Brainfood – Page 69 – Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

January 15, 2018January 15, 2018

Brainfood: Desho grass, Wheat breeding, Restoration seed policies, Drought rice, Dietary quality, Passport data, Bombyx breeding, Tea domestication, Carp diversity, Abyssinian pea, Chickpea subsetting, Oat breeding, Phenointegration, Food trade

The potential of desho grass (Pennisetum pedicellatum Trin.) for animal feed and land management practices in Ethiopia: A review. “Physiologically, desho grass has a peculiar characteristic of drought tolerance, ability to produce large biomass per unit of land.”
Wheat genetic resources in the post-genomics era: promise and challenges. Need to go for more wide crosses, which requires more cytological expertise.
Native seed trade of herbaceous species for restoration: a European policy perspective with global implications. Current policies are inadequate.
Screening African Rice (Oryza glaberrima) for Tolerance to Abiotic Stresses: II. Lowland Drought. 4 out of over 2000 accessions are promising.
Dietary species richness as a measure of food biodiversity and nutritional quality of diets. Number of species consumed is a good indicator of the quality of the diet, across seasons and countries.
Could taxonomic misnaming threaten the ex situ conservation and the usage of plant genetic resources? Only 3% of Citrullus accessions in major genebank databases correctly named.
Genetic breeding of silkworms: from traditional hybridization to molecular design. Brave new world.
Domestication origin and breeding history of the tea plant (Camellia sinensis) in China and India based on nuclear microsatellites and cpDNA sequence data. 3 domestication areas, in China and India.
Preservation of the genetic diversity of a local common carp in the agricultural heritage rice–fish system. Farmers like to select different colour types.
Abyssinian pea (Lathyrus schaeferi Kosterin pro Pisum abyssinicum A. Br.) – a problematic taxon. May have been the result of a spontaneous interspecific cross under cultivation.
Managing and Discovering Agronomically Beneficial Traits in Chickpea Germplasm Collections. Cores, mini-cores and reference sets facilitate use.
Evaluation of resistance to Blumeria graminis (DC.) f. sp. avenae, in Avena murphyi and A. magna genotypes. In oats, the lower-ploidy species have better resistance.
Editorial: Plant Phenotyping and Phenomics for Plant Breeding. The name of the game is integration.
Trade and the equitability of global food nutrient distribution. Trade is important to nutrition.

December 18, 2017December 15, 2017

Brainfood: Maize diversity, Genetic ecology, SeedStor, Conservation impact, Women & seed, Wild pea, Wild walnuts, Livestock 4 wildlife

Contributions of Zea mays subspecies mexicana haplotypes to modern maize. That’s the highland teosinte, not the lowland from which maize was domesticated, and 10% of the maize genome shows some evidence of introgression from it.
The ecological importance of intraspecific variation. …is comparable to that of interspecific variation.
SeedStor: A Germplasm Information Management System and Public Database. Interested in the John Inness Centre’s genebank? Here, go crazy.
From displacement activities to evidence-informed decisions in conservation. It’s all about impact.
Breeding next generation tree fruits: technical and legal challenges. Not going to be easy.
Women’s empowerment through seed improvement and seed governance: Evidence from participatory barley breeding in pre-war Syria. What is done locally may be undone globally.
Genomic diversity and macroecology of the crop wild relatives of domesticated pea. P. fulvum is a good species, P. sativum subsp. elatius has 5 mainly geographic clusters; genetic diversity likely to be impacted by climate change.
Demographically idiosyncratic responses to climate change and rapid Pleistocene diversification of the walnut genus Juglans (Juglandaceae) revealed by whole-genome sequences. Every walnut species is different.
The consequences of replacing wildlife with livestock in Africa. More fires, woody species and methane.

December 11, 2017December 11, 2017

Brainfood: Wheat exudates, Conservation threats, Resilience, Dietary recommendations, Urban green spaces, Dog spread, Wild foods, Ethnic fish, Brazilian cattle, Nocturnal fixation, Agroforestry impacts

Evolution of the crop rhizosphere: impact of domestication on root exudates in tetraploid wheat (Triticum turgidum L.). Domestication and breeding have led to (probably adaptive) changes in root exudates.
Threats from urban expansion, agricultural transformation and forest loss on global conservation priority areas. Vertebrate Biodiversity Hotspots are most threatened by all three factors. Plants too?
Patterns and drivers of biodiversity–stability relationships under climate extremes. Species richness may not be enough to buffer ecosystems from extreme precipitations events. But a different metric would give a different result?
Evaluating the environmental impacts of dietary recommendations. Adopting nationally recommended diets would help the environment.
On the Use of Hedonic Price Indices to Understand Ecosystem Service Provision from Urban Green Space in Five Latin American Megacities. There’s an overall strong positive correlation between urban greenery and house prices, but it’s context-specific.
Disease: A Hitherto Unexplored Constraint on the Spread of Dogs (Canis lupus familiaris) in Pre-Columbian South America. Yes, why are there no dogs in the Amazon?
Children and Wild Foods in the Context of Deforestation in Rural Malawi. Fewer wild foods in more deforested sites, and fewer sold by children from better-off households. What of the nutrition outcomes, though?
Biodiversity defrosted: unveiling non-compliant fish trade in ethnic food stores. About 40% of samples in Liverpool and Manchester mislabelled.
Population viability analysis of the Crioula Lageano cattle. It’s going to be fine.
The Kalanchoë genome provides insights into convergent evolution and building blocks of crassulacean acid metabolism. Next stop, CAM rice.
Contribution of trees to the conservation of biodiversity and ecosystem services in agricultural landscapes. It depends. But what would those kids in Malawi say?

December 5, 2017

Brainfood: Setaria diversity, Planteome, Cowpea diversity, Fertile Crescent CWR, Beer flavour, Marula diversity, Wild dates

Genetic Structure of Foxtail Millet Landraces. China is the centre of diversity, and diversity structured geographically there.
The Planteome database: an integrated resource for reference ontologies, plant genomics and phenomics. A sort of ontology of ontologies.
Genetic diversity and structure of Iberian Peninsula cowpeas compared to world-wide cowpea accessions using high density SNP markers. Iberian material all falls into 1 (S Europe-N Africa) of 4 worldwide groups.
Setting conservation priorities for crop wild relatives in the Fertile Crescent. 220 priority species.
Effects of Barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) Variety and Growing Environment on Beer Flavor. It’s not just the hops.
Molecular Characterization of Sclerocarya birrea ICRAF Field Genebank Collections. Even the duplicates identified could be good for something.
The Domestication Syndrome in Phoenix dactylifera Seeds: Toward the Identification of Wild Date Palm Populations. Fancy maths shows there may be actual wild date palms in Oman.

November 27, 2017November 23, 2017

Brainfood: Coffee apocalypse, Barley journey, Haplotype cores, Pollinator conservation, Rooting for tubers, Aussie CWR, European veggies, Capsicum evolution, Wheat genome

Climate change adaptation of coffee production in space and time. There’s a plan, at least for Nicaragua.
Journey to the east: Diverse routes and variable flowering times for wheat and barley en route to prehistoric China. Growing in diverse environments pre-adapted barley for its shift to spring sowing and move eastwards to China.
Capturing haplotypes in germplasm core collections using bioinformatics. Fortunately, “the number of accessions necessary to capture a given percentage of the haplotypic diversity present in the entire collection can be estimated.”
Pollinator Diversity: Distribution, Ecological Function, and Conservation. 350,000 species!
Roots, Tubers and Bananas: Planning and research for climate resilience. Much the same, but faster.
Priorities for enhancing the ex situ conservation and use of Australian crop wild relatives. Go north, young woman.
Consequences of climate change for conserving leafy vegetable CWR in Europe. Go, err, northwest.
Phylogenetic relationships, diversification and expansion of chili peppers (Capsicum, Solanaceae). Monophyletic clade which originated along the Andes of W to NW South America and spread clockwise around the Amazon.
The Aegilops tauschii genome reveals multiple impacts of transposons. The D genome bites the dust.

1. Sir Nathaniel Bacon’s painting records the arrival of American crops in early modern England. And the cookmaid gets equal billing.
2. North America’s bison survived near-extinction, but how much of its genetic diversity is left? Past and present DNA is helping reconstruct what was lost, with implications for how what remains is conserved and managed.
3. China’s wild rice collection in Hainan now holds more than 15,000 samples. A genetic treasure trove, but its value ultimately depends on what breeders can make of it. Much like what’s left of bison diversity.
4. Mycorrhizal fungi form vast underground networks that support plant life and store carbon. A new global map begins to show their extent, and just how much of this biodiversity remains overlooked.
5. Africa’s herbaria hold centuries of botanical history, much of it still effectively invisible. Specimens can reveal shifting plant distributions and overlooked species. First, though, someone has to do the painstaking work of getting the data online.
6. Africa has done painstaking work on seed laws, but getting good seed to farmers remains hard in practice. The gap between policy and delivery is stark, and commercial companies need to work alongside farmer-managed seed systems, not pretend they don’t exist.
Published on October 14, 2026