- Conserving and Sharing Taro Genetic Resources for the Benefit of Global Taro Cultivation: A Core Contribution of the Centre for Pacific Crops and Trees. The first line of defence against Taro Leaf Blight, among other things.
- Female access to fertile land and other inputs in Zambia: why women get lower yields. Because they’re stuck with the poorer soils. I’m assuming there was some control for maize variety, but the damn thing is behind a paywall. LATER: Yeah, they controlled for hybrid vs open pollinated variety.
- Towards a dialogue of sustainable agriculture and end-times theology in the United States: insights from the historical ecology of nineteenth century millennial communes. In other news, it has become necessary to reconcile the apocalypse with sustainability.
- Population genomic analyses of the chocolate tree, Theobroma cacao L., provide insights into its domestication process. Domestication was both good and bad.
- The use and domestication of Theobroma cacao during the mid-Holocene in the upper Amazon. Archaeology says domestication in western Amazon in line with above (somewhere in Ecuador?), but earlier than thought.
- DNA methylation footprints during soybean domestication and improvement. Differentially methylated regions are particularly genetically diverse.
- Major domestication-related phenotypes in indica rice are due to loss of miRNA-mediated laccase silencing. Not so much the genes, as their regulation.
- Phylogenetic patterns and phenotypic profiles of the species of plants and mammals farmed for food. Plants and animals are different.
- Botanic Gardens Complement Agricultural Gene Bank in Collecting and Conserving Plant Genetic Diversity. 6000 taxa in 68 crop genera are in botanic gardens. Check out the rest of the special edition of Biopreservation and Biobanking on agricultural genebanks.
- Plants: Crop diversity pre‐breeding technologies as agrarian care co‐opted? Pre-breeding ignores farmers’ knowledge.
- The Open Source Seed Licence: A novel approach to safeguarding access to plant germplasm. Seeds will find a way.
- When too much isn’t enough: Does current food production meet global nutritional needs? No: grow more food and vegetables.
- Breeding and genomics status in faba bean (Vicia faba). Plenty of diversity to be still used. Pass the chianti.
- QTL Mapping of Resistance to Bean Weevil in Common Bean. Based on a cross between the susceptible Zambian landrace Solwezi and the resistant breeding line AO-1012-29-3-3A. But which Solwezi? I hope there’s a DOI in the actual paper for those who get through the paywall.
- Spatial Multivariate Cluster Analysis for Defining Target Population of Environments in West Africa for Yam Breeding. 7 mega-environments identified, but what I want to know is if any are under-represented in terms of material in the genebank.
- Economic shifts in agricultural production and trade due to climate change. Under mitigation scenarios trade networks for agricultural commodities get more distributed, and possibly therefore more stable. So that’s another reason to mitigate C emissions, you know, apart from saving the planet.
Brainfood: Makapuno, Middle Eastern dogs, Date palm origins, Speedy NUS, Red apples, Apple characterization, Phenotyping double, Assisted migration & pathology, Soya diversity, Sustainable intensification, Seed research, Cucurbita history, Potato value chains, Livestock ES
- Towards the Understanding of Important Coconut Endosperm Phenotypes: Is there an Epigenetic Control? Maybe.
- Dogs accompanied humans during the Neolithic expansion into Europe. All part of the Fertile Crescent package.
- Genomic Insights into Date Palm Origins. Domesticated in the Gulf region, but in a more complicated way than used to be thought.
- Speed breeding orphan crops. Worth the extra cost.
- Malus sieversii: the origin, flavonoid synthesis mechanism, and breeding of red-skinned and red-fleshed apples. Not just good for pest and disease resistance.
- Can you make morphometrics work when you know the right answer? Pick and mix approaches for apple identification. Good job they differ in colour too.
- Systematic establishment of colour descriptor states through image-based phenotyping. Doesn’t work for brown, though.
- High-throughput method for ear phenotyping and kernel weight estimation in maize using ear digital imaging. And the colour doesn’t matter.
- Amplifying plant disease risk through assisted migration. Making AM great.
- Characterization of a diverse USDA collection of wild soybean (Glycine soja Siebold & Zucc.) accessions and subsequent mapping for seed composition and agronomic traits in a RIL population. One of the parents of the RIL population was a wild accession.
- Plant Responses to an Integrated Cropping System Designed to Maintain Yield Whilst Enhancing Soil Properties and Biodiversity. So far, so good.
- Seed longevity phenotyping: recommendations on research methodology. Ok, now there’s no excuse.
Oh, well, except for the paywall. - Evolutionary and domestication history of Cucurbita (pumpkin and squash) species inferred from 44 nuclear loci. All 6 crop taxa in one clade, and some novel relationships with wild species.
- Value Chain Development and the Agrarian Question: Actor Perspectives on Native Potato Production in the Highlands of Peru. Difficult to penetrate the socio-economic jargon, especially without access to the full text, but I think it’s saying that to understand why some value chains for native potatoes work and others don’t, you have to understand that different players want different things. Which seems kinda obvious so I probably don’t have that right.
- Perception of livestock ecosystem services in grazing areas. Not all bad.
Brainfood: Climate resilient crops, Food system limits, Phenotyping double, Sweet sorghum, Melon history, Paying4data, Beercalypse, Village chickens, Breeding 4.0, European maize, Brachiaria ROI
- Are agricultural researchers working on the right crops to enable food and nutrition security under future climates? No. Well, kinda.
- Options for keeping the food system within environmental limits. You need to pursue several. Including those discussed above, presumably.
- Deep Learning for Plant Stress Phenotyping: Trends and Future Perspectives. 3D CNN architectures applied to hyperspectral imaging is the future, apparently.
- Dealing with multi‐source and multi‐scale information in plant phenomics: the ontology‐driven Phenotyping Hybrid Information System. You’re going to need a fancy system to keep track to the data from the above.
- Sweet Sorghum Originated through Selection of Dry, a Plant-specific NAC Transcription Factor Gene. Could be applied to other cereals?
- Repeated domestication of melon (Cucumis melo) in Africa and Asia and a new close relative from India. Once was not enough.
- Paying for Digital Information: Assessing Farmers Willingness to Pay for a Digital Agriculture and Nutrition Service in Ghana. Cheaper is better. There’s a shocker. Oh, and women are more careful with their money.
- Decreases in global beer supply due to extreme drought and heat. 32% decrease in consumption in Argentina, 193% increase in price in Ireland. But clearly the authors have never heard of sorghum beer.
- The role of local adaptation in sustainable production of village chickens. Location, location, location.
- On the Road to Breeding 4.0: Unraveling the Good, the Bad, and the Boring of Crop Quantitative Genomics. Beyond breeding on predicted phenotypes, it’s sort of breeding for predicted environments.
- Maize yields over Europe may increase in spite of climate change, with an appropriate use of the genetic variability of flowering time. You don’t even need Breeding 1.0, if you deploy existing diversity optimally.
- Got forages? Understanding potential returns on investment in Brachiaria spp. for dairy producers in Eastern Africa. Definitely worth a flutter.
Brainfood: Emmer & drought, European legumes, Sainfoin, Alpine nomads, American domestication, Cereal domestication, Tree plantations, Garlic breeding, African veggies, African staple breeding, Sugarcane genome
- Genetic contribution of emmer wheat (Triticum dicoccon Schrank) to heat tolerance of bread wheat. It’s considerable.
- Warm Season Grain Legume Landraces from the South of Europe for Germplasm Conservation and Genetic Improvement. Ok ex situ, in situ not so much.
- Onobrychis viciifolia; a comprehensive literature review of its history, etymology, taxonomy, genetics, agronomy and botany. The fall and rise of an orphan forage.
- Interstitial but Resilient: Nomadic Shepherds in Piedmont (Northwest Italy) Amidst Spatial and Social Marginalization. Truly a vale of tears.
- Parallel vs. Convergent Evolution in Domestication and Diversification of Crops in the Americas. Still can’t tell which is more prevalent.
- Whole-Genome Analysis of Candidate genes Associated with Seed Size and Weight in Sorghum bicolor Reveals Signatures of Artificial Selection and Insights into Parallel Domestication in Cereal Crops. 63 seed size genes selected during domestication in sorghum, a significant number of which in maize and rice also.
- A systematic review of the socio-economic impacts of large-scale tree plantations, worldwide. Not a good idea.
- Recent Advances in Sexual Propagation and Breeding of Garlic. Restoration of flowering ability has done wonders for diversity. With diversity poster goodness.
- Core collection of two important indigenous vegetables; Gboma eggplant (Solanum macrocarpon L.) and Jute mallow (Corchorus olitorius L.) in Africa: An important step for exploitation of existing germplasm and development of improved cultivars. Interesting, of course, but I wouldn’t call these core collections. But I won’t complain again if it gets the stuff used more.
- Measuring the impact of plant breeding on sub-Saharan African staple crops. High ROI for the usual suspects. How about the traditional veggies et al., though. Anyway, do readers want more on this paper? Let me know in the comments if you want a full post on the main findings.
- Allele-defined genome of the autopolyploid sugarcane Saccharum spontaneum L. A lot of the good stuff is in wild-cultivated rearranged chromosomes.
Brainfood: Conserving rice, Cypriot olives, Bambara groundnut bioactives, Chinese spuds, Ancient pastoralism, Epigenetics, Diverse rice systems, Detecting evolution, CWR & pollution, VAM, Bacterial taxonomy
- Securing Diversity for Food Security: The Case of Conservation and Use of Rice Genetic Resources. Great achievements, but “… 95% of the rice genepool remains untapped and unexploited in rice improvement.”
- Characterization and Identification of Indigenous Olive Germplasm from Cyprus Using Morphological and Simple Sequence Repeat Markers. 125 trees, 32 accessions, 16 genotypes, 3 groups.
- Quantification of Selected Anti-nutrients and Bioactive Compounds in African Bambara Groundnut (Vigna subterranea (L.) Verdc.). Nothing to worry about, but if you insist on worrying, try the cream-coloured ones.
- DNA Fingerprinting and Genetic Diversity Analysis with Simple Sequence Repeat Markers of 217 Potato Cultivars (Solanum tuberosum L.) in China. Cultivars released since 1950 have a narrow genetic base.
- Pastoralism may have delayed the end of the green Sahara. What have pastoralists ever done for us?
- Epigenetic Diversity and Application to Breeding. Some epigenetic differences can be inherited independently of genetic differences. But how to use it?
- Complex rice systems to improve rice yield and yield stability in the face of variable weather conditions. The more azolla, fish and ducks the better.
- Can plants evolve to meet a changing climate? Yes, and we can detect it: the potential of field experimental evolution studies.
- Wheat’s wild relatives vary in their response to nitrogen and ozone. In situ populations may be at risk.
- Little evidence that farmers should consider abundance or diversity of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi when managing crops. One less thing to worry about? Ok, one fewer thing to worry about.
- Exclusivity offers a sound yet practical species criterion for bacteria despite abundant gene flow. Taxa do exist if you take the whole genome into account.