- Projected temperature increases may require shifts in the growing season of cool-season crops and the growing locations of warm-season crops. In California’s Mediterranean climate, cool season crops will have to shift in time, and warm-season crops in place.
- A “Mega Population” of the Wild Potato Species Solanum fendleri. Large population, safe, accessible and very diverse. Who needs genebanks, right?
- Survival of Solanum jamesii Tubers at Freezing Temperatures. Very unusual trait in both the crop and the wild relatives, apparently.
- Diversity and uses of enset [Ensete ventricosum (Welw.) Cheesman] varieties in Angacha district, Southern Ethiopia: call for taxonomic identifications and conservation. 55 varieties in 75 homegardens, 88 in the field genebank, many in only one or the other.
- Impact of Climate Change on the Diversity and Distribution of Enset (Ensete ventricosum (Welw) Cheesman) in Ethiopia: A Review. Some are moving, some are dying. I guess we really need in vitro and cryo after all.
- Filling the gaps in gene banks: Collecting, characterizing and phenotyping wild banana relatives of Papua New Guinea. Much diversity of banana ancestor still not in genebanks, but people are on the job.
- Modeling the Impact of Crop Diseases on Global Food Security. Genetic diversity is not enough.
- What natural variation can teach us about resistance durability. That genetic diversity is not enough, apparently.
- Wheat blast: a new threat to food security. We have the genes to fight it, but they won’t be enough.
- Limited haplotype diversity underlies polygenic trait architecture across 70 years of wheat breeding. I hope at least those genes can be found in this MAGIC population based on European bread wheat varieties from the past few decades.
- Potential Short-Term Memory Induction as a Promising Method for Increasing Drought Tolerance in Sweetpotato Crop Wild Relatives [Ipomoea series Batatas (Choisy) D. F. Austin]. Wild sweet potatoes have the genes to remember drought stress, and hence cope with it better. Will they be enough though?
- Ecological pest control fortifies agricultural growth in Asia–Pacific economies. Biological control has been worth USD 15-20 billion a year for non-rice crops over the past 100 years across 23 countries. But how much is the interaction with genetic diversity worth?
- Evaluation of the contribution of teosinte to the improvement of agronomic, grain quality and yield traits in maize (Zea mays). Wild relative not just a source of stress resistance, could be useful for yield potential too.
- “It may also have prevented churchgoers from falling asleep”: southernwood, Artemisia abrotanum L. (fam. Asteraceae), in the church bouquet, and its contemporary presence as a heritage plant in Sweden. The fragrance lingers.
- Multiple cropping systems of the world and the potential for increasing cropping intensity. Multiple cropping on 12% of total agricultural area, which could increase, but probably not as much as was thought.
- Impact and returns on investment of mungbean research and development in Myanmar. Four varieties coming out of international research created economic gains of USD 1.4 billion from 1980-2016. That’s a ROI of about 90, but it took 20 years to kick in.
- Are Traditional Food Crops Really ‘Future Smart Foods?’ A Sustainability Perspective. Well, they could be, but maybe we don’t have 20 years.
- New Guinea highland wild dogs are the original New Guinea singing dogs. …which are therefore not extinct in the wild as used to be thought. Or so the DNA says.
- WEGE: A new metric for ranking locations for biodiversity conservation. That’s “Weighted Endemism including Global Endangerment,” and it hasn’t been tried on plants. Yet.
- Toward Unifying Global Hotspots of Wild and Domesticated Biodiversity. They overlap a lot but not completely. Expect WEGE to be applied at some stage.
Brainfood: Bending the curve edition
- Bending the curve of terrestrial biodiversity needs an integrated strategy. Meaning: (i) sustainable agricultural intensification, (ii) trade, (iii) less food waste, (iv) more plant-based human diets, and (v) more and better protected areas.
- The carbon opportunity cost of animal-sourced food production on land. See (iv) above.
- Just ten percent of the global terrestrial protected area network is structurally connected via intact land. See (v) above.
- Cropland expansion in the United States produces marginal yields at high costs to wildlife. See (i) above.
- A cultivated planet in 2010 – Part 1: The global synergy cropland map. Gotta know where the cropland is before you can do (i) above.
- Advances in plant phenomics: From data and algorithms to biological insights. Fancy maths can really help with (i) above.
- Retrospective Quantitative Genetic Analysis and Genomic Prediction of Global Wheat Yields. Different fancy maths shows that CIMMYT’s Obregon wheat testing site can really help with (i) above.
- Diversity analysis of 80,000 wheat accessions reveals consequences and opportunities of selection footprints. Here’s some stuff that wheat breeders can use to develop new materials to test at Obregon using phenomics, genomics and fancy maths.
- First report on cryopreservation of mature shoot tips of two avocado (Persea americana Mill.) rootstocks. This should help with (iv) above. Eventually, work with me here.
- Bread and porridge at Early Neolithic Göbekli Tepe: A new method to recognize products of cereal processing using quantitative functional analyses on grinding stones. Ahem. Well… No, sorry, I got nothing.
Brainfood: Special citizen science edition
Something for the weekend. I hope you enjoy this special edition of Brainfood focusing on citizen science, Indigenous knowledge and participatory research. Do you like themed Brainfood editions like this? There will be another one on Monday, as it happens. They’re more tricky to produce, but if there’s significant interest I may make the extra effort. Let me know, and suggest topics.
- The value of climate-resilient seeds for smallholder adaptation in sub-Saharan Africa. Up to USD 2 billion in Malawi and Tanzania over the next 30 years.
- Agricultural productivity and deforestation: Evidence from input subsidies and ethnic favoritism in Malawi. Cheaper fertilizers increased yields and decreased deforestation. Better seeds would help too, no doubt (see above).
- Channels used to deliver agricultural information and knowledge to smallholder farmers. Farmer groups and demonstration plots work well to spread the news about fertilizers and seeds.
- Integrating Conventional and Participatory Crop Improvement for Smallholder Agriculture Using the Seeds for Needs Approach: A Review. Combine high-tech centralized and participatory decentralized germplasm evaluation and breeding approaches to get those better seeds to farmer groups and their demonstration plots.
- Citizen science breathes new life into participatory agricultural research. A review. Why do the participatory, decentralized bit? Here’s why. Fortunately, there’s an app for it…
- A global resource for exploring and exploiting genetic variation in sorghum crop wild relatives. If those seeds include sorghum, you could start with this lot.
- Gendered differences in crop diversity choices: A case study from Papua New Guinea. And don’t forget gender as you do all this participatory, decentralized stuff. For example, in PNG, the women are into marketing, the men into tradition.
- Crowd breeding of Danish apple cultivars. No word on gender differences, alas.
- Modelling illustrates that genomic selection provides new opportunities for intercrop breeding. Here’s the high-tech, centralized bit, or at least a model of it, ripe for mashing up with citizen science.
- Dissection of the domestication‐shaped genetic architecture of lettuce primary metabolism. More high-tech, centralized stuff, the real thing this time. Which can now be used to breed a better lettuce, hopefully by lots of citizens growing the stuff in their gardens and providing salad tasting results through a nifty app.
- Indigenous and Local Knowledge Practices and Innovations for Enhancing Food Security Under Climate Change: Examples from Mijikenda Communities in Coastal Kenya. Maybe farmers should run participatory programmes, with scientists as the citizens.
- Micronutrient composition and microbial community analysis across diverse landraces of the Ethiopian orphan crop enset. Don’t know how you’d do citizen science on this, but I bet somebody does.
- Discovering the indigenous microbial communities associated with the natural fermentation of sap from the cider gum Eucalyptus gunnii. Someone mention traditional fermentation practices?
- The Milpa Game: a Field Experiment Investigating the Social and Ecological Dynamics of Q’eqchi’ Maya Swidden Agriculture. Citizen science is not a game. No, wait…
- The Ancient Tree Inventory: a summary of the results of a 15 year citizen science project recording ancient, veteran and notable trees across the UK. Not a game indeed: very serious, but fun, definitely fun.
Brainfood: Millet yields, Millet review, Taro genome, Salty sunflower, WorldVeg network, Phylorelatives, Bovine domestication, Diet quality, Nutrition metrics, Aztec diets, Complementary conservation, Post-2020, Climate change breeding
- Using remote sensing to assess the effect of trees on millet yield in complex parklands of Central Senegal. Tree cover in the landscape of up to 35% increases pearl millet yields.
- Genetic and genomic resources for improving proso millet (Panicum miliaceum L.): a potential crop for food and nutritional security. All that’s missing is the investment. And, possibly, the trees.
- A high-quality genome of taro (Colocasia esculenta (L.) Schott), one of the world’s oldest crops. Has benefitted from two whole-genome duplications. Now that this investment has been made, I expect to see the crop take off. And here’s a blast from the past on this subject.
- Key traits and genes associate with salinity tolerance independent from vigor in cultivated sunflower. There is a way to increase yield under salinity stress without affecting yield under more benign conditions. Millets and taro should take note.
- Sustainable Cucurbit Breeding and Production in Asia Using Public–Private Partnerships by the World Vegetable Center. WorldVeg presents improved lines and F1 hybrids of bitter gourd (Momordica charantia), tropical pumpkin (Cucurbita moschata), ridge gourd (Luffa acutangula) and sponge gourd (Luffa cylindrica) to private sector breeders at Crop Field Days. Everybody wins. But are there any private sector breeders of millets and taro to take note?
- Crop Wild Phylorelatives (CWPs): phylogenetic distance, cytogenetic compatibility and breeding system data enable estimation of crop wild relative gene pool classification. Predicting crossability of a crop with its wild relatives from whatever data is on hand.
- Evolution and domestication of the Bovini species. They’ve been very promiscuous, and the results can be summarized in one illustration.
- Defining diet quality: a synthesis of dietary quality metrics and their validity for the double burden of malnutrition. Seven dietary metrics out there, none of them perfect.
- Assessing nutritional, health, and environmental sustainability dimensions of agri-food production. Here’s how to make nutrition and health metrics better. Maybe these guys should get together with the above?
- Aztec diets at the residential site of San Cristobal Ecatepec through stable carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis of bone collagen. The men drank more pulque than the women. I wonder if 500 years from now they’ll be judging us like this.
- The unique role of seed banking and cryobiotechnologies in plant conservation. Good summary of the different ex situ approaches available for plants, none of them perfect. The existence of an Exceptional Plant Conservation Network and a Project Baseline for seed genebanks was news to me.
- Making the post-2020 global biodiversity framework a successful tool for building biodiverse, inclusive, resilient and safe food systems for all. The CBD needs to learn to love mixed, diverse agricultural landscapes. And genebanks, natch. Maybe it should invest in dietary metrics.
- The Role of Genetic Resources in Breeding for Climate Change: The Case of Public Breeding Programmes in Eighteen Developing Countries. Business as usual, except more intense. Oh, and perhaps more use of landraces. No word on dietary metrics.
Brainfood: Torres bananas, European Neolithic, Pleistocene dogs, Thai Neolithic, Amaranth domestication, Gluten trends, Perennial cereal, Resistant potatoes, Aridamerica, Ex situ mammals, AI, Zoonoses, Trade & diversity
- Multidisciplinary evidence for early banana (Musa cvs.) cultivation on Mabuyag Island, Torres Strait. Early as in 2000 years ago, which isn’t all that early compared to PNG. But opens possibility of mainland Aborigines being agriculturalists too, at least in the wet tropical NE.
- Climate shaped how Neolithic farmers and European hunter-gatherers interacted after a major slowdown from 6,100 BCE to 4,500 BCE. There was the most interaction between the two groups where Middle Eastern crops came to the limit of their climatic adaptation.
- The first evidence for Late Pleistocene dogs in Italy. Those hunter gatherers had dogs.
- Three thousand years of farming strategies in central Thailand. Millet first, then rice, but initially still rainfed. No word on whether anyone had dogs.
- Parallel Seed Color Adaptation during Multiple Domestication Attempts of an Ancient New World Grain. 3 grain amaranth domesticated species from one wild ancestor, with selection for white seeds in common.
- Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) Breeding from 1891 to 2010 Contributed to Increasing Yield and Glutenin Contents but Decreasing Protein and Gliadin Contents. No evidence of increasing immunostimulatory potential in German wheat varieties.
- ‘MN‐Clearwater’, the first food‐grade intermediate wheatgrass (Kernza perennial grain) cultivar. Perennial is good, sure, but is it low in gluten?
- Screening of wild potatoes identifies new sources of late blight resistance. All plants in about 10% of 384 wild potato accessions were resistant.
- An Aridamerican model for agriculture in a hotter, water scarce world. 17 genera have highest potential to be used in polyculture to improve agricultural resilience, human health, and community prosperity in the face of climate change.
- Ex situ management as insurance against extinction of mammalian megafauna in an uncertain world. Fancy maths can tell you were genebanks could do the most good.
- Machine learning: A powerful tool for gene function prediction in plants. Very fancy maths can help you predict phenotype from genotype, and much more besides.
- Zoonotic host diversity increases in human-dominated ecosystems. Oh we are in so much trouble.
- Global changes in crop diversity: Trade rather than production enriches supply. Well, actually, a bit of both.