- The paradox of productivity: agricultural productivity promotes food system inefficiency. It’s the cheap calories, stupid.
- Genetic Evaluation of Exotic Chromatins from Two Obsolete Interspecific Introgression Lines of Upland Cotton for Fiber Quality Improvement. Yield from one species, fibre quality from the other.
- Resequencing of 429 chickpea accessions from 45 countries provides insights into genome diversity, domestication and agronomic traits. Including drought tolerance.
- Genome of ‘Charleston Gray’, the principal American watermelon cultivar, and genetic characterization of 1,365 accessions in the U.S. National Plant Germplasm System watermelon collection. Four genetic groups reflecting geography.
- Genome-wide nucleotide patterns and potential mechanisms of genome divergence following domestication in maize and soybean. The best candidates for domestication are plants that are willing to mutate a bit, but not too much.
- Crop Biodiversity: An Unfinished Magnum Opus of Nature. “Linking genotype and phenotype remains the holy grail of crop biodiversity studies.”
- Meeting global land restoration and protection targets: What would the world look like in 2050? Very nice. It would look very nice.
- The ecological drivers of variation in global language diversity. High year-round productivity leads to lots of languages. And lots of biodiversity, but that’s another story.
- Product authenticity versus globalisation—The Tulsi case. The division of Indian Holy Basil into 3 types based on traditional knowledge is only partially supported by genetic and phytochemical studies.
- A method for generating virus-free cassava plants to combat viral disease epidemics in Africa. Let the distribution commence.
- Cereal processing at Early Neolithic Göbekli Tepe, southeastern Turkey. They must have been some feasts.
- Persistent Early to Middle Holocene tropical foraging in southwestern Amazonia. On the cusp of agriculture 10,000 years ago in Bolivia. That’s about the same time as Göbekli Tepe, give or take a thousand years.
- Moral Hazard: Experimental Evidence from Tenancy Contracts. Tenant farmers should keep a higher share to increase productivity and diversity, but of course the landlords won’t let them so what’s needed is revolution.
Nibbles: Dog & bone, Giant maize, Edible Archive, Myanmar diversification, Colombian community seedbank, Sorghum grande, Coconut exhibit, Chinese ag history, African domestication, Japanese citrus, RivieraLigure DOP, Cactus candy, Hazelnut resistance, American crop rethinks, Public sector engagement
- Nice synthesis of dog (and chicken) domestication.
- Saving the Jala maize landrace in Mexico.
- Saving lots of rice landraces in India by eating them.
- Myanmar does not live by rice alone. And neither does India.
- Saving a whole bunch of stuff in Colombia.
- Saving a sorghum wild relative in Australia.
- How coconuts can help museums decolonize.
- Maybe agricultural development needs to decolonize too. Discuss.
- Africa’s Fertile Crescent is the Niger River Basin. Nice, but we saw that coming first.
- Citrus is big in Japan.
- Olive oil is big in Liguria.
- The visnaga cactus was big in the US Southwest once. As an ingredient in candy, of all things.
- Breeding filberts in the US.
- Tomato 2.0.
- And a bunch of other crops American farmers and breeders are having to adapt to climate change.
- And not just that, they have to deliver better nutrition too.
- Eat what you want, sure. But think what that means for climate change.
- Principles for GAIN engaging with the private sector (in all its diversity) on nutrition. Could be applied to engagement on climate change, I suppose, and crop diversity conservation for that matter. My question, though, is: runaway train, or Titanic?
The very political genetics of wheat
A massive EU study looked into the DNA of 487 different kinds of wheat, including wild relatives, close domesticated cousins, old landraces, old cultivars and modern elite varieties. All bread wheat falls into one of three separate clusters. There is a founder population that represents primitive landraces originating in the Fertile Crescent and modern varieties that came about as part of the green revolution. It includes older varieties from Western Europe. A separate cluster contains varieties from Eastern European countries, developed after about 1955 during the cold war. The third cluster contains mostly varieties developed after about 1985 that mix DNA from the founder population and the Warsaw Pact cluster, reflecting a greater exchange among breeders after 1989.
There’s more, especially for wheat nerds such as myself.
The nerd in question is Jeremy, and his further thoughts are on his newsletter. I have his permission to reproduce the piece in full here, but I suggest you subscribe to the newsletter, it’s always full of interesting food-related stuff.
For one, Asian and European cultivars are much less similar than one might expect. Farmers in the two regions, while pursuing the same overall goal of greater productivity, seem to have done so by selecting different genetic targets for their work. Breeders now have more specific information about the stretches of DNA that they might want to target as they go about creating new varieties that can cope with changing climates.
Overall, the current picture of the evolution of wheat remains the same – complex – albeit with stronger support for some of the putative pathways. Personally, that’s a great relief. It means I don’t have to scrap any of the episodes of Our Daily Bread devoted to the evolution of wheat.
The original research paper Tracing the ancestry of modern bread wheats is behind a paywall, a scandal for taxpayer-funded research, but that’s another story. I suspect that anyone who needs more detail will have access, but if you just want more details, drop me a note.
You can also leave a comment below.
Brainfood: Grazing behaviour, XW, Swedish Neolithic, Apple genome impact, Mango diversity, Blueberry quality, Durum genome, Ancient sorghum, Nordic rye, Tomato flavour, Diets & health, CGIAR & ITPGRFA
- An inexpensive and open‐source method to study large terrestrial animal diet and behaviour using time‐lapse video and GPS. GoPro used to figure out what species grazing cows eat throughout the year. Could be useful to gauge forage value of different plants.
- The risk posed by Xanthomonas wilt disease of banana: Mapping of disease hotspots, fronts and vulnerable landscapes. Northern Mozambique and central lowland DR Congo are the gateways. Extension is the key.
- Maritime Hunter-Gatherers Adopt Cultivation at the Farming Extreme of Northern Europe 5000 Years Ago. Migrating farmers drew the line at Sweden.
- Apple whole genome sequences: recent advances and new prospects. Great insights into domestication and diversity of collections. Next step: genomic prediction.
- Estimation of genetic diversity and relatedness in a mango germplasm collection using SNP markers and a simplified visual analysis method. The collection at the USDA Subtropical Horticulture Research Station could be half the size.
- Haplotype-phased genome and evolution of phytonutrient pathways of tetraploid blueberry. Including candidate genes for fruit quality.
- Durum wheat genome highlights past domestication signatures and future improvement targets. Mutation for high cadmium accumulation common in domesticated material, but a variant allowing better growth in zinc-deficient soils and less accumulation available in wild populations.
- A domestication history of dynamic adaptation and genomic deterioration in Sorghum. Genomes from archaeological specimens suggest that decrease in diversity over time in sorghum was not due to an initial one-off domestication bottleneck, but rather to repeated sequential founding episodes. Doesn’t seem like much of a difference to me.
- Population genetic structure in Fennoscandian landrace rye (Secale cereale L.) spanning 350 years. Just one big happy, old family.
- Meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies provides insights into genetic control of tomato flavor. Breeders could breed for flavour. But will they?
- Health effects of dietary risks in 195 countries, 1990–2017: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2017. People should eat more of the above grains and fruits.
- CGIAR Operations under the Plant Treaty Framework. Non-monetary benefits are not to be sneezed at, but all too often are.
Brainfood: GI, Collection representativeness, Miracle tree, Brave new world, Wheat roots, Dry beans, Seedling roots, Ecotourism, Citrus evolution, Mango evolution, Aboriginal translocation, Carrot cores, Potato breeding
- Impact of Geographical Indication schemes on traditional knowledge in changing agricultural landscapes: An empirical analysis from Japan. GI encouraged sharing of traditional knowledge.
- Genetic diversity in British populations of Taxus baccata L.: Is the seedbank collection representative of the genetic variation in the wild? Yes, though marginal populations could be collected more.
- The miracle mix of Moringa: Status of Moringa research and development in Malawi. Needs breeding.
- New plant breeding technologies for food security. Genome editing, basically. Meet the new boss…
- Evolutionary agroecology: Trends in root architecture during wheat breeding. In China, wheat breeding has involved unconscious group selection for simpler, less branched, deeper roots in higher-yielding modern varieties.
- Root and shoot variation in relation to potential intermittent drought adaptation of Mesoamerican wild common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.). Deeper-rooted, and more drought-tolerant, wild beans are found in dry regions.
- Seedling traits predict drought-induced mortality linked to diversity loss. Species with longer seedling roots survive drought better.
- Is ecotourism a panacea? Political ecology perspectives from the Sundarban Biosphere Reserve, India. Well, what do you think?
- Genotyping by sequencing can reveal the complex mosaic genomes in gene pools resulting from reticulate evolution: a case study in diploid and polyploid citrus. Citrus evolution in one beautiful diagram. I just wish I could remember the details from one day to the next.
- Population genomic analysis of mango (Mangifera indica) suggests a complex history of domestication. Two genepools, and no bottleneck. No cool diagram though.
- Aboriginal Translocations: The Intentional Propagation and Dispersal of Plants in Aboriginal Australia. More than just replanting tubers after harvest, although plenty of that.
- Comparison of Representative and Custom Methods of Generating Core Subsets of a Carrot Germplasm Collection. It’s a numbers game.
- Potato Breeding by Many Hands? Measuring the Germplasm Exchange Based on a Cultivated Potatoes Database. Most use of varieties in breeding is within countries.
