Breeding

August 23, 2022August 24, 2022

So are soybeans sorted or not?

Readers may have seen press coverage of a paper in Science suggesting that a biotech tweak to photosynthesis has led to significant yield boosts in soybeans. The tweak involves getting leaves to respond more nimbly to changes in light intensity, including due to shading by other leaves. It has successfully increased biomass production in tobacco in the past: would it also increase seed yield in a food crop under field conditions?

Yes, by up to a third, said the headlines. Not so fast, said Merritt Khaipho-Burch on Twitter: we’re going to need many more and much better field trials before we’re convinced.

That got some push-back, basically saying those kinds of trials are too expensive to be a precondition of publication. But now one of the authors of the original study, Steven Burgess, has weighed in, also on Twitter, saying the criticism is valid, it’s all very complicated, and the paper is just a proof of principle at this stage.

Now to get the press to explain all that.

August 16, 2022August 16, 2022

Nibbles: Wheat diplomacy, Bean improvement, Ghana genebank, Algeria genebank, CIP genebank

Yeah what we all need right now is to politicize wheat.
Tepary bean to the rescue of common bean. Politicize that!
Ghana’s genebank getting some use.
Algeria gets a genebank. Hope it gets used.
Pretty sure the CIP genebank is getting used. Find out how on Facebook Live today.

August 9, 2022August 9, 2022

Nibbles: Forgotten crops special issue, Coffee fingerprinting, Three Sisters, Food gardening, Magic mushrooming, Genebanks in Ukraine, Colombia, Australia, China

Forthcoming special issue of Plants, People, Planet on forgotten crops. Get your paper in about how they’re under-represented in genebanks.
Or about how they need to be DNA fingerprinted, like the USDA is doing for coffee.
I wonder if there is a forgotten crops version of the Three Sisters. Answers on a postcard, please.
Forget about genebanks, grow those forgotten crops in your garden. Rebelliously.
Forget about forgotten crops, how about forgotten mushrooms?
Lest we forget the Ukrainian genebank.
No way to forget the Future Seeds genebank.
Australians are not being allowed to forget about genebanks, plant and animal. With video goodness. There’s hope yet.
Meanwhile, in China…

August 8, 2022August 16, 2022

Brainfood: Convivial conservation, Resilient forests, Traditional industries, Wheat supplies, Food system transformation, Micronutrient security, Biotech promise, Ultra-processed food impacts, Sub-Saharan agriculture, Farmer risk management, Afro-Brazilian agriculture, Biodiversity funding

Exploring Convivial Conservation in Theory and Practice: Possibilities and Challenges for a Transformative Approach to Biodiversity Conservation. Conservation should be integrative, democratic and redistributive. Hard row to hoe.
Emerging signals of declining forest resilience under climate change. Convivially or not, better conserve forests quickly.
Adapting traditional industries to national park management: A conceptual framework and insights from two Chinese cases. Integrative and redistributive, but I’m not sure how democratic.
Near- to long-term measures to stabilize global wheat supplies and food security. There’s a bunch of stuff that we can do in the short term, but in the end we’re going to need diverse, gender-equitable agro-ecosystems which are properly supported by investment in research. Sort of integrative, democratic and redistributive then, perhaps?
From food price crisis to an equitable food system. Looks like the food system needs to be as convivial as conservation. If not more so.
Trade and dietary preferences can determine micronutrient security in the United Kingdom. Going to be difficult to take back control of micronutrient security.
Turning promise into practice: Crop biotechnology for increasing genetic diversity and climate resilience. Maybe biotech needs to be more convivial too.
A conceptual framework for understanding the environmental impacts of ultra-processed foods and implications for sustainable food systems. Nothing convivial about ultra-processed foods, alas.
Why food insecurity persists in sub-Saharan Africa: A review of existing evidence. Exports, basically. Looks like exports are really not very convivial.
Crops in crises: Shocks shape smallholders’ diversification in rural Ethiopia. Farmers need continual access to both the informal and formal seed systems to mitigate risk, but poor farmers need more money to do so. Maybe link them up to export markets? No, wait…
Traditional Agriculture and Food Sovereignty: Quilombola Knowledge and Management of Food Crops. Lots of conviviality, but not enough to fully mitigate risk.
The role of international cooperative initiatives in financing biodiversity. Partnerships between state and a variety of non-state actors may just be an opportunity for more convivial conservation and food systems. But then I would say that.

July 29, 2022July 29, 2022

Nibbles: CGIAR impacts, Innovative varieties, Sweet potato in PNG, Mexican food viz, Mango diversity, Lactase persistence, Tree planting, Indigenous sea gardens

Average returns on agricultural R&D investment is 100%, says CGIAR.
I wonder how many from this list of the most innovative plant varieties of 2020 can trace back to some CGIAR product. Or genebank.
Which sweet potato varieties do consumers actually like in PNG?
Cool visualizations of the relationships between Mexican crops and foods.
One village, 100 mangoes. Visualize that.
Don’t blame high food prices on war. Entirely, anyway.
Lactase persistence is not due to the benefits of drinking milk. Entirely, anyway.
A whole bunch of tools to help select trees to plant in Europe. The entirely correct URL for the climate matching tool is this one though.
Why worry about any of that when you can have sea gardens, though?