Breeding

May 26, 2015May 26, 2015

Brewing up some new coffee

Over the years, we’ve mentioned attempts by breeders to call an evolutionary do-over and re-synthesize interspecific hybrid crops like bread wheat, banana, brassicas and peanuts. I don’t think we mentioned an early attempt to do something similar with potato which ended up not quite working to plan. Anyway, point is, they’re going to try it with coffee now, according to Dr Timothy Schilling, executive director of World Coffee Research (WCR):

What we aim to do is to get a bunch of highly diverse C eugenioides and C canephora ¹ and cross them, to recreate C arabica but better — more diverse.

I for one would like to taste it.

May 25, 2015May 20, 2015

Brainfood: Agrobiodiversity & nutrition, Solanaceae, Pepper resistance, Fenugreek erosion, Wild grapes double, CC & mountains

Improving diets with wild and cultivated biodiversity from across the landscape. Only 12 papers on the link between agrobiodiversity or crop diversity and nutrition included nutritionally relevant information, so perhaps not surprising that we still don’t really know how agrobiodiversity or wild biodiversity contribute to overall diet quality.
Biodiversity of Food Species of the Solanaceae Family: A Preliminary Taxonomic Inventory of Subfamily Solanoideae. 15 genera used as food, 4 have economic crops, but then one of them is Solanum.
Diversity of genetic backgrounds modulating the durability of a major resistance gene. Analysis of a core collection of pepper landraces resistant to Potato virus Y. Breakdown of resistance conferred by given allele depends a lot on the background it finds itself in.
Brief but alarming reminder about the need for reintroducing ‘Greek hay’ (Trigonella foenum-graecum L.) in Mediterranean agricultures. Why don’t people like this thing? Is it the smell?
Crop Wild Relatives as Genetic Resources – the Case of the European Wild Grape. Introgression from American wild species in S. German wild grapes. Still probably valuable for various disease resistances, though.
Mining new resources for grape resistance against Botryosphaeriaceae: a focus on Vitis vinifera ssp. sylvestris. See what I mean?
Global mountain topography and the fate of montane species under climate change. Some plants may have more land available to them as they migrate upwards.

May 24, 2015May 23, 2015

Nibbles: CIAT genebank, Kew impacts, Zambian poachers, Sustainable cows, CO2 fertilization, Trees on the radio, Prosecco shortage, Chamomile

CIAT 2014 annual report highlights role of genebank in its impact pathways.
Kew post for International Day for Biological Diversity does something similar.
Zambian poachers beat swords into ploughshares, plant peanuts.
Turns out meat is not murder.
Higher carbon dioxide can’t make up for other stuff.
Great BBC Radio 4 series on The Meaning of Trees.
Saving the Jesuit pear tree. Maybe they should put this on the radio.
I’m not sure it would be so bad if prosecco ran out.
Because the genomes of all of the components of beer have now been sequenced, so we’re safe.
Have a a nice cup of chamomile instead.

May 22, 2015May 22, 2015

Nibbles: Regreening, Dog & chicken domestication, Genebanks, Banana hybrids, Orange maize, IFPRI

There’s now absolutely no excuse for not regreening.
Age of dogs doubled. And european omelettes older too.
Quis custodiet ipsos genebanks?
Heard of Nerica? Now there’s NARITA. Different crop, thankfully.
Orange is the new maize.
IFPRI annual report highlights nutrition.

May 21, 2015May 20, 2015

For all the soybeans in China

There’s a chart in last week’s issue of The Economist that really got my attention. Here it is:

Screen Shot 2015-05-20 at 12.25.04 PM

What in tarnation has been happening to soybean production in China? It looks really bad, especially compared to what’s happening to the other crops. And it’s important. Soybeans are now a big proportion of overall food imports.

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So is it that Chinese farmers are just growing less of the crop? Well, FAOStat says no, it’s that yields have been stagnating of late:

soybeans

But this is a problem that, for example, the US and Brazil seem not to be having. It’s not as if Chinese breeders and gene-jockeys aren’t trying. And they have plenty of genetic diversity available. So what’s going on? Maybe one of our readers can explain.