- 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.
Brainfood: Cover crops, Forest management, Mixtures, Diverse landscapes, Ethiopia and CC, Mapping settlements, Fonio, Peach, Aging seeds, African diversity, Svalbard, Vegetables
- The hidden land use cost of upscaling cover crops. You’d need to devote 4% of the arable maize area of the US to cover crop seed production to have enough cover crop seed for the maize cultivated area. That’s a lot. The answer: better cover crop genetics and agronomy.
- The first rapid forest inventory and resource use assessment of Dashtijum Nature Reserve, Tajikistan: a mixed methods approach. Fancy maths says you need to restrict grazing in these fancy walnut-fruit forests to prevent further degradation.
- Towards intercrop ideotypes: non-random trait assembly can promote overyielding and stability of species proportion in simulated legume-based mixtures. In silico modelling shows that not all mixtures outyield pure stands, but it’s hard to predict which will.
- Fixing our global agricultural system to prevent the next COVID-19. Beyond the land sparing vs sharing dichotomy, to multifunctional landscapes, supported by policies and markets.
- The role of climate in the trend and variability of Ethiopia’s cereal crop yields. Higher temperatures during 1979–2014 correlated with lower yields in much of the high potential area. So, trouble ahead.
- Precise mapping, spatial structure and classification of all the human settlements on Earth. Because they’re there, that’s why.
- Genetic Resources and Varietal Environment of Grown Fonio Millets in West Africa: Challenges and Perspectives. Lots of work to be done by enterprising breeders.
- Genetic Resources, Breeding Programs in China, and Gene Mining of Peach: A Review. Lots of work has been done by enterprising breeders.
- Patterns of mitochondrial DNA fragmentation in bread wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) seeds under ex situ genebank storage and artificial aging. Possible biomarker for seed viability, but differences between natural and artificial aging.
- Ancient genomes reveal complex patterns of population movement, interaction, and replacement in sub-Saharan Africa. Present day hunter-gatherers represent a contraction of a previously widespread human population, which interacted in complex ways with subsequent waves of pastoralists and farmers.
- The past shall not begin: Frozen seeds, extended presents and the politics of reversibility. So Svalbard apparently represents the politics of reversibility made concrete. Literally.
- The Role of Vegetable Genetic Resources in Nutrition Security and Vegetable Breeding. How about reversing the slide of traditional vegetables, eh? Those enterprising breeders needed again.
Brainfood: Food groups, Bumblebees, Wild lettuce, Bambara, Miscanthus, Wild macadamia, Sperm cryo, Fungi, Feed adoption, Bere evaluation, Lactose persistence
- Culinary Cultural Conservation and Cultural Keystone Food Groups: Concepts in Ethnobotany. Immigrants stick with viandas.
- Safeguarding the genetic integrity of native pollinators requires stronger regulations on commercial lines. About half of bumblebee specimens in SW Spain were F1 hybrids or BC1.
- Lactuca dregeana DC. (Asteraceae: Chicorieae) – A South African crop relative under threat from hybridization and climate change. That’s a hell of a disjunction.
- Exploration of Bambara Groundnut (Vigna subterranea (L.) Verdc, an Underutilized Crop, To Aid Global Food Security: Varietal Improvement, Genetic Diversity and Processing. It all starts with lots of data on 420 genebanks accessions at IITA.
- MGDB: A database for evaluating Miscanthus spp. to screen elite germplasm. Kind of amazing this crop is so far ahead of Bambara groundnut.
- Genetic Structure of Wild Germplasm of Macadamia: Species Assignment, Diversity and Phylogeographic Relationships. Genetics supports taxonomy.
- 3-D printed customizable vitrification devices for preservation of genetic resources of aquatic species. Good for species with miniscule testes.
- Threats to global food security from emerging fungal and oomycete crop pathogens. Need better fungicides, but less of them.
- Improving adoption of technologies and interventions for increasing supply of quality livestock feed in low- and middle-income countries. Look at socio-economic factors along the whole value chain, and come up with packages and solve multiple problems.
- Assessing the variation in manganese use efficiency traits in Scottish barley landrace Bere (Hordeum vulgare L.). Some heritage barleys had double the chlorophyll fluorescence readings in low Mn hydroponic than elite cultivar Scholar.
- Why and when was lactase persistence selected for? Insights from Central Asian herders and ancient DNA. Apparently not in Central Asia, because of fermentation; but then, why in Europe? Maybe they didn’t like the taste there?
Brainfood: Stress, Peasants’ rights, Maize domestication, Plant diversity, Teff evaluation, Red clover diversity, WTP, AnGR cryo, Sheep history, Population & biodiversity, Planet proofing, Cassava map
- Rapid detection of stressed agricultural environments in Africa under climatic change 2000–2050 using agricultural resource indices and a hotspot mapping approach. Even some coldspots will turn hot.
- The UN Declaration on Peasants’ Rights (UNDROP): Is Article 19 on seed rights adequately balancing intellectual property rights and the right to food? What do you think?
- The genetic architecture of the maize progenitor, teosinte, and how it was altered during maize domestication. Domestication worked on lots and lots of really small-effect QTLs.
- Areas of plant diversity — What do we know? Quite a lot, actually.
- Current and projected eco-geographic adaptation and phenotypic diversity of Ethiopian teff (Eragrostis teff) across its cultivation range. Genebank collection thoroughly evaluated. Genebank unavailable for comment.
- Population structure and genetic diversity in red clover (Trifolium pratense L.) germplasm. Genotyping shows 4 geographic groups, with some linked phenotypic differences.
- ‘Warehouse’ or research centre? Analyzing public preferences for conservation, pre-breeding and characterization activities at the Czech genebank. Research centre, but only up to a point.
- Pollen Cryopreservation for Plant Breeding and Genetic Resources Conservation. Gotta wonder what the public preference for conserving pollen might be.
- The recent state of cryopreservation techniques for ex-situ gene conservation and breeding purposes in small ruminants: A review. Oocytes and embryos need more work than pollen.
- Archaeogenetic analysis of Neolithic sheep from Anatolia suggests a complex demographic history since domestication. Domestication bottleneck, followed by diversity increase due to admixture. Too late to cryo, alas.
- A systematic review of biodiversity and demographic change: A misinterpreted relationship? High human population numbers are usually bad for biodiversity, but not everywhere and not always.
- A re-boot of tropical agriculture benefits food production, rural economies, health, social justice and the environment. Plant cool species on degraded farmland. Especially where human population density is high?
- CassavaMap, a fine-resolution disaggregation of cassava production and harvested area in Africa in 2014. Always good to have the next crop production map.
Brainfood: CC & breeding, Maize data, Images, Seed activism, Fishy rice, BRI, Cherry genome, Llama diversity, Swiss chestnuts, Integrated livestock, Aichi targets, Forests, Rejolladas, Bitter gourd genome
- Designing crops for adaptation to the drought and high‐temperature risks anticipated in future climates. High-temperature tolerance of seed-setting and transpiration efficiency are going to be needed.
- 2019 release of SNP allele frequency data for maize accessions in the CIMMYT Germplasm Bank maize collection. Maybe this will help?
- ImageBreed: Open‐access plant breeding web–database for image‐based phenotyping. I’m sure this will help.
- In or out? Organisational dynamics within European ‘peasant seed’ movements facing opening-up institutions and policies. In, I hope.
- Rice field fisheries: Wild aquatic species diversity, food provision services and contribution to inland fisheries. Careful with intensification.
- A draft genome of sweet cherry (Prunus avium L.) reveals genome‐wide and local effects of domestication. Interesting parallels with peach.
- Genetic Diversity and Population Structure of Llamas (Lama glama) from the Camelid Germplasm Bank—Quimsachata. The populations of 2 breeds in the bank are diverse but not very different.
- Reservoir of the European chestnut diversity in Switzerland. There’s a uniquely Swiss genetic group.
- Commercial integrated crop-livestock systems achieve comparable crop yields to specialized production systems: A meta-analysis. Aim for soils of intermediate texture for the win-win though.
- Best-practice biodiversity safeguards for Belt and Road Initiative’s financiers. Needs work.
- Assessment of national-level progress towards elements of the Aichi Biodiversity Targets. Not great. See above.
- Meeting the food security challenge for nine billion people in 2050: What impact on forests? Impact need not be as great as it could be. See above.
- Influential landscapes: Temporal trends in the agricultural use of rejolladas at Tahcabo, Yucatán, Mexico. Solution sinkholes have been used for horticulture for hundreds of years.
- Long-read bitter gourd (Momordica charantia) genome and the genomic architecture of nonclassic domestication. Almost as much phenotypic differences between two regional genotypic groups among cultivated forms than between the wild and cultivated. More here.