- Natural and human-mediated selection in a landrace of Thai rice (Oryza sativa). There is selection, but that’s counteracted by exchange and diverse agronomic practices. The result is diversity, but structured.
- Trademarks, Geographical Indications and Environmental Labelling to Promote Biodiversity: The Case of Agroforestry Coffee in India. Adding value locally is the only way to stop a really lucrative cash crop destroying the forest.
- Characterization of dairy cattle germplasm used in Mexico with national genetic evaluations in importing and exporting countries. Bringing in diversity from another country is not always the best approach.
- Phenotypic characterization of the Miami World Collection of sugarcane (Saccharum spp.) and related grasses for selecting a representative core. 300 accessions will do. That’s a bit more than 10% of the total.
- Genetic variation of salinity tolerance in Chinese natural bermudagrass (Cynodon dactylon (L.) Pers.) germplasm resources. There is some. Good for all those golf courses.
- The sustainable development of grassland-livestock systems on the Tibetan Plateau: problems, strategies and prospects. There are 19 things to do, and genetic resources are important across the board.
- Status and prospects of oil palm in the Brazilian Amazon. On already deforested land, for biofuel. What could possibly go wrong?
- Bee Species Diversity Enhances Productivity and Stability in a Perennial Crop. That would be the highbush blueberry (Vaccinium corymbosum). Can we take this for granted now?
Brainfood: Landrace trifecta, Cauliflower breeding, Carp hybrids, C4 evolution, Organic food, Symbionts squared, Ozark agrobiodiversity, Using genebanks, Food security vulnerability
- Geopolitical Maize: Peasant Seeds, Everyday Practices, and Food Security in Mexico. Growing landraces in Mexico as a feminist act.
- Resource-Use Patterns in Swidden Farming Communities: Implications for the Resilience of Cassava Diversity. In this bit of Brazil, all farmers have some cassava varieties, other varieties are more private, which means that diversity is reasonably well maintained if farms are lost at random. Ah, but what about if women farmers are lost?
- Indigenous Knowledge on Landraces and Fonio-Based Food in Benin. 35 landraces, some of them even agronomically good. No word on whether those are the common or the private ones.
- A Review on Genetic Improvement of Cauliflower. There’s a tension between hybrids and breeding for organic conditions even in cauliflower.
- Growth Performance of Indian Major Carps and Their Hybrids in Polyculture in Bangladesh. Looks like hybrids are bad in carp, though.
- Deep Evolutionary Comparison of Gene Expression Identifies Parallel Recruitment of Trans-Factors in Two Independent Origins of C4 Photosynthesis. Plants which diverged 140 million years ago have in the meantime evolved the same trans-factors (“protein that binds to specific DNA sequences, thereby controlling the flow [or transcription] of genetic information from DNA to messenger RNA”) to come up with C4 photosynthesis. You know, this C4 rice thing just might be doable.
- Organic Diets Significantly Lower Children’s Dietary Exposure to Organophosphorus Pesticides. When “conventional” food was replaced by organically grown stuff, children had lower levels of nasties in the urine. No word on what it took to convince the kids to eat their veggies.
- Building the crops of tomorrow: advantages of symbiont-based approaches to improving abiotic stress tolerance. Why breed, when you can inoculate.
- A single evolutionary innovation drives the deep evolution of symbiotic N2-fixation in angiosperms. It all started long ago with a cryptic mutation, which was lost and gained multiple times, but some clades are unlikely to lose it when they have gained it.
- Seeds of Persistence: Agrobiodiversity in the American Mountain South. “…southern/central Appalachia is the most diverse foodshed at the varietal level in the United States, Canada, and northern Mexico studied to date.”
- Separating the wheat from the chaff – a strategy to utilize plant genetic resources from ex situ genebanks. Using fancy math to mine legacy phenotypic data can yield a couple extra alleles.
- Sustainability and Food & Nutrition Security: A Vulnerability Assessment Framework for the Mediterranean Region. Take each vulnerability (say to climate change, or price volatility) and break it down into exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity.
Brainfood: Old flax, Rice in Spain, Rice in Iran, Mozambican cowpea, Agrobiodiversity reserve, Old olives, Georgian livestock, Crowdsourcing fungi
- Harvesting wild flax in the Galilee, Israel and extracting fibers — bearing on Near Eastern plant domestication. The wild stuff was harvested before the Neolithic Revolution.
- Building resilience to water scarcity in southern Spain: a case study of rice farming in Doñana protected wetlands. Better to restore part of the rice fields to natural wetlands.
- Evaluation of rice dominance and its impact on crop diversity in north of Iran. Rice can’t catch a break in Iran either.
- Evaluation of four Mozambican cowpea landraces for drought tolerance. One of them is promising.
- Agro-Biodiversity Spatial Assessment and Genetic Reserve Delineation for the Pollino National Park (Italy). Somewhat gratuitous use of GIS, as far as I can see, but pretty maps.
- A comparative analysis of genetic variation in rootstocks and scions of old olive trees — a window into the history of olive cultivation practices and past genetic variation. Much more variation among rootstocks than scions.
- The diversity of local Georgian agricultural animals. I’d like to see a Megrelian horse one day, they sound cool.
- Crowdsourcing to create national repositories of microbial genetic resources: fungi as a model. Why just fungi, though?
Brainfood: Open sesame, Turkish buffalo, Crops & diets, Tuberous-rooted chervil, Pine breeding, Pigeonpea diversity, Sorghum adoption, Slumdog trees, Regenerating wild sunflower
- Sesame Crop: An Underexploited Oilseed Holds Tremendous Potential for Enhanced Food Value. Nice overview of diversity conservation and use. Lots of scope for improvement.
- Microsatellite based genetic diversity among the three water buffalo (Bubalus bubalis) populations in Turkey. No great evidence of differentiation among populations into breeds, unlike in India, say.
- Crop diversification, dietary diversity and agricultural income: empirical evidence from eight developing countries. More crops grown, more dietary diversity.
- Temporal evolution of the genetic diversity of Chaerophyllum bulbosum: Consequences on the genetic resources management. French article on the lack of hydrographic structuring, or erosion, in the genetic diversity of largely forgotten apiaceous root vegetable in Germany.
- Merging applied gene conservation activities with advanced generation breeding initiatives: a case study of Pinus radiata D. Don. Because introduction of new diversity from native areas is difficult, foresters in non-native areas should better understand and use the diversity in existing provenance/progeny trials.
- Comparative Analysis of Genetic Diversity among Cultivated Pigeonpea (Cajanus cajan (L) Millsp.) and Its Wild Relatives (C. albicans and C. lineatus) Using Randomly Amplified Polymorphic DNA (RAPD) and Inter Simple Sequence Repeat (ISSR Fingerprinting. 16 Indian accessions classified in 3 clusters, with the stress resistant material mostly together. More diversity in the wilds.
- The role of varietal attributes on adoption of improved seed varieties: the case of sorghum in Kenya. Not just about yield.
- Vegetation in Bangalore’s Slums: Boosting Livelihoods, Well-Being and Social Capital. What’s needed is trees with short stature, narrow trunks, medium canopy, high value. How many species like that can you think of?
- Comparison of fatty acid composition of oil from original and regenerated populations of wild Helianthus species. It’s not the same.
Brainfood: Homegardens, AnGR genomic conservation, Forest services, Desert wheat, Wild artichoke, Enset ethnobotany, Turkish sheep, Eggplant evaluation, Bolivian maize, Cattle & fire
- Biodiversity conservation in home gardens: traditional knowledge, use patterns and implications for management. Most cliches about homegardens are valid in Benin, apart from the one which suggests old people know more about them.
- Genomics applied to management strategies in conservation programmes. How gene jockeys can help you maintain enough diversity within breeds, but no more.
- Living close to forests enhances people׳s perception of ecosystem services in a forest–agricultural landscape of West Java, Indonesia. And agroforests perceived as being best providers of services, even better than actual forest.
- Saharan wheats: before they disappear. Surprisingly, they have not been much studied.
- The wild gene pool of globe artichoke. Four wild species lack studies of crossability with the cultigen, but look interesting and could actually be in GB2.
- Indigenous knowledge, use and on-farm management of enset (Ensete ventricosum (Welw.) Cheesman) diversity in Wolaita, Southern Ethiopia. Maybe 100 varieties, 10 dishes, lots of knowledge.
- Genetic diversity in nine native Turkish sheep breeds based on microsatellite analysis. Most variation within breeds, but not much higher that that of European breeds.
- Genetic Diversity, Population Structure, and Resistance to Phytophthora capsici of a Worldwide Collection of Eggplant Germplasm. 99 accessions, 4 species, 5 continents, 32 countries, 1 resistant genotype.
- Conserving agrobiodiversity amid global change, migration, and nontraditional livelihood networks: the dynamic uses of cultural landscape knowledge. Things are changing, but maize diversity abides.
- Fuel, fire and cattle in African highlands: Traditional management maintains a mosaic heathland landscape. Sustainable management of vegetation (including some CWR?) in Ethiopian highlands means using fire and cattle in consort.