- The beauty of breadfruit. Spoiler alert: resilience.
- The meaning of Svalbard. Spoiler alert: insurance.
- The history of pizzoccheri. Spoiler alert: contested.
- The paddy diversity of Assam. Spoiler alert: in situ.
- The latest NBPGR genebank. Spoiler alert: pandanus.
- The pastoralists of Sardinia. Spoiler alert: flexible.
Brainfood: Seed boundaries, Open Source Seeds, Chickpea evaluation, Central Asia homegardens, Teff evaluation, Wheat collection rationalization, Resurgent millets, Duplicates software, Cooking up “minor” crops
- Constructing Seed Boundaries: Foundation and Evolution of Scientific Conceptions and Practices of Crop Diversity from the Green Revolution to date. We need to put the knowledge, expertise, activities and needs of farmers at the centre of conservation and use of crop diversity.
- Open Source Seeds and the Revitalization of Local Knowledge. Open-source seeds is one way we can put the knowledge, expertise, activities and needs of farmers at the centre of conservation and use of crop diversity.
- Evaluation of Global Composite Collection Reveals Agronomically Superior Germplasm Accessions for Chickpea Improvement. We need detailed, multi-location, multi-year agronomic evaluation of chickpea diversity to figure out what diversity we should use to give farmers the diversity we think they will need.
- Home gardens of Central Asia: Reservoirs of diversity of fruit and nut tree species. We need homegardens.
- Data-driven, participatory characterization of farmer varieties discloses teff breeding potential under current and future climates. We need detailed, multi-location, multi-year agronomic evaluation of teff diversity done in collaboration with farmers to figure out what diversity we should use to give farmers the diversity they will need, and what they already have.
- Cultural Effects on Sorghum Varieties Grown, Traits Preferred, and Seed Management Practices in Northern Ethiopia. We need detailed, multi-location, multi-year studies of farmers’ sorghum diversity, practices and needs to figure out what diversity we should use to give farmers the diversity they will need, and what they already have.
- Metrics for optimum allocation of resources on the composition and characterization of crop collections: The CIMMYT wheat collection as a proof of concept. We could use genotyping and this fancy maths to figure out what to have in our wheat genebank collections so we can then figure out which diversity to use to give farmers the diversity we think they will need.
- From marginalized to miracle: critical bioregionalism, jungle farming and the move to millets in Karnataka, India. Forget wheat. We need local food activism. But critical local food activism.
- G-DIRT: a web server for identification and removal of duplicate germplasms based on identity-by-state analysis using single nucleotide polymorphism genotyping data. We need this fancy software to get rid of duplicates from our genebank collections so it’s cheaper to maintain them and ensure that they’re always around for people to use to get to farmers the diversity they need.
- “Famine Foods” and the Values of Biodiversity Preservation in Israel-Palestine. We need recipes.
Nibbles: Food security, CWR, Rice, Food crisis, Yams, Peanuts, Tuscan wine, SADC seeds, Lonely trees
- Handy primer on the effects of climate change and biodiversity on food security, courtesy of the House of Lords.
- Crop wild relatives could help with all three.
- Trouble brewing for rice. House of Lords nodding wisely.
- The trouble that brewed for wheat wasn’t quite as advertised. Spoiler alert: the price spike had to do with China buying up all it could. So is rice next then?
- No trouble brewing for yams now that they’re getting sequenced.
- Nor for peanuts in the Gambia, for different reasons.
- Sounds like everything is hunky dory for the Tuscan grape too.
- Good to see SADC is on the job.
- It may be too late for some trees though.
Brainfood: Species mixtures double, Crop diversification, Local adaptation, Speed of adaptation, Essential Biodiversity Variables, Effective population size, Monitoring diversity
- Drought-exposure history increases complementarity between plant species in response to a subsequent drought. Repeated stress makes plant species get along better, sustaining diversity. If only it worked so well with people…
- A quantitative synthesis of soil microbial effects on plant species coexistence. Meta-analysis shows soil microbes work against plant species getting along better.
- Does crop diversification lead to climate-related resilience? Improving the theory through insights on practice. Crops getting along well together is pretty well linked to better livelihoods, but less strongly to increased resilience.
- Local Adaptation: Causal Agents of Selection and Adaptive Trait Divergence. You need to do reciprocal transplant experiments really well to find out where plants are best adapted and why. Probably means taking microbes into account.
- Genetic variance in fitness indicates rapid contemporary adaptive evolution in wild animals. Natural selection can be quicker than climate change. I hope they did the reciprocal transplant experiments really well.
- Global genetic diversity status and trends: towards a suite of Essential Biodiversity Variables (EBVs) for genetic composition. Genetic diversity, Genetic differentiation, Inbreeding, and Effective Population Size (Ne). Who needs reciprocal transplant experiments?
- On the feasibility of estimating contemporary effective population size (Ne) for genetic conservation and monitoring of forest trees. Ouch.
- Selecting species and populations for monitoring of genetic diversity. All of them, right?
Nibbles: Forgotten crops special issue, Coffee fingerprinting, Three Sisters, Food gardening, Magic mushrooming, Genebanks in Ukraine, Colombia, Australia, China
- Forthcoming special issue of Plants, People, Planet on forgotten crops. Get your paper in about how they’re under-represented in genebanks.
- Or about how they need to be DNA fingerprinted, like the USDA is doing for coffee.
- I wonder if there is a forgotten crops version of the Three Sisters. Answers on a postcard, please.
- Forget about genebanks, grow those forgotten crops in your garden. Rebelliously.
- Forget about forgotten crops, how about forgotten mushrooms?
- Lest we forget the Ukrainian genebank.
- No way to forget the Future Seeds genebank.
- Australians are not being allowed to forget about genebanks, plant and animal. With video goodness. There’s hope yet.
- Meanwhile, in China…