- Assessment of genetic relationships between cultivated arracacha (Arracacia xanthorrhiza Bancr.) and its wild close relatives in the area of domestication using microsatellite markers. Lots more variation in the wild, natch.
- Exploring Relationships between Biodiversity and Dietary Diversity in the Mediterranean Region: Preliminary Insights from a Literature Review. There has been an increase in dietary diversity, but of the wrong sort of diversity.
- Special issue Of Small Ruminant Research on “Genetic diversity of small ruminants in Asia”. From the Punjab Urial sheep to the goats of Myanmar.
- Genetic diversity of flax accessions originating in the Alpine region: a case study for an ex situ germplasm evaluation based on molecular marker. Past genebank conservation hasn’t been perfect.
- Enhancing genetic gain in the era of molecular breeding. It all starts with genetic variance. Hello, genebanks!
- Crops In Silico: Generating Virtual Crops Using an Integrative and Multi-scale Modeling Platform. Factor in gene editing and goodbye genebanks.
- Unconscious selection drove seed enlargement in vegetable crops. And not only vegetables, cereals too. But remember African rice?
- Palm economic and traditional uses, evolutionary history and the IUCN Red List. Globally, the more threatened palms are the less used.
- Impact of Climate Change, Weather Extremes, and Price Risk on Global Food Supply. The effect is not just on production, but also price.
- Identifying the landscape drivers of agricultural insecticide use leveraging evidence from 100,000 fields. In Kern County, California, crop diversity decreases insecticide us. But…
Brainfood: CWR prioritization, CWR data, Yam core redux, Traditional landscape value, African rice domestication, Digital conservation, First farmers, Revived breed, Mitigation targets, Zoonoses, Population, JEB on legumes
- Broadening the Base, Narrowing the Task: Prioritizing Crop Wild Relative Taxa for Conservation Action. Use socioeconomic value of crop, and potential usefulness and threat status of relative.
- Germinate 3: Development of a Common Platform to Support the Distribution of Experimental Data on Crop Wild Relatives. Useful in determining the second of the above.
- Re-defining the yam (Dioscorea spp.) core collection using morphological traits. Cleaning up the core.
- “Things are different now”: Farmer perceptions of cultural ecosystem services of traditional rice landscapes in Vietnam and the Philippines. 73 indicators for the contribution of landscapes to culture, aesthetics, and local knowledge.
- A single-nucleotide polymorphism causes smaller grain size and loss of seed shattering during African rice domestication. You want no shattering? You also get smaller seeds. Like it or edit it.
- Digital conservation: An introduction. Brave new world… Special issue of Ambio.
- The Genomic History Of Southeastern Europe. Souther Greek Neolithic farmers not same as other European Neolithic farmers.
- Genomics of a revived breed: Case study of the Belgian campine cattle. Racial impurities are confined to a few farms.
- Reducing emissions from agriculture to meet the 2 °C target. We’re doomed.
- Conservation of biodiversity as a strategy for improving human health and well-being. By keeping animals and their nasty diseases away from people, we’re not talking communing with Nature here.
- The interaction of human population, food production, and biodiversity protection. Minimise the interaction.
- Nature’s pulse power: legumes, food security and climate change. Special issue of Journal of Experimental Botany on legumes. Eat up your beans!
Brainfood: Iron beans, Citrus evolution, Ethiopian co-ops, Farmer evaluation app, Exotic breeding, Cost of doing business, Plummy, Italian pears, Chinese cowpea, Breadfruit phylogeny, Seed collecting
- Iron beans in Rwanda: crop development and delivery experience. 800,000 households, discontinuation rate 11%. But the health outcomes? Too early, I guess.
- Phylogenetic origin of limes and lemons revealed by cytoplasmic and nuclear markers. It’s so VERY complicated.
- Seed producer cooperatives in the Ethiopian seed sector and their role in seed supply improvement: A review. Sitting between the formal and informal seed systems, they “play a key role in meeting seed demand and contribute greatly to seed supply improvement through high-volume production of seed, crop, and variety diversification, and seed delivery to farmers.”
- Gamification of farmer-participatory priority setting in plant breeding: Design and validation of “AgroDuos”. Based on pairwise ranking. I remember doing it by hand, but it’s nice to have the app. And there’s more.
- Emerging Avenues for Utilization of Exotic Germplasm. It comes down to the collections being better characterized and understood.
- Genetic resource policies in international collaborative research for food and agriculture: A study of USAID-funded innovation labs. Transaction costs are rising. Well, yeah.
- Plums: A Brief Introduction. Will keep you regular.
- Characterization and phylogenetic analysis of ancient Italian landraces of pear. Some synonyms found, some unknown things identified. All very worthy.
- Genetic diversity and a population structure analysis of accessions in the Chinese cowpea [Vigna unguiculata (L.) Walp.] germplasm collection. The Chinese stuff is different to the African stuff.
- Out of Borneo: biogeography, phylogeny and divergence date estimates of Artocarpus (Moraceae). Yeah but how many can you eat?
- Effective seed harvesting strategies for the ex situ genetic diversity conservation of rare tropical tree populations. “…fewer seeds from each of a larger number of trees, … from peripheral subdivided regions of the population.”
Victory declared in Strawberry Wars
A federal jury has ruled in favor of the University of California in its lawsuit with two former UC Davis strawberry breeders and the private breeding company they created with UC-owned plants. A separate jury is expected to decide issues related to damages at a later time.
About time. It’s been quite a ride.
Nibbles: Participatory research, Plant breeding 101, Seed systems webinar, Hot pepper, Heritage Breed Week, Girardinia fibre, Chocolate high, Avocado history, Pollinator heist
- Participate!
- In plant breeding, that is.
- And seed systems too, natch.
- And you too could come up with the world’s hottest pepper.
- Or help save a heritage breed.
- Or sustainably harvest Himalayan nettle.
- But careful not to get high on this chocolate hack.
- Though binging on avocado is perfectly acceptable.
- And for goodness’ sake, watch out for those Russians.