Climate change

April 19, 2022April 25, 2022

The Guardian on the guardians of agrobiodiversity

There’s a big series on agricultural biodiversity unfolding in The Guardian. So far we’ve had the following:

Our food system isn’t ready for the climate crisis, including pithy quote from yours truly.
Seed banks: the last line of defense against a threatening global food crisis, including pithy quote from my boss.
‘We’re running out of time’: Dan Saladino on why the loss of diversity in our foods matters, including numerous pithy quotes from Dan.
Blue corn and melons: meet the seed keepers reviving ancient, resilient crops, including pithy quotes from Roxanne Swentzell and others.

I’m not sure how much more there is to come, but I hope it keeps going a while yet.

LATER: There was indeed more!

April 6, 2022April 6, 2022

Nibbles: Genebanks and CC, Use of genebanks, Wild potatoes, Potato evaluation, TLB breeding, Canadian tree genebank

Climate change is sending people to genebanks…
…and leading to their holdings being used in lots of different and interesting ways.
Collections of wild potatoes will surely be very useful…
…for projects such a this, for example.
And there’s also taro leaf blight to see to…
…as well as trees important to Indigenous people to be conserved.

April 4, 2022April 4, 2022

Brainfood: Digitizing collections, Bean core, Livestock diversity, Maya & maize, Fish stocks & CC, Save the weed, Flax CWR, Italian agrobiodiversity

Cross-validation of a semantic segmentation network for natural history collection specimens. Computers can distinguish the herbarium label from the actual specimen and other stuff on the sheet, helping with the whole automatic digitization thing, but it takes some really fancy math.
The landscapes of livestock diversity: grazing local breeds as a proxy for domesticated species adaptation to the environment. Medium fancy math used to map breed diversity in the Iberian Peninsula for different livestock species and relate it to environmental factors.
South-to-north migration preceded the advent of intensive farming in the Maya region. Sort of like tomato, but in the other direction. Plenty of math involved, but behind the scenes, thankfully.
Timing and magnitude of climate-driven range shifts in transboundary fish stocks challenge their management. Huge amount of data and very fancy math shows fish are in trouble.
A Core Set of Snap Bean Genotypes Established by Phenotyping a Large Panel Collected in Europe. Ok, even I can follow the math on this one.
Assessment of biogeographic variation in traits of Lewis flax (Linum lewisii) for use in restoration and agriculture. Very approachable math shows which populations of a CWR can best be used for restoration, and where; and also for domestication and breeding.
An updated checklist of plant agrobiodiversity of northern Italy. Very useful use of very basic maths. Key number: only 43% of the PGR on the list are conserved ex situ.
Cannabis, the multibillion dollar plant that no genebank wanted. No math needed to figure out weed needs a genebank.

March 28, 2022March 22, 2022

Brainfood: NPGS use, Descriptor clustering, Fast phenotyping, Flax duplicates, Photosynthesis variation, Brassica breeding, Robusta & CC, Seaweed domestication, Fighting fish domestication, Hotspots & diets, Cotton & wildlife

Developing country demand for crop germplasm conserved by the U.S. National Plant Germplasm System. 5 years, 10 crops, 100,000 samples.
cacGMS: An Algorithm Cluster Germplasm based on Categorical Genetic Traits. Build a better cluster algorithm for categorical descriptors and the world will beat a path to your genebank. If it isn’t already.
Deep learning: as the new frontier in high-throughput plant phenotyping. A really fancy way of scoring those descriptors.
Selection of duplicates of flax accessions – an important task in the management of collection of genetic resources of Linum usitatissimum L. But you can do a lot with passport data.
Mining for allelic gold: finding genetic variation in photosynthetic traits in crops and wild relatives. Let the gene editing begin!
Expanding the genetic variation of Brassica juncea by introgression of the Brassica rapa genome. AABB gets a shot of AA.
Adaptive potential of Coffea canephora from Uganda in response to climate change. Some populations are going to do better than others under climate change. Ah, but are they the best populations for other traits?
Pre-domestication bottlenecks of the cultivated seaweed Gracilaria chilensis. Founder effect and over-exploitation mean that more diversity from New Zealand might be needed.
Genomic consequences of domestication of the Siamese fighting fish. You don’t need huge genetic diversity to get huge phenotypic diversity, even with strong selection. But will new diversity be needed eventually? From Siam?
Food versus wildlife: Will biodiversity hotspots benefit from healthier diets? Some hotspots will actually do worse if people eat better, so we will have to look at better agriculture too. Including seaweed, for all I know.
Commodity crops in biodiversity-rich production landscapes: Friends or foes? The example of cotton in the Mid Zambezi Valley, Zimbabwe. Possibly an example of the above. Cotton was better for wildlife than what came after prices dropped.

March 22, 2022March 23, 2022

Nibbles: Future Seeds, Irish Seed Savers, ICRAF genebank, Cherry blossoms, Coffee futures, Eat This Newsletter

More on how Future Seeds fits into the global system of genebanks. And more still.
You can immerse yourself in the Irish Seed Savers genebank.
Do you want chips with your tree genebank?
There’s a sort of cherry blossom genebank in the Smithsonian Gardens.
The Economist fails to mention genebanks in its piece on how to save coffee from climate change. Here’s an EU project that’s using coffee diversity for adaptation.
Jeremy’s latest newsletter looks at everything from the denazification of cattle to yams. But not genebanks. Subscribe anyway!