- Heritable genome-wide variation of gene expression and promoter methylation between wild and domesticated chickens. Domestication was Lamarckian.
- Global economy interacts with climate change to jeopardize species conservation: the case of the greater flamingo in the Mediterranean and West Africa. Financial crisis leads to closing down of Mediterranean saltpans, which is not good news for flamingo. Climate change doesn’t help. Must be similar examples for plants, Shirley.
- Parallel Evolution Under Domestication and Phenotypic Differentiation of the Cultivated Subspecies of Cucurbita pepo (Cucurbitaceae). C. pepo subsp. pepo and subsp. texana underwent similar genotypic and phenotypic changes during domestication.
- Ecological and human impacts on stand density and distribution of tamarind (Tamarindus indica L.) in Senegal. Climate change will lead to an area of currently low density in the NW being a refugium. Connectivity problems will ensue.
- Biofortification of wheat through inoculation of plant growth promoting rhizobacteria and cyanobacteria. Breeders give up.
- Nutritional ranking of 30 Brazilian genotypes of cowpeas including determination of antioxidant capacity and vitamins. Breeders take heart.
- A short history of Lagenaria siceraria (bottle gourd) in the Roman provinces: morphotypes and archaeogenetics. Out of Asia. And more.
- Functional Properties, Nutritional Value, and Industrial Applications of Niger Oilseeds (Guizotia abyssinica Cass.). It has them, in spades, as this paper summarises.
- Sex at the origin: an Asian population of the rice blast fungus Magnaporthe oryzae reproduces sexually. The Himalayan foothills would seem to be the place where to look for resistance.
- Evolutionary History of Pearl Millet (Pennisetum glaucum [L.] R. Br.) and Selection on Flowering Genes since Its Domestication. Bayesian modelling of 20 random genes supports domestication about 4,800 years ago, with protracted introgression from the wild relative, and selection sweeps suggest flowering related genes unsurprisingly underwent strong selection as the crop spread southward. But a single domestication scenario? Anyway, sounds familiar, doesn’it.
- Genome-Wide Analysis of the World’s Sheep Breeds Reveals High Levels of Historic Mixture and Strong Recent Selection. Much like, ahem, pearl millet. For flowering genes, read horniness genes. The bit about an initially broad sampling of diversity sounds a bit like the horse. Who out there is going to synthesize all this domestication stuff? Not that I’m looking for a meta-narrative, mind.
- Ultra-barcoding in cacao (Theobroma spp.; Malvaceae) using whole chloroplast genomes and nuclear ribosomal DNA. Well, sequence the whole thing and be done with it is what I say, why flaff around with ultra-this and super-that?
- The crop yield gap between organic and conventional agriculture. 20%.
- Marcela, a promising medicinal and aromatic plant from Latin America: A review. Achyrocline satureioides, in the Asteraceae. Yeah, I never heard of it either. But these guys say it’ll make you rich and beautiful.
- Comparative genetic structure within single-origin pairs of rice (Oryza sativa L.) landraces from in situ and ex situ conservation programs in Yunnan of China using microsatellite markers. 2-5 times more unique alleles in the in situ version of various landraces compared to the ex situ version, collected in 1980. But same number of common alleles.
- Mutualism breakdown in breadfruit domestication. More recent cultivars have less abundant and less species-rich arbuscular mycorrhizas.
Brainfood: Falcons, Wild soybean squared, Horse domestication
- Effects of Introducing Threatened Falcons into Vineyards on Abundance of Passeriformes and Bird Damage to Grapes. Potential savings of US$234/ha for Sauvignon Blanc, more for Pinot Noir.
- Genetic characterization and gene flow in different geographical-distance neighbouring natural populations of wild soybean (Glycine soja Sieb. & Zucc.) and implications for protection from GM soybeans. There is a small amount of outcrossing, which decreases with distance. GM crops should be grown far from wild populations, certainly more than 1.5km. And we can work out better ways to collect for ex situ conservation.
- Phylogenetic relationships, interspecific hybridization and origin of some rare characters of wild soybean in the subgenus Glycine soja in China. Intermediate forms are closer to the wild than the cultivated species.
- Mitochondrial genomes from modern horses reveal the major haplogroups that underwent domestication. A diversity of maternal lines were domesticated about 150,000 years ago, leading to about 18 modern haplogroups. One of them is only found in the only remaining wild horse, E. przewalskii.
Brainfood: Tea, NGS, Grandmothers, Anti-scorbutics, Barley population structure, Climate change below ground, Rice
- Genetic structure and diversity of India hybrid tea. It’s complicated. It’s important because the success of tea outside its core are is due to hybridization between Indian and Chinese types in Assam starting in 1875. It’s limited.
- NGS technologies for analyzing germplasm diversity in genebanks. That’s Next-Generation Sequencing. Can be used to “identify patterns of genetic diversity, map quantitative traits and mine novel alleles.” Recommendation is for “genotyping by sequencing” to be applied stepwise, starting with a core collection. That’ll be complicated, but the real bottleneck will be the phenotyping.
- The role and influence of grandmothers on child nutrition: culturally designated advisors and caregivers. Wise up, nutrition advocates. You are, apparently, ignoring egg-suckers, a primary force for good.
- The importance of eating local: slaughter and scurvy in Antarctic cuisine. Who needs oranges when you have fresh penguin at hand?
- Islands and streams: clusters and gene flow in wild barley populations from the Levant. There is ecogeographic patterning in the wild material, once you remove the effect of recent admixture with cultivated barley. Geneflow is more N to S than vice versa.
- Global change belowground: impacts of elevated CO2, nitrogen, and summer drought on soil food webs and biodiversity. It’s complex, really complex; increased CO2 and N may result in new, simpler belowground assemblages.
- Rice and Language Across Asia: Crops, Movement, and Social Change. An entire issue of Rice journal.
Brainfood: Conservation policy, Grasspea breeding, Modeling rice diseases, Maize roots, Literature on new oil crops, Native vs non-native trees in Indonesian city parks, Cherimoya maps, Darwin Core, Seed dispersal and conservation, Oxalis variation, Polyploidy and variation, Pollinators, Microsymbionts, Plant migration, Culture and agriculture
As ever, we have added most of these references to our public group on Mendeley, for ease of finding. “Most?” we hear you say. “What gives?” Well, Mendeley and some academic publishers still don’t play nicely. There’s nothing to stop you adding the paper in question by hand, if you’re so inclined, but we don’t really have the time. And if you do, please do it right.
- Why are some biodiversity policies implemented and others ignored? Lessons from the uptake of the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation by botanic gardens. Because there are no feedback mechanisms?
- Genetic improvement of grass pea (Lathyrus sativus) in Ethiopia: an unfulfilled promise. Conventional breeding for low ODAP hasn’t worked, so forget about solving that problem through conventional breeding, and move on to other problems, or use genetic transformation.
- Modeling and mapping potential epidemics of rice diseases globally. It is not particularly well done, but one is surprised to see it done at all. NiM ((Not in Mendeley.))
- Morphological and physiological characteristics of corn (Zea mays L.) roots from cultivars with different yield potentials. More roots means more yield. Among some modern varieties anyway. Under some conditions. NiM
- Trends in literature on new oilseed crops and related species: Seeking evidence of increasing or waning interest. And finding it, alas. Sort of. NiM
- The green colonial heritage: Woody plants in parks of Bandung, Indonesia. Native species used to be used more, and should be used more again. NiM
- Mapping Genetic Diversity of Cherimoya (Annona cherimola Mill.): Application of Spatial Analysis for Conservation and Use of Plant Genetic Resources. Cool maps of microsat hotspots.
- Darwin Core: An Evolving Community-Developed Biodiversity Data Standard. The way out of Genebank Database Hell? Well, maybe the match that will light the torch that will show the way out.
- Seed dispersal in changing landscapes. Fragmentation, harvesting, invasions and climate change affect seed dispersal in ways that need to be understood by conservationists. NiM. And the BBC’s more verbose take on it.
- Distribution models and a dated phylogeny for Chilean Oxalis species reveal occupation of new habitats by different lineages, not rapid adaptive radiation. Title says it all, really. It’s not that a single lineage exploded as new habitats became available. Old lineages were pre-adapted to the new habitats. ((Finding the actual paper online could be really, really hard.))
- Extensive chromosomal variation in a recently formed natural allopolyploid species, Tragopogon miscellus (Asteraceae). Polyploidy leads to all hell breaking lose in the genome for generations.
- Overplaying the role of honey bees as pollinators: A comment on Aebi and Neumann (2011). It’s the wild bees, hoverflies and other native pollinators, stupid! But still.
- Arbuscular Mycorrhizas Reduce Nitrogen Loss via Leaching. 40 times less, no less.
- Distributional migrations, expansions, and contractions of tropical plant species as revealed in dated herbarium records. Eppur si muovono. And more on the paper. And more on herbarium digitization in general. what can I tell you, I’ve got apophenia.
- Ecological and socio-cultural factors influencing in situ conservation of crop diversity by traditional Andean households in Peru. There are influences; and why wouldn’t there be?
Brainfood: Climate change in Europe, Slow cheese in Portugal, Grapevine diversity in Spain, Noni in India, Farmers and pastoralists in Jordan, Stevia everywhere, Almond genes flow, Peanuts, Disease control
- Representing two centuries of past and future climate for assessing risks to biodiversity in Europe. Temperature up 3-6°C throughout Europe by end of century, rainfall down in south, up in north. Sounds lovely.
- Gourmandizing Poverty Food: The Serpa Cheese Slow Food Presidium. Trying to bring back a lost Portuguese cheese is romantic and elitist. Wish they’d just say what they really mean.
- Genetic diversity of wild grapevine populations in Spain and their genetic relationships with cultivated grapevines. If there’s a genetic contribution of wild grapevines to cultivated in Spain, it’s not great.
- Revisiting the origin of the domestication of noni (Morinda citrifolia L.). Let’s just say Pacific islanders won’t be pleased.
- The desert and the sown: Nomad–farmer interactions in the Wadi Faynan, southern Jordan. Changes from sedentarism to pastoralism are mainly due to chance.
- Stevia rebaudiana Bertoni, source of a high-potency natural sweetener: A comprehensive review on the biochemical, nutritional and functional aspects. Not just sweetness, folic acid, vitamin C and all of the indispensable amino acids except tryptophan too.
- Gene flow among wild and domesticated almond species: insights from chloroplast and nuclear markers. The main insight being that it happens a lot, in both directions.
- Agricultural Technology, Crop Income, and Poverty Alleviation in Uganda. New peanut varieties increase incomes and reduce poverty, but aren’t enough on their own.
- Plant diversity improves protection against soil-borne pathogens by fostering antagonistic bacterial communities. It sure does, at least in a long-term grassland.