Noted food historian Rachel Laudan was at the recent Borlaug Summit on Wheat for Food Security in Obregón, Mexico, organized by CIMMYT to celebrate 100 years of Norman Borlaug, and what an inspired decision it was to invite her. She spoke at the conference about the foundational role of wheat in the development of civilization, and I hope her slides and perhaps even a video of her presentation, along with those of the other distinguished speakers, will be made available. In the meantime, her blog post on the experience provides a refreshingly different perspective than is usually provided by participants at this sort of conference. ((If you’re on Facebook, you can follow a discussion that’s developing there on the post.)) Too bad she didn’t get to see the CIMMYT genebank…
Brainfood: Sunflower genomics, Omani chickens, Ozark cowpea, Amerindian urban gardens, Thai homegardens, Global North homegardens, African pollination, Ugandan coffee pollination, Use of wild species, Wheat and climate change, Iranian wheat evaluation, Tunisian artichokes, Fig core, Onion diversity, Distillery yeasts
- Genomic variation in Helianthus: learning from the past and looking to the future. Paleopolyploid events, transposable elements, chromosomal rearrangements. Is there anything these plants don’t have? But then these guys would say that, wouldn’t they.
- Assessment of genetic diversity and conservation priority of Omani local chickens using microsatellite markers. Unsurprisingly, the Dhofar (far S) and Musadam (far N) populations are the most different. I collected crops in both places way back when, and I bet you it would be the same for things like alfalfa and sorghum. Or cowpea, which brings me to…
- Just Eat Peas and Dance: Field Peas (Vigna unguiculata) and Food Security in the Ozark Highlands, U.S. Still important after all these years. (I suspect Gary Nabhan would have predicted this, but I can’t even get an abstract of his paper Food Security, Biodiversity and Human Health: Ethnobiology as a Predictive Science.)
- Amerindian Agriculture in an Urbanising Amazonia (Rio Negro, Brazil). Traditional systems survive move to cities just fine.
- Human-Induced Movement of Wild Food Plant Biodiversity Across Farming Systems is Essential to Ensure Their Availability. Just like in Brazil, people move wild species to their homegardens in Thailand too.
- Urban home food gardens in the Global North: research traditions and future directions. Uhm, could maybe Brazilian and Thai homegarden studies guide similar work in the North… Yep, and here’s how.
- Priorities for Research and Development in the Management of Pollination Services for Agricultural Development in Africa. Old and traditional may not mean weak and out of date, but change gonna come anyway.
- Social and Ecological Drivers of the Economic Value of Pollination Services Delivered to Coffee in Central Uganda. No wait, change here already.
- Use it or lose it: measuring trends in wild species subject to substantial use. Wild species which are being used by people tend to be doing better than those that are not. Yeah, but settle down, the data are not that great.
- An assessment of wheat yield sensitivity and breeding gains in hot environments. The successes have been coming from the lower potential material, not the elite of the elite.
- Adaptation Patterns and Yield Stability of Durum Wheat Landraces to Highland Cold Rainfed Areas of Iran. It’s not always about heat. Anyway, in either case, thank goodness for diverse worldwide germaplasm collections.
- Karyological and genome size insights into cardoon (Cynara cardunculus L., Asteraceae) in Tunisia. The wild populations from Sicily and Tunisia are closest to the crop.
- Ex situ conservation of underutilised fruit tree species: establishment of a core collection for Ficus carica L. using microsatellite markers (SSRs). Fancy maths allows Spanish researchers to recover all microsats within a collection of 300 figs in only about 10% of the accessions. So who gives a fig for the rest, right?
- Assessing the genetic diversity of Spanish Allium cepa landraces for onion breeding using microsatellite markers. Alas, all the Spanish Allium cepa landraces fall in the same cluster, so a core could be tricky. These guys really know their onions.
- Biodiversity of non-Saccharomyces yeasts in distilleries of the La Mancha region (Spain). Gonna need some booze to wash down the figs and onions, right?
Brainfood: Carpathian landuse, Yield & biodiversity, Cajanus @ICRISAT, Wheat meddling, Grape acne, Safflower diversity, Mangosteen origins, Agroforestry and SDGs, Brazilian Gir
- Forest and agricultural land change in the Carpathian region—A meta-analysis of long-term patterns and drivers of change. Collapse of socialism bad for agriculture, good for forests. At the level of cover anyway, who knows what’s happened to diversity.
- Closing yield gaps: perils and possibilities for biodiversity conservation. Better yields potentially good for birds, but everyone needs to work together.
- The Wild Genepool of Pigeonpea at ICRISAT Genebank-Status and Distribution. There are still some gaps.
- Meddling Wheat Germplasm to Augment Grain Protein Content and Grain Yield. I just love that title.
- Interkingdom transfer of the acne causing agent, Propionibacterium acnes, from human to grapevine. First time ever, apparently, that a human pathogen attacks a crop. But do I have to start worrying about wine?
- Discrimination and genetic diversity of cultivated and wild safflowers (Carthamus spp.) using EST-microsatellites markers. C. palestinus is the closest.
- New evidence on the origin of mangosteen (Garcinia mangostana L.) based on morphology and ITS sequence. Not an interspecific hybrid after all.
- Knowledge gaps and research needs concerning agroforestry’s contribution to Sustainable Development Goals in Africa. Can agroforestry concepts and practices form an effective, efficient and fair pathway towards the achievement of many Sustainable Development Goals? Yes, but only if governance of food production is multi-sectoral and system-based.
- History, structure, and genetic diversity of Brazilian Gir cattle. Diversity is not as restricted as might be feared, so it can probably take a breeding programme with high selection intensity.
Brainfood: Intercropping, Biodiversity loss, Fisheries evolution, Pigeonpea diversity, Upland framing, Alpine agroforestry, Italian core tomatoes, Madagascar adaptation
- Is there an associational resistance of winter pea–durum wheat intercrops towards Acyrthosiphon pisum Harris? Yep. Which is important for organic systems, apparently, because they are martyrs to this aphid.
- Interactions between climate change and land use change on biodiversity: attribution problems, risks, and opportunities. Interactions make things complicated, but fortunately there are some pretty simple things you can do that address multiple drivers of biodiversity loss. Including for crop wild relatives?
- What can selection experiments teach us about fisheries-induced evolution? Harvesting can lead to rapid genetic change and lower fisheries yields.
- Genetic Diversity and Demographic History of Cajanus spp. Illustrated from Genome-Wide SNPs. Asia species different to Australian. Madhya Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh centres of origin and domestication. More diversity within populations and landraces than between states.
- Mixed Grazing Systems Benefit both Upland Biodiversity and Livestock Production. Livestock grazing management on upland farms influences economic outputs, biodiversity and greenhouse gas emissions, all at once. Mixed upland grazing systems consisting of sheep and cattle is your win-win-win. Heirloom breeds no help, alas. Because they don’t count as biodiversity, I guess.
- What plant traits tell us: Consequences of land-use change of a traditional agro-forest system on biodiversity and ecosystem service provision. Both abandonment and intensification of traditionally managed larch agroforestry in the Alps are bad.
- Genetic diversity in Italian tomato landraces: Implications for the development of a core collection. You may need up to 25% of a southern Italian collection of open-pollinated tomato landraces to get a decent core. But since the collection is only 75 landraces anyway…
- Extreme vulnerability of smallholder farmers to agricultural risks and climate change in Madagascar. Main coping strategy seems to be eating less food. And moving from rice to cassava, beans and wild yams. Scary.
Brainfood: Sturgeon semen, Wheat biofortification, Wild barley future, Pest numbers, Wild potatoes, Mishan pig drift, Microbial models, Paspalum genomics, Chinese peanuts
- Improvement in wild endangered Persian sturgeon, Acipenser persicus (Borodin, 1897) semen cryopreservation by 2-hydroxypropyl-beta-cyclodextrin (HβCD). Hey, stop sniggering, it’s good to know there’s an ex situ option.
- Biofortification of wheat grain with iron and zinc: integrating novel genomic resources and knowledge from model crops. Your jetpack is here, sir.
- Genetic Diversity and Ecological Niche Modelling of Wild Barley: Refugia, Large-Scale Post-LGM Range Expansion and Limited Mid-Future Climate Threats? As ever, the answer is yes.
- Economic and physical determinants of the global distributions of crop pests and pathogens. More crops, more pests, but not as many as there would be if more money were available for observation.
- Wild potato species (Solanum section Petota Solanaceae) in the Tunari National Park, Andean Region of Cochabamba, Bolivia. Four species, but not very morphologically variable.
- Impact of Genetic Drift on Access and Benefit Sharing Under the Nagoya Protocol: The Case of the Meishan Pig. Current Meishan pigs in the US have become differentiated from the ones originally imported from China in the 1980s.
- Investment into the future of microbial resources: culture collection funding models and BRC business plans for biological resource centres. Services must include capacity building and the promotion of links to research collections and users. That can’t be done on basis of full cost recovery from sales. Will need a combination of government, commercial and project support. Can crop collections learn anything from this?
- Gene Discovery and Molecular Marker Development, Based on High-Throughput Transcript Sequencing of Paspalum dilatatum Poir. Important forage grown in apomictic monoculture now has genomic resources that should allow better breeding. And perhaps some diversification.
- Genetic Diversity and Population Structure of the Major Peanut (Arachis hypogaea L.) Cultivars Grown in China by SSR Markers. The northern cultivars are different to the southern.