- Identification and Control of Latent Bacteria in in vitro Cultures of Sweetpotato [Ipomoea batatas (L.) Lam]. 10% of about 2400 in vitro plantlets had a total of about 20 types of bacteria, some of which might be beneficial for all we know, but all of which could be removed.
- Genome-wide genotyping elucidates the geographical diversification and dispersal of the polyploid and clonally propagated yam (Dioscorea alata L.). Asian and Pacific genepools, thence to India, then Africa, then the Caribbean.
- Multi-parent populations in crops: a toolbox integrating genomics and genetic mapping with breeding. Like MAGIC.
- Genetic and genomic resources, and breeding for accelerating improvement of small millets: current status and future interventions. Here’s all the promising material, now go crazy with the MAGIC.
- Plural valuation of nature for equity and sustainability: Insights from the Global South. The road to decolonizing conservation.
- Long-Term Storage and Longevity of Orthodox Seeds: A Systematic Review. Treat your seeds right.
- Changes in food access by mestizo communities associated with deforestation and agrobiodiversity loss in Ucayali, Peruvian Amazon. Less diversified diets, loss of forest cover and reduced agricultural biodiversity go together, somehow.
- Evaluation of Wild Potato Germplasm for Tuber Starch Content and Nitrogen Utilization Efficiency. Wild species are better on both counts.
- Conservation protocols for Ensete glaucum, a crop wild relative of banana, using plant tissue culture and cryopreservation techniques on seeds and zygotic embryos. 2 accessions thus conserved at NBPGR.
- Computational models to improve surveillance for cassava brown streak disease and minimize yield loss. Fancy maths shows that planting clean material helps a lot.
- Genome wide association analysis of a stemborer egg induced “call-for-help” defence trait in maize. “…egg-induced parasitoid attraction trait was more common in landraces than in improved inbred lines and hybrids.”
- Low Additive Genetic Variation in a Trait Under Selection in Domesticated Rice. That would be root growth under drought and Al stress conditions. Every accession has a different set of low frequency causal alleles.
Brainfood: SDGs, Ancient sustainability, Phenomics, Wheat phenotyping, Public breeding, Almond breeding, Ethiopian sorghum, Methane mitigation, Reindeer games, Raised fields, #ArtGenetics
- Living Links Connecting the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals: Small-Scale Farmers and Agricultural Biodiversity. Want to address a whole bunch of SDGs at once? Here’s a tip…
- Archaeology for Sustainable Agriculture. Sustainability is not forever.
- A Congo Basin ethnographic analogue of pre-Columbian Amazonian raised fields shows the ephemeral legacy of organic matter management. Another example of the above?
- Genebank Phenomics: A Strategic Approach to Enhance Value and Utilization of Crop Germplasm. A lot of useful phenotyping can be done fast and cheap, and genebanks should do it.
- LeafMachine: Using machine learning to automate leaf trait extraction from digitized herbarium specimens. This might help with the above.
- Affordable Phenotyping of Winter Wheat under Field and Controlled Conditions for Drought Tolerance. This certainly could. Basically a supermarket cart with a drone mounted on top of it.
- Plant Breeding Capacity in U.S. Public Institutions. It’s in trouble.
- Redomesticating Almond to Meet Emerging Food Safety Needs. Turning to peach, wild and cultivated, to reduce immunoreactivity and control aflatoxin and Salmonella. Somebody say public breeding is in trouble?
- Genetic variability among Ethiopian sorghum landrace accessions for major agro-morphological traits and anthracnose resistance. From 360 accessions to 10. Let’s hope at least the public sector can get hold of them.
- Review: Genetic and genomic selection as a methane mitigation strategy in dairy cattle. Gotta measure emissions on individual animals.
- Genome sequence and comparative analysis of reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) in northern Eurasia. Two domestications, affecting at least a dozen genes. No word on methane.
- Genomes on Canvas: Artist’s Perspective on Evolution of Plant-Based Foods. Crowdsourcing historical images to trace crop evolution.
Brainfood: Sled dogs, Chicken origins, Ancient livestock, Tenure and deforestation, Buckwheat, Soybean pangenome, Yam bean nutrients, Orphan legumes, Wild seeds, SeedGerm, Coconut conservation
- Arctic-adapted dogs emerged at the Pleistocene–Holocene transition. Sled dogs arose in Siberia, where they interbred with wolves.
- 863 genomes reveal the origin and domestication of chicken. It was Gallus gallus spadiceus from southwestern China, northern Thailand and Myanmar that was domesticated, possibly by rice and millet cultivators, according to Dorian Fuller, who disagrees with the domestication dates but likes the rest of the paper.
- Fodder for Change: Animals, Urbanisation, and Socio-Economic Transformation in Protohistoric Italy. In first-millennium BCE Italy, pigs grew in importance, cattle increased in size, sheep breeds differentiated according to use, and the chickens was adopted and adapted.
- Formalizing land rights can reduce forest loss: Experimental evidence from Benin. Randomized control trial shows land registration is associated with less deforestation.
- Buckwheat (Fagopyrum sp.) genetic resources: What can they contribute towards nutritional security of changing world? Not much until given the full -omics treatment, apparently.
- Pan-Genome of Wild and Cultivated Soybeans. The pan-genome is the new genome. Wait, did I use that before?
- Developing the role of legumes in West Africa under climate change. Lesser know, orphan legumes could step in for cowpea in some places, if only we knew more about them. Like a pan-genome, I guess.
- Evaluation of Nutritional and Antinutritional Properties of African Yam Bean (Sphenostylis stenocarpa (Hochst ex. A. Rich.) Harms.) Seeds. But we do know more about them! Lots of variation available to combat protein malnutrition, if only farmers grew more of the stuff. Oh so now it’s their fault?
- Conserving orthodox seeds of globally threatened plants ex situ in the Millennium Seed Bank, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, UK: the status of seed collections. Some decline in germinability for about 16% of samples. Includes successful germination protocols for 165 globally threatened seed plant taxa.
- SeedGerm: a cost‐effective phenotyping platform for automated seed imaging and machine‐learning based phenotypic analysis of crop seed germination. Fancy kit and maths can match seed specialists in scoring radicle emergence. But will it work with wild seeds? MSB unavailable for comment.
- In Situ and Ex Situ Conservation of Coconut Genetic Resources. Beyond coconut-only genebanks. I’d like to see SeedGerm work on this lot. Check out the whole book.
Brainfood: Biodiversity targets, Image software, Potato efficiency, Cassava cyanide, Popcorn, Payment for agrobiodiversity, Walnut conservation, Grapevine leaves, Pigeonpea haplotypes, Chakras, Diet & diversity, Seed activism, Seed longevity
- Genetic diversity targets and indicators in the CBD post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework must be improved. Better than accession numbers? Well, yeah, but will it matter?
- FIELDimageR: An R package to analyze orthomosaic images from agricultural field trials. Extract plot-level results from your drone shots, automagically.
- Radiation Interception, Conversion and Partitioning Efficiency in Potato Landraces: How Far Are We from the Optimum? Quite far, but perhaps more interestingly you can predict tuber yield from time-series aerial imagery. Which means the above could come in useful.
- Genetic architecture and gene mapping of cyanide in cassava (Manihot esculenta Crantz.). High cyanide alleles in 2 major genes mainly found along Amazonian rivers and in coastal areas of Brazil. Drones unavailable for comment.
- Relationships among American popcorn and their links with landraces conserved in a microcenter of diversity. Did the diverse popcorns of southern Brazil derive from local diversification or independent local domestication? More work needed. Anyone going to mash this up with the cassava result above?
- Payments for agrobiodiversity conservation services: An overview of Latin American experiences, lessons learned and upscaling challenges. 5 ha of each of 100 varieties will cost you US$70,000 p.a. at a 5% discount rate. Bargain.
- Diversity Under Threat: Connecting Genetic Diversity and Threat Mapping to Set Conservation Priorities for Juglans regia L. Populations in Central Asia. Ex situ where threat level from climate change is severe, in situ where threat level due to climate change is minor, assisted natural regeneration where threat level from climate change is minor but severe from other things, like overgrazing. No word on payments for ecosystem services rendered.
- Composite modeling of leaf shape across shoots discriminates Vitis species better than individual leaves. Fancy maths used to composite leaf shapes along a shoot as a way of telling species apart.
- Superior haplotypes for haplotype‐based breeding for drought tolerance in pigeonpea (Cajanus cajan L.). From 10 genes and about 300 genotypes to 17 accessions with 4 superior haplotypes.
- Create Space for Indigenous Leadership to Preserve Agricultural Biodiversity. In the Ecuadorian Amazon, cacao production for cash is not driving down agrobiodiversity.
- Conceptual Links between Landscape Diversity and Diet Diversity: A Roadmap for Transdisciplinary Research. There are 4 different pathways whereby diverse forested landscapes can lead to diet diversity.
- ‘Keeping seeds in our hands’: the rise of seed activism. While the formal sector is still arguing about farmers’ rights, activists have moved the paradigm to seed sovereignty.
- Thirty-year monitoring and statistical analysis of 50 species’ germinability in genebank medium-term storage suggest specific characteristics in seed longevity. Huge dataset reveals some geographic variation in seed longevity within crops, among other things.
Brainfood: Agroforestry double, Cassava drones, Neolithic elites, PAs and CC, Livestock networks, Banana preferences, Prehistoric Cyprus, Terra Petra, Food system, Argentinian tomatoes, Canary sheep, Scicomm
- Land‐use history determines ecosystem services and conservation value in tropical agroforestry. Not all agroforests are created equal.
- Temperate agroforestry systems provide greater pollination service than monoculture. No word on land-use history though.
- Machine learning for high-throughput field phenotyping and image processing provides insight into the association of above and below-ground traits in cassava (Manihot esculenta Crantz). Fancy maths helps you estimate root yield from drone images of the canopy of cassava plots.
- A dynastic elite in monumental Neolithic society. Ancient DNA suggests Atlantic megaliths were built to honour incestuous god-kings. But n=1, so there’s that.
- Keeping pace with climate change in global terrestrial protected areas. The representation of climates in protected areas is going to change, with cold and warm climates suffering.
- Network analysis of regional livestock trade in West Africa. It all starts in Burkina Faso.
- Gender and Trait Preferences for Banana Cultivation and Use in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Literature Review. Farmers still prefer traditional cultivars.
- Decoding diversity in the food system: wheat and bread in North America. “Although the dominant trends are toward uniformity, there are also numerous forms of resistance.” Banana farmers available for comment.
- Against the Grain: Long-Term Patterns in Agricultural Production in Prehistoric Cyprus. There was resistance during the agricultural transition too.
- Legacy of Amazonian Dark Earth soils on forest structure and species composition. Forest that was actively managed and farmed in pre-Columbian times is more diverse.
- Evidence of genetic diversity within Solanum Lycopersicum L. ‘Platense’ landrace and identification of various subpopulations. The accessions thus labelled in an Argentinian genebank show a lot of variation.
- Genetic diversity evolution of a sheep breed reintroduced after extinction: Tracing back Christopher Columbus’ first imported sheep. Decolonization in action.
- Simple rules for concise scientific writing. Easier said than done, as all the above confirm.