- Climate-resilient crops: Lessons from xerophytes. Breeding for Na+ exclusion to improve salinity tolerance in crops has compromised their drought tolerance, but both tolerances are down to more gene copies in key families when comparing species.
- Innovation and Technological Mismatch: Experimental Evidence from Improved Crop Seeds. Breeders should strive to give farmers what they want, even if it means releasing multiple locally adapted varieties rather than a single blockbuster.
- Stressors and Resilience within the Cassava Value Chain in Nigeria: Preferred Cassava Variety Traits and Response Strategies of Men and Women to Inform Breeding. Man and women want different things from cassava breeders.
- Intra-household discrete choice experiment for trait preferences: a new method. If only there was a new way to measure that…
- Genome editing to re-domesticate and accelerate use of barley crop wild relatives. No word on whether men and women would edit different genes.
- Understanding Genome Structure Facilitates the Use of Wild Lentil Germplasm for Breeding: A Case Study with Shattering Loci. I suspect neither men nor women would tolerate shattering lentils.
- Repeat turnover meets stable chromosomes: repetitive DNA sequences mark speciation and gene pool boundaries in sugar beet and wild beets. But you can’t use wild species in breeding if you can’t cross them with the crop, and in beet that’s down to the repeatome. So maybe this would make a better case for domestication through gene editing than barley or lentils?
- Development of trait-specific genetic stocks derived from wild Cicer species as novel sources of resistance to important diseases for chickpea improvement. Would be really cool to domesticate one of the really resistant tertiary genepool species.
- Developing Genetic Resources Within the Chenopodium Genus to Advance Quinoa Breeding and the de novo Domestication of C. berlandieri. Not that you need gene editing for domesticating crop wild relatives.
- Genomic traces of Japanese malting barley breeding in two modern high-quality cultivars, ‘Sukai Golden’ and ‘Sachiho Golden’. Old-fashioned breeding has been pretty successful, so who needs CWR, gene editing and discrete choice experiments? ((Last bit added purely for clicks, I’m desperate.))
- Consistent effects of independent domestication events on the plant microbiota. I hope all those gene-editing de novo domesticators are considering the novo microbiomes.
Brainfood: Nutrition edition
- Which crop biodiversity is used by the food industry throughout the world? A first evidence for legume species. Mainly soy, alas. Which is bad because…
- Diversified agriculture leads to diversified diets: panel data evidence from Bangladesh. …promoting diversified farming systems and market participation is good for women’s empowerment and better diets. Which is just as well because…
- Historical shifting in grain mineral density of landmark rice and wheat cultivars released over the past 50 years in India. …breeding hasn’t been good for nutritional content in staples.
- Surviving mutations: how an Indonesian Capsicum frutescens L. cultivar maintains capsaicin biosynthesis despite disruptive mutations. But if you can breed for extreme pungency, you can surely breed for better nutrient content.
- Exploiting Indian landraces to develop biofortified grain sorghum with high protein and minerals. Yep, simple selection can make a sorghum landrace more nutritious.
- Genome-edited foods. Or you could resort to gene editing.
- Adoption and impact of improved amaranth cultivars in Tanzania using DNA fingerprinting. Although maybe it might be easier to just eat more amaranth.
- Stakeholders’ perceptions of and preferences for utilizing fonio (Digitaria exilis) to enrich local diets for food and nutritional security in Nigeria. But documenting knowledge will be key in either case.
- Domestication through clandestine cultivation constrained genetic diversity in magic mushrooms relative to naturalized populations. And watch what you’re doing to diversity.
Brainfood: MLS, PPP, GMOs, SINAREFI, FGD, InDel
- What Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture Are Available under the Plant Treaty and Where Is This Information? It’s really difficult to know, and it shouldn’t be.
- Bridging the gap? Public–private partnerships and genetically modified crop development for smallholder farmers in Africa. They really haven’t worked. But should they have?
- Recalcitrant maize: Conserving agrobiodiversity in the era of genetically modified organisms. Trying to keep landraces and GMOs both physically and conceptually apart won’t work, and doesn’t need to.
- Flavour, culture and food security: The spicy entanglements of chile pepper conservation in 21st century Mexico. Efforts to ensure food security needs to take flavour into account if they are to work.
- Gender differential in choices of crop variety traits and climate-smart cropping systems: Insights from sorghum and millet farmers in drought-prone areas of Malawi. Efforts to improve crop adaptation and resilience to climate change need to take gender into account if they are to work.
- A target cultivar-specific identification system based on the chromatographic printed array strip method for eight prominent Japanese citrus cultivars. Specific DNA markers can be used to enforce plant breeders’ rights.
Brainfood: Lima bean network, Obake rice, Feral Canadian apples, African plum seed systems, Canary Island potatoes, Wild potatoes & late blight, Wild lentils & drought, Wild grapes & salt, Robusta core, Ethiopian barley diversity, De novo wheat domestication
- International Lima Bean Network: from the origin of the species to modern plant breeding. And you can join it here.
- Solving the mystery of Obake rice in Africa: population structure analyses of Oryza longistaminata reveal three genetic groups and evidence of both recent and ancient introgression with O. sativa. The wild African O. longistaminata is closer to Asian O. sativa than to other African wild species, and shows evidence of ancient introgression from O. sativa in southern Africa. Definitely worth a network.
- The origins and evolutionary history of feral apples in southern Canada. They are mainly recombinants involving early heritage cultivars, with no hybridization with local wild species. So, not like rice in Africa.
- Can seed exchange networks explain the morphological and genetic diversity in perennial crop species? The case of the tropical fruit tree Dacryodes edulis in rural and urban Cameroon. Cities are hotspots of African plum diversity because people bring in tress from all over the place. So, a bit like apples in Canada.
- Ancient Potato Varieties of the Canary Islands: Their History, Diversity and Origin of the Potato in Europe. “The Andes end in the Canary Islands.” A bit like how the Caucasus ends in Canada?
- Functional diversification of a wild potato immune receptor at its center of origin. Wild species can be used to improve the late blight tolerance of cultivated potatoes.
- Limited-transpiration trait in response to high vapor pressure deficit from wild to cultivated species: study of the Lens genus. Wild species can be used to improve the drought tolerance of cultivated lentils.
- A Tunisian wild grape leads to metabolic fingerprints of salt tolerance. Wild species can be used to improve the salt tolerance of cultivated grapes.
- Characterization of the genetic composition and establishment of a core collection for the INERA Robusta coffee (Coffea canephora) field genebank from the Democratic Republic of Congo. From 730 shrubs to 263 unique genotypes to 10 plants with 93% of the alleles. Some wild stuff involved. Do the same for African plum?
- Genetic diversity within landraces of barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) and its implications on germplasm collection and utilization. Maybe we should do core collections for each landrace?
- Phenotyping and identification of target traits for de novo domestication of wheat wild relatives. Maybe we should try it with that wild African rice too.
Brainfood: Maize, Chickpea, CWR, Canola, Coconut, Avocado, Eggplant, Carrot, Watermelon, Citrus, Potato, Pearl millet, Roses
- A New Methodological Approach to Detect Microcenters and Regions of Maize Genetic Diversity in Different Areas of Lowland South America. Multiple disciplines identify 4 microcenters of maize diversity in the lowlands of South America.
- Historical Routes for Diversification of Domesticated Chickpea Inferred from Landrace Genomics. Genomics identifies both Indian and Middle Eastern traces in Ethiopian chickpeas.
- Crop wild relatives in Lebanon: mapping the distribution of Poaceae and Fabaceae priority taxa for conservation planning. Spatial analysis identifies a couple of key ex situ and in situ conservation areas for CWR in Lebanon.
- Analysis of gaps in rapeseed (Brassica napus L.) collections in European genebanks. Spatial analysis identifies a few key ex situ and in situ conservation areas for rapeseed wild relatives in Europe.
- Genomic and population characterization of a diversity panel of dwarf and tall coconut accessions from the International Coconut Genebank for Latin America and Caribbean. Characterization of various sorts identifies different Atlantic and Pacific coconut genepools in the Western Hemisphere.
- Pleistocene-dated genomic divergence of avocado trees supports cryptic diversity in the Colombian germplasm. Genomics identifies a uniquely Colombian avocado genepool.
- Analysis of >3400 worldwide eggplant accessions reveals two independent domestication events and multiple migration-diversification routes. Genomics identifies separate Southeast Asia and Indian areas of domestication, and limited exchange between them.
- Population genomics identifies genetic signatures of carrot domestication and improvement and uncovers the origin of high-carotenoid orange carrots. Genomics identifies wester-central Asia as the area of carrot domestication in the Early Middle Ages, and western Europe as the place where the orange variant was selected in the Renaissance.
- A Citrullus genus super-pangenome reveals extensive variations in wild and cultivated watermelons and sheds light on watermelon evolution and domestication. Pangenomics identifies a gene in wild Kordofan melons as promoting the accumulation of sugar in watermelon.
- Pangenome analysis provides insight into the evolution of the orange subfamily and a key gene for citric acid accumulation in citrus fruits. Pangenomics identifies south central China as the primary centre of origin of the genus Citrus.
- Pangenome analyses reveal impact of transposable elements and ploidy on the evolution of potato species. Pangenomics identifies wild species from North and Central America as having lots of genes for abiotic stress response, but also fewer transposable elements.
- Pangenomic analysis identifies structural variation associated with heat tolerance in pearl millet. Pangenomics identifies the key genes and structural variations associated with pearl millet accessions from the most hot and dry places.
- Dark side of the honeymoon: reconstructing the Asian x European rose breeding history through the lens of genomics. Genomics and other data identifies a shift from a European to a mainly Asian genetic background in cultivated roses during the 19th century, leading to a narrowing of genetic diversity.