Breeding

July 10, 2019July 10, 2019

Bill Gates has CGIAR’s back

We will need many new ideas like these to help farmers be prepared to meet the challenges of our changing climate. If they are, we will all have an answer to the question “What’s for dinner?” for years to come.

That’s His Billness on the importance of CGIAR and its scientists. Would have been nice to have a shoutout for the genebanks too, but I know he appreciates them just as much as the breeding work.

Can we feed 10 billion people? I’m optimistic that we can if we invest in research that will help poor farmers adapt to climate change. https://t.co/KjKNQRMBJy

— Bill Gates (@BillGates) July 9, 2019

July 8, 2019February 18, 2020

Brainfood: Molecular characterization, Ancient weed, Patagonian berries, Strawberry origins controversy, Potato & nutrition, European potatoes, Extension, Cacao, Maize & wheat breeding history, Rural employment, Production stability, Amazonian Neolithic, Fairtrade wages

Genebank genomics bridges the gap between the conservation of crop diversity and plant breeding. What do we want? An accurate genotype-to-phenotype map for all seeds stored in the genebank. When do we want it? As soon as we have the money to ensure their conservation.
The origins of cannabis smoking: Chemical residue evidence from the first millennium BCE in the Pamirs. Well, that’s like your opinion, man. Residues in incense burners used for mortuary rituals, if you must know.
Patagonian berries as native food and medicine. Good, and good for you.
Revisiting the Origin of the Octoploid Strawberry. Not 4 separate diploid progenitors, as another paper recently found, but rather 2 extant ones, once you re-do the math.
The Nutritional Contribution of Potato Varietal Diversity in Andean Food Systems: a Case Study. It’s great, but it’s not enough.
The origins and adaptation of European potatoes reconstructed from historical genomes. Sequencing of old herbarium specimens, including Darwin’s, shows that early introductions to Europe were from the Andes, and later admixed there with Chilean and wild material, forming a sort of secondary centre of diversity.
Effect of Intensive Agriculture-Nutrition Education and Extension Program Adoption and Diffusion of Biofortified Crops. Breeding is not enough.
Morphological characterisation and evaluation of cacao (Theobroma cacao L.) in Trinidad to facilitate utilisation of Trinitario cacao globally. Now we know which ones are the best, for different reasons.
Evolution of US maize (Zea mays L.) root architectural and anatomical phenes over the past 100 years corresponds to increased tolerance of nitrogen stress. There has been unconscious selection for root traits resulting in better N use efficiency. An old paper, resurrected because of the next one.
Breeding improves wheat productivity under contrasting agrochemical input levels. Breeding wheat in Europe for good performance under high input levels has not markedly affected its performance under more challenging conditions. Diversity has held up too.
Positive outcomes between crop diversity and agricultural employment worldwide. Irrespective of input levels and economic growth rates.
National food production stabilized by crop diversity. Crop diversity is not just good for rural employment (see above), but for year-on-year production stability too.
Climate change and cultural resilience in late pre-Columbian Amazonia. And it was sort of the same in ancient Amazonia.
Effects of Fairtrade on the livelihoods of poor rural workers. Fairtrade improves wages of workers in cooperatives, but not on small farms.

July 1, 2019July 1, 2019

Brainfood: Barley diversity, Chinese veggies, Perennial legumes, Ecosystem value, Wild restorer, Eggplant taxonomy, Sweet potato phenotyping, Grass pollen, Aromatic rice origin, Orange cucumber, Watermelon breeding, Livestock value, Wild apples

Genome-Wide Association Mapping of Seedling Net Form Net Blotch Resistance in an Ethiopian and Eritrean Barley Collection. 8 new QTLs, just like that.
Vegetable Genetic Resources in China. 36,000 accessions. Just like that.
Building a botanical foundation for perennial agriculture: Global inventory of wild, perennial herbaceous Fabaceae species. Check out the Perennial Agriculture Project Global Inventory.
Ecosystem services and nature’s contribution to people: negotiating diverse values and trade-offs in land systems. Biological diversity has a diversity of values. Duh.
Development of a drought stress-resistant rice restorer line through Oryza sativa–rufipogon hybridization. From F6 via BC5F5 to BIL627.
Eggplants and Relatives: From Exploring Their Diversity and Phylogenetic Relationships to Conservation Challenges. The taxonomy is “arduous and unstable.”
Morphometric and colourimetric tools to dissect morphological diversity: an application in sweet potato [Ipomoea batatas (L.) Lam.]. Beyond colour charts. Way beyond.
Chemotaxonomy of domesticated grasses: a pathway to understanding the origins of agriculture. Fancy maths can identify pollen grains.
Origin of the Aromatic Group of Cultivated Rice (Oryza sativa L.) Traced to the Indian Subcontinent. Arose when japonica hybridized with local wild populations.
Orange-fleshed cucumber (Cucumis sativus var. sativus L.) germplasm from North-East India: agro-morphological, biochemical and evolutionary studies. Possible niche market?
Progress in genetic improvement of citron watermelon (Citrullus lanatus var. citroides): a review. These are all orange-fleshed.
Review: Domestic herbivores and food security: current contribution, trends and challenges for a sustainable development. Can’t live without them, but gotta do something about that enteric fermentation.
Evaluation of Malus genetic resources for tolerance to apple replant disease (ARD). It’s the wilds, of course.

June 25, 2019June 25, 2019

Nibbles: Organic Greek, Mexican maize heirloom, Community seedbank, Arizona chilli, African maize, Chinese trifecta, Sex-changing solanum, Breeding oddities, Breeding costing tool, Chicken project, WFP, Cattle book, Agroforestry database, Minor cereals, Reviewing genebanks, Wheat breeding, Rice seeds

Greek organic farm resists.
Communities getting into seed banking all over.
Saving zapalote chico.
Would you like chiltepines with that?
No zapalote chico in South Africa, but lots of other maize.
Conserving agricultural biodiversity in China.
Including in Hainan.
At the same time, China restricts foreign access to human genome data.
Sexually plastic Australian wild tomato named at long last.
Breeding flavour crops.
And figuring out how much it will cost.
Interesting project on human-chicken interactions.
Veggie breeder wins World Food Prize.
New coffee table book on cattle in Africa.
Flagship agroforestry database gets new version. Anyone wanna test it for us?
Minor cereals in Europe are anything but minor.
And lots are conserved in Europe’s increasingly scrutinized genebanks.
Meanwhile, a major cereals keeps getting the attention it also needs.
“The candidate markers could be used by any rice genebank to potentially identify varieties with seeds that are particularly short- or long-lived in storage. Viability monitoring intervals could then be customized by variety.” And wheat?

June 24, 2019June 24, 2019

Brainfood: Macadamia domestication, Middle Eastern wheat, ART virus, Open science, Red Queen, Food system change, Chinese Neolithic booze, Dough rings, Making maps, Biofortification, Endophytes, African maize, Switchgrass diversity, Ancestral legume

Wild Origins of Macadamia Domestication Identified Through Intraspecific Chloroplast Genome Sequencing. One tree is the basis of the industry.
The Israeli Palestinian wheat landraces collection: restoration and characterization of lost genetic diversity. Bringing it all back home.
Using high‐throughput sequencing in support of a plant health outbreak reveals novel viruses in Ullucus tuberosus (Basellaceae). There’s always something…
Plant health emergencies demand open science: Tackling a cereal killer on the run. …but openness will get us through it.
Rapid evolution in plant–microbe interactions – a molecular genomics perspective. Until the next one.
Understanding food systems drivers: A critical review of the literature. Spoiler alert: urbanization, raise in consumer income, population growth, attention paid to diet & health issues, technological innovations, intensification and homogenization of the agricultural sector, increase in frequency and intensity of extreme events, general degradation in soils and agro-ecological conditions, improved access to infrastructure and information, trade policies and other processes influencing trade expansion, internationalization of private investments, concerns for food safety. I guess diversity is in there somewhere.
The origins of specialized pottery and diverse alcohol fermentation techniques in Early Neolithic China. So good, they invented fermentation twice.
The Hoard of the Rings. “Odd” annular bread-like objects as a case study for cereal-product diversity at the Late Bronze Age hillfort site of Stillfried (Lower Austria). Unbaked, tarallini-like dried wheat/barley dough rings may have been used ritualistically. No, not like that.
EviAtlas: a tool for visualising evidence synthesis databases. Everybody likes a map.
Editorial: Improving the Nutritional Content and Quality of Crops: Promises, Achievements, and Future Challenges. A review of reviews of biofortification, and more.
Fungal endophyte diversity from tropical forage grass Brachiaria. 38 fungi isolated from 9 Brachiaria species, but unclear if any are beneficial.
Characteristics of maize cultivars in Africa: How modern are they and how many do smallholder farmers grow? Out of 500 samples in 13 countries, about half were in some way improved, covering about half of the surveyed planted area.
QTL × environment interactions underlie adaptive divergence in switchgrass across a large latitudinal gradient. You can combine alleles which are locally advantageous in different places to get a
super-biofuel.
Reconstruction of ancestral genome reveals chromosome evolution history for selected legume species. The wild ancestor of peanut, pigeonpea, soybean, beans, mungbean, chickpea, lotus and medics was closest to wild peanuts. Maybe they can synthesize it?