Category: Breeding

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Featured: Breeding with wild peanuts

David Bertioli points out, in a comment to a blog post about a recent paper of his, that there’s more than one way to use peanut wild relatives in breeding:

Your previous blog detailed the impact of Charles Simpson’s crosses in Texas, which used the “tetraploid route” of introgression which donated a chromosome segment from A09 which confers root knot nematode resistance. The PNAS paper focuses mostly on progeny from the North Carolina “hexaploid route”, which ended up traveling most around the world. These introgressions, from A02 and A03, confer resistance to Late Leaf Spot, Rust, and to a lesser extent Web Blotch.

Would be interesting to compare the impacts of the two “routes.”

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Feeling even better about crop wild relatives

The publication of “Legacy genetics of Arachis cardenasii in the peanut crop shows the profound benefits of international seed exchange” in PNAS rang a faint bell:

Here, we uncover the contribution of one wild species accession, Arachis cardenasii GKP 10017, to the peanut crop (Arachis hypogaea) that was initiated by complex hybridizations in the 1960s and propagated by international seed exchange.

And yes, it turns out we had blogged about this wild peanut species more than a decade ago, in Another feel-good crop wild relative story.

Some things have changed since 2008, I’m happy to say. I seem to have had some difficulty pulling together data ((And the links are now dead.)) at the time, whereas Genesys had no trouble at all showing me 45 accessions. And GKP 10017 even has a DOI now.

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Brainfood: Mapping double, Niche modelling, CGIAR impacts, Pathogen genebank, Data stewardship, Breeding tradeoffs, Organic vs conventional, Agronomic trials, Teff evaluation, Eggplant genetic resources, Quinoa phenotyping

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Nibbles: Luxury brands, Food companies, TV and diets, Saving seeds, IUCN Green Status, 0 Hunger Pledge, Zizania

  1. Luxury brands discover biodiversity: “There is no champagne without grapes, no ready-to-wear without silk and cotton, no perfume without flowers…”
  2. What about global food and agriculture companies though? Let’s find out, shall we?
  3. TV can help where companies won’t.
  4. Of course, you can set up your own company, as these Tunisian women did.
  5. Imagine a company helping to move a species to “green status.” Imagine.
  6. They could sign the Zero Hunger Pledge for the Private Sector while they’re at it.
  7. But meanwhile, on Ojibwe land…
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Nibbles: Genebanks in Brazil, Tunisia, Ghana, Ethiopia, Goan rice, Wheat adoption, Peruvian hot peppers & cacao, Amazonian fruits and nuts, Dates, Great Hedge of India, Conservation genetics presentation

  1. Safety duplicating a chickpea collection.
  2. Tunisia’s genebank in the news.
  3. Ghana’s genebank trying to save taro.
  4. Using a genebank to improve Elephant grass.
  5. On-farm conservation of rice in Goa.
  6. Molecular tools show that a couple of varieties account for about half the wheat acreage in Bangladesh and Nepal. Hope all the landraces are in genebanks, and safety duplicated.
  7. Celebrating Peruvian pepper diversity.
  8. Peru’s cacao diversity doesn’t need help, apparently.
  9. However, the Amazon’s wild-extracted fruits (including cacao and a wild relative) could be in trouble. Hope they’re in genebanks, just in case.
  10. How the date came to the US. Including its genebanks.
  11. India had a precursor of the Green Wall of Africa but nobody remembers it. Glad it wasn’t used as a genebank of sorts.
  12. Conservation genetics (i.e., most of the above) explained in 48 slides.