
- Crop biodiversity, productivity and production risk: Panel data micro-evidence from Ethiopia. More crops = more production. But the devil is in the details, I suspect.
- Identification of gaps in pearl millet germplasm from East and Southern Africa conserved at the ICRISAT genebank. We used to do this sort of thing by hand in my day.
- At3g08030 transcript: a molecular marker of seed ageing. This mRNA could predict germination performance of a dry seed lot across species. Good for genebanks?
- Assembling a core collection from the flax world collection maintained by Plant Gene Resources of Canada. You don’t hear much about core collections these days, why is that?
Brainfood: Pig genome, Turkey genome, Big genomes, Maize genome, Potato improvement, Mango diversity, Coconut germination
- Analyses of pig genomes provide insight into porcine demography and evolution. More wild diversity in Asia, suggesting origin there, followed by migration to Europe. Separate domestication in SE Asia and Europe, followed by geneflow.
- Whole genome SNP discovery and analysis of genetic diversity in Turkey (Meleagris gallopavo). Lot less diverse than chicken. Or pig. Commercial breed even less diverse.
- Why size really matters when sequencing plant genomes. We must not shy away from the big genomes.
- QTL mapping in three tropical maize populations reveals a set of constitutive and adaptive genomic regions for drought tolerance. Eureka!
- Crops that feed the world 8: Potato: are the trends of increased global production sustainable? Maybe. But can you guess what will be needed? Nice review of genebank holdings and improvement strategies and aims.
- Physico-chemical Characterization of Unexploited Mango Diversity in Sub-mountane Zone of Northern India. 28 varieties in the Punjab, with all kinds of different uses.
- Germination Rate is the Significant Characteristic Determining Coconut Palm Diversity. Natural and artificial selection associated with different rates of germination (as well as other phenotypic traits of course).