- Drought-exposure history increases complementarity between plant species in response to a subsequent drought. Repeated stress makes plant species get along better, sustaining diversity. If only it worked so well with people…
- A quantitative synthesis of soil microbial effects on plant species coexistence. Meta-analysis shows soil microbes work against plant species getting along better.
- Does crop diversification lead to climate-related resilience? Improving the theory through insights on practice. Crops getting along well together is pretty well linked to better livelihoods, but less strongly to increased resilience.
- Local Adaptation: Causal Agents of Selection and Adaptive Trait Divergence. You need to do reciprocal transplant experiments really well to find out where plants are best adapted and why. Probably means taking microbes into account.
- Genetic variance in fitness indicates rapid contemporary adaptive evolution in wild animals. Natural selection can be quicker than climate change. I hope they did the reciprocal transplant experiments really well.
- Global genetic diversity status and trends: towards a suite of Essential Biodiversity Variables (EBVs) for genetic composition. Genetic diversity, Genetic differentiation, Inbreeding, and Effective Population Size (Ne). Who needs reciprocal transplant experiments?
- On the feasibility of estimating contemporary effective population size (Ne) for genetic conservation and monitoring of forest trees. Ouch.
- Selecting species and populations for monitoring of genetic diversity. All of them, right?
Brainfood: Diversity & breeding in Coix, Triticum, Phaseolus, Manihot, Oryza, Vigna, Glycine, Zea, Malus
- Nutritional profiling and GIS-based grid mapping of Job’s tears (Coix lacryma-jobi L.) germplasm. 2 genebank accessions out of 32 are especially good.
- Diversity and Adaptation of Currently Grown Wheat Landraces and Modern Germplasm in Afghanistan, Iran, and Turkey. Some wheat landraces were just as productive as modern varieties, so crossing landraces with other landraces could be a good breeding strategy. Maybe even for Job’s tears.
- Mining of the national gene bank collection identifies resistance sources for loose smut of wheat in Northern Himalayan conditions. 58 of 586 were resistant. Let the inter-landrace crossing begin!
- Are Traditional Lima Bean (Phaseolus lunatus L.) Landraces Valuable to Cope with Climate Change? Effects of Drought on Growth and Biochemical Stress Markers. Oh no, the commercial variety is more drought-resistant than the, ahem, two landraces.
- Low-cost, handheld near-infrared spectroscopy for root dry matter content prediction in cassava. A faster and cheaper way of figuring out which cassavas are better than others.
- Mutations in DNA polymerase δ subunit 1 co-segregate with CMD2-type resistance to Cassava Mosaic Geminiviruses. Now for a faster and cheaper way of spotting the gene in your crosses.
- Phenotypic Variation and the Impact of Admixture in the Oryza rufipogon Species Complex (ORSC). Sometimes there’s no short-cut to the slog of detailed phenotyping if you want a short-cut to pre-breeding.
- Evaluation of black gram varieties using crowd source citizen science under northern hilly climatic condition of Chhattisgarh. Let the farmers do the slog of phenotyping.
- A view of the pan-genome of domesticated cowpea (Vigna unguiculata [L.] Walp.). The genes not shared by all six sub-populations of the cultivated cowpea are very important to the overall diversity of the crop. Let scientists do the slog of genotyping.
- Breeding for disease resistance in soybean: a global perspective. 800 resistance loci/alleles for 28 varied diseases from all over the world. Imagine one variety with all of them :)
- Genetic diversity in early maturity Chinese and European elite soybeans: A comparative analysis. Two equally diverse but distinct genepools. Unclear how the above 800 loci divide up.
- Association mapping across a multitude of traits collected in diverse environments in maize. More slogging through phenotyping, this time to uncover pleiotropy.
- Incorporating male sterility increases hybrid maize yield in low input African farming systems. But I guess you need the above to decide on the parents for your fancy hybrids.
- Pedigree reconstruction for triploid apple cultivars using single nucleotide polymorphism array data. Triploids apples may be bigger and stronger, but they’re also genetic dead ends.
- Evidence of an additional center of apple domestication in Iran, with contributions from the Caucasian crab apple Malus orientalis Uglitzk. to the cultivated apple gene pool. Another example of multiple domestication “events”.
Brainfood: Canadian berries, Durian, Watermelon domestication, Wild cacao, New Chinese fruit, Animal pollinators, Food impacts
- Berries as a case study for crop wild relative conservation, use, and public engagement in Canada. Berries could be an agrobiodiversity conservation flagship, at least in Canada. If only other types of crops, and countries, were that easy.
- The king of fruits. There’s a dark side to durian that’s thankfully not there with berries.
- Genome sequencing of up to 6,000-yr-old Citrullus seeds reveals use of a bitter-fleshed species prior to watermelon domestication. Neolithic Libyans used wild watermelons for their seeds, not flesh.
- Comparison of bioactive components and flavor volatiles of diverse cocoa genotypes of Theobroma grandiflorum, Theobroma bicolor, Theobroma subincanum and Theobroma cacao. Could use the wild relatives for tastier chocolate. Another potential flagship, surely.
- Akebia: A Potential New Fruit Crop in China. I’d totally try it. And not just because it’s called both “wild banana” and “chocolate vine.”
- Animal pollination increases stability of crop yield across spatial scales. Not just higher yields, greater yield stability too. Important for some of the above, and many other fruits.
- Estimating the environmental impacts of 57,000 food products. More nutritious foods tend to be more environmentally friendly too. But how many of these products include the above? I mean fruits, not pollinators.
Brainfood: Sweet potato in Polynesia, Land use in Jamaica, Himalayan Neolithic, Early modern Spanish ag, E Asian Neolithic double
- Sweet Potato on Rapa Nui: Insights from a Monographic Study of the Genus Ipomoea. Seeds could just maybe have got there by floating, but more likely sweet potato was introduced to Easter Island by people from other parts of Polynesia, perhaps not by the first arrivals though.
- The legacy of 1300 years of land use in Jamaica. European colonization led to deforestation. And no doubt the spread of sweet potato, but that’s another story. The constant is cassava.
- Prehistoric agricultural decision making in the western Himalayas: ecological and social variables. Large, socially diverse prehistoric sites had more diverse agriculture. At these high altitude anyway. The constant is barley.
- Early Austronesians Cultivated Rice and Millet Together: Tracing Taiwan’s First Neolithic Crops. That would be japonica rice and foxtail millet, which were brought to Taiwan from the SE coast of China.
- Millet, Rice, and Isolation: Origins and Persistence of the World’s Most Enduring Mega-State. Meanwhile, back in China, the adoption of agriculture drives state formation.
- A 16th-century biodiversity and crop inventory. 60 crop and livestock species, which doesn’t sound like enough. Alas, no sweet potato or rice, but some Setaria millet.
Brainfood: Convivial conservation, Resilient forests, Traditional industries, Wheat supplies, Food system transformation, Micronutrient security, Biotech promise, Ultra-processed food impacts, Sub-Saharan agriculture, Farmer risk management, Afro-Brazilian agriculture, Biodiversity funding
- Exploring Convivial Conservation in Theory and Practice: Possibilities and Challenges for a Transformative Approach to Biodiversity Conservation. Conservation should be integrative, democratic and redistributive. Hard row to hoe.
- Emerging signals of declining forest resilience under climate change. Convivially or not, better conserve forests quickly.
- Adapting traditional industries to national park management: A conceptual framework and insights from two Chinese cases. Integrative and redistributive, but I’m not sure how democratic.
- Near- to long-term measures to stabilize global wheat supplies and food security. There’s a bunch of stuff that we can do in the short term, but in the end we’re going to need diverse, gender-equitable agro-ecosystems which are properly supported by investment in research. Sort of integrative, democratic and redistributive then, perhaps?
- From food price crisis to an equitable food system. Looks like the food system needs to be as convivial as conservation. If not more so.
- Trade and dietary preferences can determine micronutrient security in the United Kingdom. Going to be difficult to take back control of micronutrient security.
- Turning promise into practice: Crop biotechnology for increasing genetic diversity and climate resilience. Maybe biotech needs to be more convivial too.
- A conceptual framework for understanding the environmental impacts of ultra-processed foods and implications for sustainable food systems. Nothing convivial about ultra-processed foods, alas.
- Why food insecurity persists in sub-Saharan Africa: A review of existing evidence. Exports, basically. Looks like exports are really not very convivial.
- Crops in crises: Shocks shape smallholders’ diversification in rural Ethiopia. Farmers need continual access to both the informal and formal seed systems to mitigate risk, but poor farmers need more money to do so. Maybe link them up to export markets? No, wait…
- Traditional Agriculture and Food Sovereignty: Quilombola Knowledge and Management of Food Crops. Lots of conviviality, but not enough to fully mitigate risk.
- The role of international cooperative initiatives in financing biodiversity. Partnerships between state and a variety of non-state actors may just be an opportunity for more convivial conservation and food systems. But then I would say that.