- GAIN Discussion Paper 9: Food group diversity and nutrient adequacy. Eat a diverse diet…
- Can Underutilized Tropical Fruits Meet the Nutritional Requirements of Rural Indonesia? …which includes fruits, of course.
- The nutritional quality of cereals varies geospatially in Ethiopia and Malawi. And cereals, though it depends where they’re growing.
- Variation for Photoperiod and Temperature Sensitivity in the Global Mini Core Collection of Sorghum. Less than 10% are sensitive to neither. And yes, there’s another paper on the nutrient quality of the same subset. Though not on how that varies geographically.
- Habitat value of bivalve shellfish and seaweed aquaculture for fish and invertebrates: Pathways, synthesis and next steps. Eat more bivalves and seaweed too, it can be good for the environment too.
- Measurements of lethal and nonlethal inbreeding depression inform the de novo domestication of Silphium integrifolium. Always good to have a new oil crop, especially a perennial one, but careful what you cross to get it, and how.
- Genome design of hybrid potato. Re-inventing the potato as a seed-propagated crop could be good for nutrition, sure, why not.
- High Throughput can produce better decisions than high accuracy when phenotyping plant populations. As you make better and more nutritious crops, keep in mind it may be better to phenotype more plants in more environments than obsess about accuracy and precision. What does that mean for mini-cores?
- Insight into the introduction of domestic cattle and the process of Neolithization to the Spanish region Galicia by genetic evidence. But is any of this worth the hassle? After all, the early domesticated cattle of Galicia are similar to modern breeds…
Brainfood: Hybrid wheat, Vietnam rice, Canadian apples, European cherries, Ecuador maize, Honeybush, Pearl millet domestication, Fish domestication, African veggie seeds, Cereal micronutrients, Oz forages collections
- Unlocking big data doubled the accuracy in predicting the grain yield in hybrid wheat. Breeding programmes and genebanks need to pool their data. That’s kind of what the Plant Treaty’s GLIS is for, isn’t it?
- Resequencing of 672 Native Rice Accessions to Explore Genetic Diversity and Trait Associations in Vietnam. Another example of the above: an indica sub-population in Vietnam is pretty unique and seemingly untapped in breeding.
- Quantifying apple diversity: A phenomic characterization of Canada’s Apple Biodiversity Collection. And another: 20,000 apples phenotyped to within an inch of their lives to show, among many other things, that new varieties have been getting lower in phenolics.
- Towards a Joint International Database: Alignment of SSR Marker Data for European Collections of Cherry Germplasm. I swear I didn’t plan this…
- Morphological and eco-geographic diversity analysis of maize germplasm in the high altitude Andes region of Ecuador. Loja province is a bit of a maize diversity hotspot, and you don’t need big data to prove it.
- The transition to agricultural cultivation of neo-crops may fail to account for wild genetic diversity patterns: insights from the Cape Floristic Region. Taking a new species into cultivation can lead to a genetic bottleneck, and you don’t need big data to prove it.
- Fish domestication in aquaculture: 10 unanswered questions. Same as above for fish, but oddly genetic diversity doesn’t feature among the questions. Maybe the answer would have been too obvious?
- Transition From Wild to Domesticated Pearl Millet (Pennisetum glaucum) Revealed in Ceramic Temper at Three Middle Holocene Sites in Northern Mali. How wild pearl millet was taken into cultivation can be followed in time because bits of the plants were added to clay to prevent the pots cracking during firing in ancient times. The opposite of big data, but still pretty cool.
- Africa’s evolving vegetable seed sector: status, policy options and lessons from Asia. Seed companies in Africa need capacity, policies, extension, and marketing. And data, I would add.
- Are the modern-bred rice and wheat cultivars in India inefficient in zinc and iron sequestration? Eat more vegetables? Don’t need data to figure that out.
- A history of Australian pasture genetic resource collections. 85,000 accessions qualifies as pretty big. Not sure about the data though.
Brainfood: Food systems & biodiversity, Tree diversity, Cereal micronutrients, African crops in America, Coffee vulnerability, Coffee fungus, Wildrice, Wild coriander, Wild apple genebank, Laperrine’s olive, Maize landraces, Goat domestication, Honey bee cryo
- Biodiversity Towards Sustainable Food Systems: Four Arguments. For the record: food/nutrition security, climate change resilience, sustainable diets, resilience to zoonoses. I would have added something about culture.
- Biodiversity–productivity relationships are key to nature-based climate solutions. Greenhouse gas mitigation helps tree diversity helps productivity helps greenhouse gas mitigation.
- Genetic determinants of micronutrient traits in graminaceous crops to combat hidden hunger. Big crops can help little crops.
- Contributions of African Crops to American Culture and Beyond: The Slave Trade and Other Journeys of Resilient Peoples and Crops. Decolonizing American agriculture.
- Vulnerability of coffee (Coffea spp.) genetic resources in the United States. Americans have a cunning plan for an African crop.
- Historical genomics reveals the evolutionary mechanisms behind multiple outbreaks of the host-specific coffee wilt pathogen Fusarium xylarioides. Coffee Wilt Disease fungus got a boost from banana Panama Disease fungus. Got a plan for this?
- Improved Remote Sensing Methods to Detect Northern Wild Rice (Zizania palustris L.). They’re this close to putting in place an early warning system. Coffee next? But what about those micronutrients, eh?
- Wild coriander: an untapped genetic resource for future coriander breeding. Not only untapped, its very existence was in doubt. Detect this from space, Colin!
- Advanced genebank management of genetic resources of European wild apple, Malus sylvestris, using genome-wide SNP array data. The Dutch field collection can be managed as a single unit. Kind of a relief, probably. Coffee next?
- Contrasting Genetic Footprints among Saharan Olive Populations: Potential Causes and Conservation Implications. Looks like the wild Saharan olive cannot be managed as a single unit. Bet they can be monitored from space though.
- Growing maize landraces in industrialized countries: from the search for seeds to the emergence of new practices and values. Two contrasting approaches by farmers’ associations in France and Italy.
- Herded and hunted goat genomes from the dawn of domestication in the Zagros Mountains. Before goats were morphologically domesticated, they were managed and genetically domesticated. I wonder if coffee was the same.
- Europe’s First Gene Bank for Honey Bees. Really cold drone semen finds a home in Germany.
Brainfood: Insurance, Maize roots, Grass strips, Banana nutrients, Fish nutrients, Wild potatoes, Apple genes, Wheat resistance, Killer tomatoes
- Biodiversity as insurance: from concept to measurement and application. It’s important to draw a distinction between the effect of biodiversity on mean and on variance of ecosystem properties.
- Reproductive resilience but not root architecture underpins yield improvement under drought in maize (Zea mays L.). Which presents an opportunity.
- Functional traits driving pollinator and predator responses to newly established grassland strips in agricultural landscapes. Biodiversity takes its time.
- Genetic diversity in fresh fruit pulp mineral profile of 100 Indian Musa accessions. Plenty of diversity, though different micronutrients are correlated, and 100 g contributes only 5-10% of daily mineral requirements.
- Declining diversity of wild-caught species puts dietary nutrient supplies at risk. Let them eat bananas. More nuance.
- A Metric for Species Representation in the US Potato Genebank. Sort of like a core collection, but across species.
- Pyramiding resistance genes and widening the genetic base of the apple (Malus × domestica Borkh.) crop. From 36 cultivars, via 110 cross combinations, to 7,876 offsprings, to 2,969 after screening, to 75 genotypes each with 2-3 of the 20 Rvi6 genes. Hard row to hoe.
- Resistance to diseases in samples of rare wheat species from the N.I. Vavilov All-Russian Institute of Plant Genetic Resources. Very hard row to hoe. Septoria nodorum blotch seems to be particularly tricky.
- Alien introgression and morpho‑agronomic characterization of diploid progenies of Solanum lycopersicoides monosomic alien addition lines (MAALs) toward pre‑breeding applications in tomato (S. lycopersicum). I particularly like the bit where it bursts through John Hurt’s chest.
Brainfood: INCREASE, Bean geneflow, Potato geneflow, Rhodes Grass diversity, Tritordeum, Ivory Coast PGRFA access, Thai rice diversity, Local food, Indian rice breeding, Genetic diversity metric, Grapevine rootstocks
- Intelligent Characterization of Lentil Genetic Resources: Evolutionary History, Genetic Diversity of Germplasm, and the Need for Well-Represented Collections. Basically a set of protocols for producing, documenting and maintaining single-seed descended (SSD) pure lines. For beans too. Courtesy of the INCREASE project.
- Gene Flow in Phaseolus Beans and Its Role as a Plausible Driver of Ecological Fitness and Expansion of Cultigens. The diversity in the wild-weedy-crop complexes should be studied and conserved.
- Natural and Cultural Processes Influencing Gene Flow Among Wild (atoq papa), Weedy (araq papa and k’ipa papa), and Crop Potatoes in the Andean Region of Southern Peru. Indigenous communities seem to be doing just that for potatoes in the Andes.
- Genetic Diversity and Population Structure of a Rhodes Grass (Chloris gayana) Collection. From 104 accessions in the ILRI genebank to a core collection of 21 in 2 genetic clusters. No word on SSD.
- Tritordeum: Creating a New Crop Species—The Successful Use of Plant Genetic Resources. That would be Hordeum chilense x durum wheat. Quite the wild-weedy complex.
- Systems of Genetic Resources Exchange in Côte D’Ivoire and its Evolution: Case Study of Food Crops Such as Yam, Cassava, Rice and Plantain. Lots of material has come into the country from CGIAR centres, except for yams.
- Estimation of the Genetic Diversity and Population Structure of Thailand’s Rice Landraces Using SNP Markers. Two geographic subgroups within indica. No word on influx of material from CGIAR.
- The sustainability of “local” food: a review for policy-makers. Local food does not necessarily mean environmentally, socially or economically sustainable food. I guess that may go for genetic resources too (see above)?
- Rice breeding in India: eight decades of journey towards enhancing the genetic gain for yield, nutritional quality, and commodity value. QED.
- Global Commitments to Conserving and Monitoring Genetic Diversity Are Now Necessary and Feasible. Phew.
- Grapevine rootstocks affect growth-related scion phenotypes. It’s not just about the genetic diversity. But still.