- The world’s largest potato cryobank at the International Potato Center (CIP) – Status quo, protocol improvement through large-scale experiments and long-term viability monitoring. It’s been a long road, but they’re almost there…
- Overcoming Challenges for Shoot Tip Cryopreservation of Root and Tuber Crops. …but there’s a bit further to go for other roots and tubers….
- Conserving Citrus Diversity: From Vavilov’s Early Explorations to Genebanks around the World. …and citrus.
- Seed Longevity — The Evolution of Knowledge and a Conceptual Framework. The road goes on forever.
- The 3D Pollen Project: An open repository of three-dimensional data for outreach, education and research. The road has to begin somewhere.
- Pollen Cryobanking—Implications in Genetic Conservation and Plant Breeding. And we’re off…
Brainfood: Why measure genetic diversity?
- Genetic diversity goals and targets have improved, but remain insufficient for clear implementation of the post-2020 global biodiversity framework. The struggle to ensure recognition of the importance of measuring genetic diversity is real, despite the available tools. And despite the range of uses to which the results can be put, as illustrated in the following papers.
- DNA barcoding markers provide insight into species discrimination, genetic diversity and phylogenetic relationships of yam (Dioscorea spp.). Measuring genetic diversity can help you tell species apart.
- Genetic diversity and population structure of barley landraces from Southern Ethiopia’s Gumer district: Utilization for breeding and conservation. Measuring genetic diversity can help you decide what’s new and what to use in breeding.
- Management of genetic erosion: The (successful) case study of the pear (Pyrus communis L.) germplasm of the Lazio region (Italy). Measuring genetic diversity can help you detect genetic erosion and figure out what to do about it.
- Genetic and Pomological Determination of the Trueness-to-Type of Sweet Cherry Cultivars in the German National Fruit Genebank. Measuring genetic diversity can help you fix mistakes in genebanks.
- Genetic diversity and local adaption of alfalfa populations (Medicago sativa L.) under long-term grazing. Measuring genetic diversity can help you identify adaptive genes.
- A common resequencing-based genetic marker data set for global maize diversity. Measuring genetic diversity can help you pinpoint useful flowering genes.
- Genome-wide association study of variation in cooking time among common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) accessions using Diversity Arrays Technology markers. Measuring genetic diversity can help you identify carbon-friendly genes.
- Dissecting the genetic architecture of leaf morphology traits in mungbean (Vigna radiata (L.) Wizcek) using genome-wide association study. Measuring genetic diversity can help you find plants with nice leaves.
- Genetic Diversity Strategy for the Management and Use of Rubber Genetic Resources: More than 1,000 Wild and Cultivated Accessions in a 100-Genotype Core Collection. Measuring genetic diversity can help you go from over 1000 accessions to under 100.
- Sustainable seed harvesting in wild plant populations. Measuring genetic diversity can help you model optimal germplasm collecting strategies.
- Genetics of randomly bred cats support the cradle of cat domestication being in the Near East. Measuring genetic diversity can tell you where the cat was domesticated.
- Bacterial species diversity of traditionally ripened sheep legs from the Faroe Islands (skerpikjøt). Measuring genetic diversity can help you figure out how to ripen sheep legs properly.
Brainfood: NbS, Intercropping, Sparing, Mixtures, Intensification, Shifting cultivation, Mexican wild foods, Chinese NUS, Andean crops, South African indigenous foods, Uganda community seedbanks
- Nature-Based Solutions and Agroecology: Business as Usual or an Opportunity for Transformative Change? Nature-based solutions need to be diversity-based. Let’s look at some example, shall we? Buckle up…
- The productive performance of intercropping. Meta-analysis shows intercropping leads to more land sparing and more protein compared to monoculture.
- Sparing or expanding? The effects of agricultural yields on farm expansion and deforestation in the tropics. Ouch, increasing yield results more often in higher deforestation than lower. If only they had gone for intercropping…
- Crop mixtures outperform rotations and landscape mosaics in regulation of two fungal wheat pathogens: a simulation study. …or crop mixtures.
- Intensified rice production negatively impacts plant biodiversity, diet, lifestyle and quality of life: transdisciplinary and gendered research in the Middle Senegal River Valley. And just to be clear, agricultural expansion can be bad for both farmers and the environment.
- Drivers and consequences of archetypical shifting cultivation transitions. Being able to charge rent is the main driver of the move away from shifting cultivation, but the environmental results depend on what system replaces it.
- Contribution of the biodiversity of edible plants to the diet and nutritional status of women in a Zapotec communities of the Sierra Norte, Oaxaca, Mexico. It’s the older, less educated housewives that are more nature-based, and all the better for it.
- Six Underutilized Grain Crops for Food and Nutrition in China. That would be barley, buckwheat, broomcorn millet, foxtail millet, oat, and sorghum, which would certainly make a nature-based breakfast of champions.
- Traditional crops and climate change adaptation: insights from the Andean agricultural sector. Growing traditional crops in the Andes may be less profitable, but it is more resilient to climate change. Unclear which of the two options is more nature-based, though. And has anyone told China?
- Opportunities and Challenges of Indigenous Food Plant Farmers in Integrating into Agri-Food Value Chains in Cape Town. To take advantage of nature-based solutions in South Africa, you have to know about local nature.
- Community Seedbanks in Uganda: Fostering Access to Genetic Diversity and Its Conservation. More research is needed to figure out how community seedbanks can be at their nature-based best.
Brainfood: Sulawesi Warty Pig, Neolithic violence, Early cotton, Livestock poop, Pontic millet, Bronze Age opium, Sami shamanism, Wild chickens
- Pigs as Pets: Early Human Relations with the Sulawesi Warty Pig (Sus celebensis). You don’t need to be a sedentary agricultural society to domesticate an animal as a pet. There was the dog, and also the Sulawesi Warty Pig.
- Conflict, violence, and warfare among early farmers in Northwestern Europe. Early sedentary agricultural societies were not exempt from violence, pets or no pets.
- The earliest cotton fibers and Pan-regional contacts in the Near East. At least early sedentary agricultural societies did all that fighting wearing comfortable cotton garments.
- How animal dung can help to reconstruct past forest use: a late Neolithic case study from the Mooswinkel pile dwelling (Austria). In between spells of fighting, early sedentary agricultural societies let their livestock roam the forest during the day but kept them in their settlements in winter, and that accumulates a lot of dung that can come in useful thousands of years later in working out what said livestock ate in said forest.
- Between Cereal Agriculture and Animal Husbandry: Millet in the Early Economy of the North Pontic Region. You didn’t need to be a completely sedentary agricultural society to grow Panicum miliaceum in the Pontic steppes.
- Opium trade and use during the Late Bronze Age: Organic residue analysis of ceramic vessels from the burials of Tel Yehud, Israel. There comes a time when a sedentary agricultural society will start growing, and then selling, drugs.
- A Sacred Tree in the Boreal forest: A Narrative About a Sámi Shaman, her Tree, and the Forest Landscape. You don’t need to be a sedentary agricultural society and grow drugs to have a rich spiritual life, but it’s harder — though not impossible — to document it.
- Historic samples reveal loss of wild genotype through domestic chicken introgression during the Anthropocene. Sedentary agricultural societies are polluting the genetics of wild species related to domesticates. The chicken in this case, the Sulawesi Warty Pig unavailable for comment.
Brainfood: Zea, Urochloa, Medicago, Solanum, Juglans, Camellia, Artocarpus, Lactuca, Phaseolus, and everything else
- Genome sequencing reveals evidence of adaptive variation in the genus Zea. Alleles associated with flowering time were key to adaptation in highland and temperate regions.
- THP9 enhances seed protein content and nitrogen-use efficiency in maize. And it came from wild teosinte.
- Diverged subpopulations in tropical Urochloa (Brachiaria) forage species indicate a role for facultative apomixis and varying ploidy in their population structure and evolution. Polyploidy plus apomixis equals world domination. Maize next?
- Plastid phylogenomics uncovers multiple species in Medicago truncatula (Fabaceae) germplasm accessions. Genebanks need to go beyond conventional taxonomy sometimes.
- Comparative Analysis of the Genetic Diversity of Chilean Cultivated Potato Based on a Molecular Study of Authentic Herbarium Specimens and Present-Day Gene Bank Accessions. Native Chilean potato landraces are being replaced and polluted…
- Diversity of Late Blight Resistance Genes in the VIR Potato Collection. …and will probably continue to be replaced and polluted.
- The United States Potato Genebank Holding of cv. Desiree is a Somatic Mutant of cv. Urgenta. Shit happens, even in well-run genebanks.
- Domestication and selection footprints in Persian walnuts (Juglans regia). Breeding hasn’t had much of an effect on diversity.
- Comparative phylogenetic analysis of oolong tea (Phoenix Dancong tea) using complete chloroplast genome sequences. Oolong teas are a genetic thing.
- Linking breadfruit cultivar names across the globe connects histories after 230 years of separation. Because of genebanks, botanic gardens, herbaria and three generations of women scientists we now know which breadfruit varieties Captain Bligh introduced to the West Indies.
- Lactuca georgica Grossh. is a wild species belonging to the secondary lettuce gene pool: additional evidence, obtained by KASP genotyping. A wild species gets demoted.
- Large genomic introgression blocks of Phaseolus parvifolius Freytag bean into the common bean enhance the crossability between tepary and common beans. A wild species helps with crossing two cultivated species. Figure out which genepool it belongs to after that.
- Genebanking plant genetic resources in the postgenomic era. Yeah, but all the above leads to the question: “what happens when all crop diversity has been sequenced?” Read this to find out.