- 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.
Nibbles: Rubber, Cacao, Emissions, Dioscorea, Humanities
- Rubber is running out.
- Hand pollination is better than fertilisers etc. for cacao yields.
- When all is said and done, agriculture is a third of emissions.
- A wild Mexican yam is behind the Pill.
- The cultural history of plants.
Nibbles: Millets 2023, Pygmy hog, Iraqi seeds, Botanicals, Business, EU
- Watch out for the millets renaissance.
- This small wild pig is already having a renaissance.
- Can you help with the renaissance of some Iraqi vegetable seeds?
- Alpine botanicals will be having anything but a renaissance. Genebanks anyone?
- No way to call the uptick in interest in biodiversity in the financial industry a renaissance. I’m not even sure it’s an uptick, actually. Absinthe, anyone?
- Will the EU’s Farm to Fork plus biodiversity strategies lead to an environmental renaissance?
Brainfood: Extra livestock edition
- Resilience and livestock adaptations to demographic growth and technological change: A diachronic perspective from the Late Bronze Age to Late Antiquity in NE Iberia. The changing balance between sheep, cattle and pigs through time was driven by socio-economics more than environment.
- Heat stress will detrimentally impact future livestock production in East Africa. 4-19% of livestock production will have more heat to cope with.
- Pastoralism in the highest peaks: Role of the traditional grazing systems in maintaining biodiversity and ecosystem function in the alpine Himalaya. A ban on grazing would be counter-productive.
- The evolving interface between pastoralism and uncertainty : reflecting on cases from three continents. Adaptive herd management, livelihood mosaics, persisting mobility, reticular territories, and articulated social networks have been enough, but for how long more?
- Redefinition of the Mora Romagnola Pig Breed Herd Book Standard Based on DNA Markers Useful to Authenticate Its “Mono-Breed” Products: An Example of Sustainable Conservation of a Livestock Genetic Resource. Fraudsters beware.
- Estimating the genetic diversity of Pacific salmon and trout using multigene eDNA metabarcoding. DNA was recovered from the water, for pity’s sake.
Brainfood: Rewilding, Neotropical domestication, Teosinte hybrids, Milpa, Wild grapes, Wild banana, Wild rice, European landrace trifecta, Ethiopian coffee double, Eco-anger
- Agricultural wilding: rewilding for agricultural landscapes through an increase in wild productive systems. But would it be sparing or sharing?
- Disentangling Domestication from Food Production Systems in the Neotropics. “Wild” is a contested concept in the Neotropics anyway.
- Evidence for Multiple Teosinte Hybrid Zones in Central Mexico. Maize systems are already pretty wild in Mexico.
- Maize intercropping in the milpa system. Diversity, extent and importance for nutritional security in the Western Highlands of Guatemala. And they’re doing pretty well, thank you very much.
- Extensive introgression among North American wild grapes (Vitis) fuels biotic and abiotic adaptation. Plenty of wilding in American grapevines too.
- Conservation status assessment of banana crop wild relatives using species distribution modelling. There’s a danger of banana de-wilding.
- A route to de novo domestication of wild allotetraploid rice. The upside of dewilding.
- Landrace added value and accessibility in Europe: what a collection of case studies tells us. Landraces can maybe help with that rewilding of agriculture in Europe, as they are mostly adapted to marginal, low-input systems.
- The Analysis of Italian Plant Agrobiodiversity Databases Reveals That Hilly and Sub-Mountain Areas Are Hotspots of Herbaceous Landraces. Like I said, landraces can help.
- Locally Adapted and Organically Grown Landrace and Ancient Spring Cereals—A Unique Source of Minerals in the Human Diet. Plus they’re good for you.
- Not my cup of coffee: Farmers’ preferences for coffee variety traits – Lessons for crop breeding in the age of climate change. Which is not to say landraces don’t need improvement every now and then.
- The potential for income improvement and biodiversity conservation via specialty coffee in Ethiopia. But in the end, it’s about the value added.
- From anger to action: Differential impacts of eco-anxiety, eco-depression, and eco-anger on climate action and wellbeing. Does any of the above make you angry? Good!