Climate change

April 27, 2021April 28, 2021

A taste of coffee to come

Seems like it’s probably worth recapping the whole new-species-will-save-your-morning-coffee-from-climate-change story that’s been going around.

It all started last year with a paper describing the rediscovery in the wilds of Sierra Leone of a species of coffee that used to be very well liked but then fell out of commercial favour due to low yields. It’s called Coffea stenophylla ((More on this database of wild coffee here. There is only one entry for C. stenophylla in Genesys, from CATIE, but there are some doubts about it.)) and of course Jeremy did a podcast about it, interviewing one of the authors of said paper, the very engaging Prof. Jeremy Haggar.

Fast forward a year and we now have a follow-up paper assessing the taste of coffee made from beans of C. stenophylla from that (very tiny, alas) wild population in Sierra Leone and also from a (more substantial) CIRAD research stand in La Reunion. And guess what? It’s really good. So of course Jeremy went back to Prof. Haggar for another nice chat.

C. stenophylla grows in hot and humid lowlands, so it’s a little more ready for climate change than your average arabica. ((There’s also a video now.)) Still, the yield issue is presumably still there, and no doubt other problems will arise, as they always do. But I’m keeping my fingers crossed, because I really want to taste the stuff — and boost Sierra Leonean business along the way.

Oh and of course we’ll have to revise the global coffee diversity conservation strategy now…

April 22, 2021

Nibbles: Big Ag, Agroecology, Open seeds, Canadian garlic, CSN, CGIAR, Mary Jane, Rapid phenotyping, DSI, Roman gardens

Yay Big Agriculture!
Don’t listen to them: yay agroecology!
Come down everyone, DW with the balanced view on open seeds.
Meanwhile, there’s a project to document all the garlic varieties grown in Canada.
And the Community Seed Network is hard at work.
All those seeds are going to have to be kept alive: this is how the CGIAR genebanks do it.
Morocco thinks about legalizing kif.
Need help phenotyping your kif, Morocco?
Soon there will be lots of sequence information on that kif, and then you’ll need a way to regulate access, and this study for the European Commission might help.
Ok you’ll need a palate cleanser after that, I suspect: Roman gardens, perhaps?

April 19, 2021April 19, 2021

Brainfood: Allium collecting, IPK barley double, Capsicum crossability, Genetic erosion, Chickpea breeding, Maize phenotyping, Maize landraces, Pre-adaptation, Synthetic peanuts, Genomic offset, Cotton domestication, Public breeding, Wholeness, Smallness trifecta

Collecting and regenerating populations of the Allium ampeloprasum complex from Greece. There’s some good news, and some bad news.
Genomic prediction models trained with historical records enable populating the German ex situ genebank bio-digital resource center of barley (Hordeum sp.) with information on resistances to soilborne barley mosaic viruses. Good news if you want to get usable data on genebank accession from old experiments.
Using Genome-Wide Predictions to Assess the Phenotypic Variation of a Barley (Hordeum sp.) Gene Bank Collection for Important Agronomic Traits and Passport Information. Good news if you thought the above was good news.
Reproductive compatibility in Capsicum is not necessarily reflected in genetic or phenotypic similarity between species complexes. Bad news for the genepool concept.
Trends in Varietal Diversity of Main Staple Crops in Asia and Africa and Implications for Sustainable Food Systems. Bad news, especially for Asia, if you like to see diversity on farm.
Broadening the genetic base of cultivated chickpea following introgression of wild Cicer species-progress, constraints and prospects. Good news if you like to see diversity in chickpea breeding.
DeepCob: Precise and high-throughput analysis of maize cob geometry using deep learning with an application in genebank phenomics. Great news if you’ve got a whole bunch of maize cobs to measure.
Demonstration of local adaptation of maize landraces by reciprocal transplantation. Good news if you think landraces are locally adapted.
Exaptation Traits for Megafaunal Mutualisms as a Factor in Plant Domestication. Good news if you want to learn a new word. Fascinating stuff, all kidding apart.
Morphological and reproductive characterization of nascent allotetraploids cross-compatible with cultivated peanut (Arachis hypogaea L.). Good news if you like the idea of re-running domestication and there’s no suitable megafauna available.
Parallel and Intertwining Threads of Domestication in Allopolyploid Cotton. Good news if you’re interested in the domestication, spread, and introgression of the 2 New World cottons.
Can public universities play a role in fostering seed sovereignty? The good news is the answer is yes.
Ecosystem integrity is neither real nor valuable. The good news is this may be a straw man. Interesting argument, though.
Prospects and limitations of genomic offset in conservation management. Good news if you abandon the concept of ecosystem integrity.
Higher yields and more biodiversity on smaller farms. Good news if you still think small is beautiful.
Do small food businesses enable small farms to connect to regional food systems? Evidence from 9 European regions. More good news for small farms.
Global Legal Constraints: How the International System Fails Small-Scale Farmers and Agricultural Biodiversity, Harming Human and Planetary Health, and What to Do About It. Bad news for the agri-food-industrial complex, come the revolution.

April 12, 2021April 5, 2021

Brainfood: Post 2020, Dietary diversity, African greens, Pollinator diversity, Seed science, Seed systems, Sorghum landraces, Wild millet, Maize microbiome, AnGR, Yosemite apples

Actions on sustainable food production and consumption for the post-2020 global biodiversity framework. Subsidy reform, valuation, food waste reduction, sustainability standards, life cycle assessments, sustainable diets, mainstreaming biodiversity and strengthening governance. Easy, then, I guess.
Farming System for Nutrition-a pathway to dietary diversity: Evidence from India. Well at least mainstreaming biodiversity is very easy, it seems.
Unpacking the value of traditional African vegetables for food and nutrition security. Not so fast. African leafy greens have come a long way, but there’s still a bit of mainstreaming to go.
Wild insect diversity increases inter-annual stability in global crop pollinator communities. Mainstreaming biodiversity should include pollinators.
First the seed: Genomic advances in seed science for improved crop productivity and food security. Yeah, but it starts with seeds.
Pluralistic Seed System Development: A Path to Seed Security? Though sometimes the seeds don’t get to who needs them.
Farmers’ Perception about the Use of Sorghum (Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench) Landraces and Their Genetic Erosion in South Wollo Administrative Zone, Ethiopia. Sorghum landraces could do with some mainstreaming. Maybe pluralistic seed systems would help.
Phenotypic variation and adaptation in morphology and salt spray tolerance in coastal and inland populations of Setaria viridis in central Japan. Mainstreaming diversity in a crop may involve protecting the habitats of its wild relatives.
Maize germplasm chronosequence shows crop breeding history impacts recruitment of the rhizosphere microbiome. And not in a good way. Looks like mainstreaming biodiversity should also include the root microbiome.
Farm animal genetic resources and the COVID-19 pandemic. Agroecology is the high road to mainstreaming farm animal biodiversity.
Genetic data inform Yosemite National Park’s apple orchard management guidelines. Mainstreaming biodiversity in action.

March 29, 2021March 29, 2021

Brainfood: On farm, Barahnaja, Vegetable landraces, Okra core, Carrot breeding, Soybean breeding, Afghan wheat, Phytochemistry, Cassava diversity, Dietary diversity double, Pollination trade

On-Farm Crop Diversity for Advancing Food Security and Nutrition. Lots of solid context, plus fun and unusual boxes on fe’i bananas, African greens and Vietnam seed clubs.
Mainstreaming Barahnaja cultivation for food and nutritional security in the Himalayan region. Could be another box in the above.
Vegetable Landraces: The “Gene Banks” for Traditional Farmers and Future Breeding Programs. Unusual way to put it, but you can see what they mean.
The World Vegetable Center Okra (Abelmoschus esculentus) Core Collection as a Source for Flooding Stress Tolerance Traits for Breeding. It’s the longer vegetative phase that possibly helps with flooding tolerance.
Strategies to Identify and Introgress Production and Quality Traits from Genetic Resources to Elite Carrot Cultivars. But maybe it’s not core collections that you need.
Genomic dissection of widely planted soybean cultivars leads to a new breeding strategy of crops in the post-genomic era. Here’s another core collection, this time of popular cultivars rather than landraces, as a basis for a strategy called Potalaization which seems to amount to starting your breeding programme with a wide genetic base.
Genetic Diversity and Population Structure Analysis of Triticum aestivum L. Landrace Panel from Afghanistan. You could select a core collections based on ecogeography. Mainly.
Spatial and evolutionary predictability of phytochemical diversity. Interestingly, the same goes for phytochemical diversity in Swiss grasslands.
DNA fingerprinting reveals varietal composition of Vietnamese cassava germplasm (Manihot esculenta Crantz) from farmers’ field and genebank collections. From 1570 clones to 31 unique genotypes. No need for a core collection then.
Dietary diversity of rural Indonesian households declines over time with agricultural production diversity even as incomes rise. Indonesians need to go back to growing more vegetables. See some of the previous papers for examples. You’re welcome.
The interplay between food market access and farm household dietary diversity in low and middle income countries: A systematic review of literature. Or their market access could be improved, though it’s unclear whether that would improve their diets.
Virtual pollination trade uncovers global dependence on biodiversity of developing countries.
Many diets depend on other people’s pollinators, though.