Category: Breeding

• Projected temperature increases may require shifts in the growing season of cool-season crops and the growing locations of warm-season crops. In California’s Mediterranean climate, cool season crops will have to shift in time, and warm-season crops in place.
• A “Mega Population” of the Wild Potato Species Solanum fendleri. Large population, safe, accessible and very diverse. Who needs genebanks, right?
• Survival of Solanum jamesii Tubers at Freezing Temperatures. Very unusual trait in both the crop and the wild relatives, apparently.
• Diversity and uses of enset [Ensete ventricosum (Welw.) Cheesman] varieties in Angacha district, Southern Ethiopia: call for taxonomic identifications and conservation. 55 varieties in 75 homegardens, 88 in the field genebank, many in only one or the other.
• Impact of Climate Change on the Diversity and Distribution of Enset (Ensete ventricosum (Welw) Cheesman) in Ethiopia: A Review. Some are moving, some are dying. I guess we really need in vitro and cryo after all.
• Filling the gaps in gene banks: Collecting, characterizing and phenotyping wild banana relatives of Papua New Guinea. Much diversity of banana ancestor still not in genebanks, but people are on the job.
• Modeling the Impact of Crop Diseases on Global Food Security. Genetic diversity is not enough.
• What natural variation can teach us about resistance durability. That genetic diversity is not enough, apparently.
• Wheat blast: a new threat to food security. We have the genes to fight it, but they won’t be enough.
• Limited haplotype diversity underlies polygenic trait architecture across 70 years of wheat breeding. I hope at least those genes can be found in this MAGIC population based on European bread wheat varieties from the past few decades.
• Potential Short-Term Memory Induction as a Promising Method for Increasing Drought Tolerance in Sweetpotato Crop Wild Relatives [Ipomoea series Batatas (Choisy) D. F. Austin]. Wild sweet potatoes have the genes to remember drought stress, and hence cope with it better. Will they be enough though?
• Ecological pest control fortifies agricultural growth in Asia–Pacific economies. Biological control has been worth USD 15-20 billion a year for non-rice crops over the past 100 years across 23 countries. But how much is the interaction with genetic diversity worth?
• Evaluation of the contribution of teosinte to the improvement of agronomic, grain quality and yield traits in maize (Zea mays). Wild relative not just a source of stress resistance, could be useful for yield potential too.
• “It may also have prevented churchgoers from falling asleep”: southernwood, Artemisia abrotanum L. (fam. Asteraceae), in the church bouquet, and its contemporary presence as a heritage plant in Sweden. The fragrance lingers.
• Multiple cropping systems of the world and the potential for increasing cropping intensity. Multiple cropping on 12% of total agricultural area, which could increase, but probably not as much as was thought.
• Impact and returns on investment of mungbean research and development in Myanmar. Four varieties coming out of international research created economic gains of USD 1.4 billion from 1980-2016. That’s a ROI of about 90, but it took 20 years to kick in.
• Are Traditional Food Crops Really ‘Future Smart Foods?’ A Sustainability Perspective. Well, they could be, but maybe we don’t have 20 years.
• New Guinea highland wild dogs are the original New Guinea singing dogs. …which are therefore not extinct in the wild as used to be thought. Or so the DNA says.
• WEGE: A new metric for ranking locations for biodiversity conservation. That’s “Weighted Endemism including Global Endangerment,” and it hasn’t been tried on plants. Yet.
• Toward Unifying Global Hotspots of Wild and Domesticated Biodiversity. They overlap a lot but not completely. Expect WEGE to be applied at some stage.