- The complex geography of domestication of the African rice Oryza glaberrima. Domesticated in multiple places, and the formerly putative ancestor population unlikely to be so.
- Prehistoric cereal foods of southeastern Europe: An archaeobotanical exploration. Including Panicum millet as far back as the Bronze Age, interestingly.
- Genetic diversity in Ethiopian Durum Wheat (Triticum turgidum var durum) inferred from phenotypic variations. Some landraces are better than some improved varieties, sometimes, somewhere.
- Editorial: Rediscovering Local Landraces: Shaping Horticulture for the Future. See above.
- Enhancing the rate of genetic gain in public-sector plant breeding programs: lessons from the breeder’s equation. What do they have to say about the genetic diversity term, I hear you ask? “For many species, the primary value of exotic genetic variation is the identification and deployment of rare alleles with large effects that can be introduced into elite breeding programs via a thoughtful implementation of marker-assisted selection…”
- The many‐faced Janus of plant breeding. It’s more than just genetics.
- The need for coordinated transdisciplinary research infrastructures for pollinator conservation and crop pollination resilience. Mine historical data and mobilize the citizenry.
- Human disturbance impacts the integrity of sacred church forests, Ethiopia. Even the small forests are important.
- The potential of indigenous agricultural food production under climate change in Hawaiʻi. They could have fed today’s population, and could still do so.
- Managing plant genetic resources using low and ultra-low temperature storage: a case study of tomato. Nothing is perfect.
- A spatial framework for ex-ante impact assessment of agricultural technologies. I do love a map, but I have to wonder if you can have too much of a good thing.
- Why we should let rewilding be wild and biodiverse. Well, why not?
- Increasing impacts of land use on biodiversity and carbon sequestration driven by population and economic growth. The 2008 financial crisis was good for biodiversity.
- Rapid growth in greenhouse gas emissions from the adoption of industrial-scale aquaculture. Crab ponds are worse than paddy fields for greenhouse gas emissions.
- ColourQuant: a high-throughput technique to extract and quantify colour phenotypes from plant images. Remind me to tell you my story about characterizing the colours of a taro collection in Vanuatu.
- Phenotypic analysis of leaf colours from the USDA, ARS sweetpotato (Ipomoea batatas) germplasm collection. Never mind, this story is better.
Brainfood: Salinity tolerance, Intensification & sparing, CWR templates, Cacao identity, Soybean CWR, Soybean & CC, Cassava adoption, Indian cauliflower, Bambara groundnut, CC breeding, NUS, Banana access, Enset
- Salt stress under the scalpel – dissecting the genetics of salt tolerance. Could domesticate naturally salt-tolerant species and then breed for agronomic performance.
- Exploring the relationship between agricultural intensification and changes in cropland areas in the US. Higher yields not necessarily associated with less agricultural expansion.
- New tools for crop wild relative conservation planning. Lots of templates.
- Genetic identity and origin of “Piura Porcelana”—a fine-flavored traditional variety of cacao (Theoborma cacao) from the Peruvian Amazon. Similar but not identical to Nacional from Ecuador.
- Cytogenetics and genetic introgression from wild relatives in soybean. Intersubgeneric crossability barrier finally broken.
- Increased temperatures may safeguard the nutritional quality of crops under future elevated CO2 concentrations. Swings and roundabouts.
- Poverty reduction effects of agricultural technology adoption: the case of improved cassava varieties in Nigeria. 1.62 million lifted out of poverty, give or take, depending on the breaks.
- Frequent introgression of European cauliflowers in the present day cultivated Indian cauliflowers and role of Indian genotypes in the evolution of tropical cauliflower. More evidence of interdependence, if any were needed.
- Bambara Groundnut is a Climate-Resilient Crop: How Could a Drought-Tolerant and Nutritious Legume Improve Community Resilience in the Face of Climate Change? Isn’t it obvious?
- Adaption to Climate Change: Climate Adaptive Breeding of Maize, Wheat and Rice. “The good news is that there is significant genetic variation for heat and drought/submergence tolerance in the global maize, wheat and rice gene banks.”
- Crop Diversification Through a Wider Use of Underutilised Crops: A Strategy to Ensure Food and Nutrition Security in the Face of Climate Change. And a good one too. The last three items are from the same edited volume, which looks like should be worth getting: Sustainable Solutions for Food Security.
- Seed degeneration of banana planting materials: strategies for improved farmer access to healthy seed. Decentralize.
- Enset in Ethiopia: a poorly characterized but resilient starch staple. Maybe the above will work for enset too, but it will need better collections.
Nibbles: I say potato, CATIE genebank, Wat, Teff war, Digitizing collections, Black History Month, Crop stats
- Genebanks, crop wild relatives, friends, even a cool title — this one has it all: The New Potato.
- Latest on the CATIE seed collection.
- The wonder of Ethiopian food.
- Which I guess can include teff again now.
- Digitizing the Smithsonian — fast.
- George Washington Carver celebrated.
- Oh look, there’s a new version of SPAM. Let the GISsing begin.
Nibbles: Cherokee genebank, Community genebanks, Fruit genebank, CGIAR genebanks, CWR pre-breeding, Ethiopian sacred groves, UK animal ark
- Cherokee Nation seedbank goes online.
- Does that mean it is a biodiversity eden?
- New Grewia genebank in India. No word on community involvement.
- Meanwhile, at the CGIAR genebanks…
- Pre-breeding using CWR, some even from genebanks: finger millet, eggplant.
- Yeah, yeah, it’s not just about genebanks.
- Or maybe it is.
Brainfood: Tibetan barley, Eastern Sahel domestication, CC & coffee, Good bugs, Garden Organic, Amazonian domestication, Maize domestication, Maize & CC, Acidless citrus, Seed commons book, Crispy blueberry, African hunter-gatherers, Indian forages, Brazilian PGR, Cloudberry picking, Wheat & CC
- Origin and evolution of qingke barley in Tibet. Tibetan barley was introduced from the southwest.
- On the Origins and Dissemination of Domesticated Sorghum and Pearl Millet across Africa and into India: a View from the Butana Group of the Far Eastern Sahel. Sorghum and pearl millet got to India from Sudan. No word on whether they ever got to Tibet.
- Was there ever a Neolithic in the Neotropics? Plant familiarisation and biodiversity in the Amazon. Depends on how you define it.
- The earliest maize from San Marcos Tehuacán is a partial domesticate with genomic evidence of inbreeding. The earliest proto-maize was inbred.
- Evaluating Future Impacts of Climate Change on Traditional Mexican Maize Suitability and Indigenous Communities in Mexico. Landraces are going to lose half their area of suitability.
- Why could the coffee crop endure climate change and global warming to a greater extent than previously estimated? Because of carbon dioxide?
- Understanding and exploiting plant beneficial microbes. We’re going to need microbial consortia.
- Genetic analysis of a heritage variety collection. The Heritage Seed Library, in fact.
- Noemi Controls Production of Flavonoid Pigments and Fruit Acidity and Illustrates the Domestication Routes of Modern Citrus Varieties. In citron, limetta, sweet lime, lemon, and sweet orange, acidless phenotypes are associated with large deletions or insertions of retrotransposons in a single gene. Some of them go back a long way, and are associated with ritual use in Jewish culture.
- Introduction: Commoning the seeds: the future of agrobiodiversity and food security. Is there a way out of the current impasse? Maybe.
- Molecular and Genetic Bases of Fruit Firmness Variation in Blueberry—A Review. It’s still unclear whether firmness is a quantitative trait or monogenic.
- Hunter-gatherer genomes reveal diverse demographic trajectories following the rise of farming in East Africa. Hunter-gatherers were more inventive in Africa than in Europe in the face of agricultural expansion.
- Tropical Forage Legumes in India: Status and Scope for Sustaining Livestock Production. >3200 accessions conserved, >50 cultivars released.
- Conservation of crop genetic resources in Brazil in the context of the target 9 of the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation. A lot done, a lot still to do. CWR remain a gap.
- The Impacts of Climate and Social Changes on Cloudberry (Bakeapple) Picking: a Case Study from Southeastern Labrador. Social changes have been more significant, but for how long?
- Global wheat production with 1.5 and 2.0°C above pre‐industrial warming. Frequency of extreme low yields and variability will increase in hot places like India. Assuming no new varieties.