- Securing Diversity for Food Security: The Case of Conservation and Use of Rice Genetic Resources. Great achievements, but “… 95% of the rice genepool remains untapped and unexploited in rice improvement.”
- Characterization and Identification of Indigenous Olive Germplasm from Cyprus Using Morphological and Simple Sequence Repeat Markers. 125 trees, 32 accessions, 16 genotypes, 3 groups.
- Quantification of Selected Anti-nutrients and Bioactive Compounds in African Bambara Groundnut (Vigna subterranea (L.) Verdc.). Nothing to worry about, but if you insist on worrying, try the cream-coloured ones.
- DNA Fingerprinting and Genetic Diversity Analysis with Simple Sequence Repeat Markers of 217 Potato Cultivars (Solanum tuberosum L.) in China. Cultivars released since 1950 have a narrow genetic base.
- Pastoralism may have delayed the end of the green Sahara. What have pastoralists ever done for us?
- Epigenetic Diversity and Application to Breeding. Some epigenetic differences can be inherited independently of genetic differences. But how to use it?
- Complex rice systems to improve rice yield and yield stability in the face of variable weather conditions. The more azolla, fish and ducks the better.
- Can plants evolve to meet a changing climate? Yes, and we can detect it: the potential of field experimental evolution studies.
- Wheat’s wild relatives vary in their response to nitrogen and ozone. In situ populations may be at risk.
- Little evidence that farmers should consider abundance or diversity of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi when managing crops. One less thing to worry about? Ok, one fewer thing to worry about.
- Exclusivity offers a sound yet practical species criterion for bacteria despite abundant gene flow. Taxa do exist if you take the whole genome into account.
Nibbles: ITPGRFA, CIMMYT, VIR, Livestock & CC, Vesuvius, Apple pie, Biobanking
- The Plant Treaty tries to enhance itself: the story so far.
- CIMMYT gets a podcast. Here’s one on blue maize.
- The Vavilov collection put to good use. Again.
- “Cow farts cause more climate change than cars.” Not really. Here comes the science, by way of a Twitter thread, of all things.
- The Pompeii eruption: August, or October? Here comes the archaeobotany, among other things, by way of a Twitter thread, of all things.
- It was World Apple Day or somesuch, so here’s two canonical feel-good heirloom apple stories.
- Fancy an open-access special issue of Biopreservation and Biobanking? Too nerdy? It’s on agricultural genebanks… Yeah, I thought you might.
Nibbles: Transformation, Restoration, Renumeration, Validation, Mensuration, Celebration, Visualization, Diversification, Fructification, Information, Fermentation, Sustentation, Association, Migration, Transformation, Microconservation
- Lawrence Haddad on how to start transforming the food system.
- Here’s an idea: CIMMYT genebank recognized for restoring agricultural diversity in Guatemala.
- And another. Cash transfers are better than more conventional interventions for malnutrition, but they have to be real money.
- But, of course, they don’t always work. That’s one of many development myths listed in this fun Twitter thread.
- We also need metrics, sure, but the right ones, and we may already have them.
- The first ecologist remembered. That would be Humboldt.
- Terrible visualizations of the changing geography of American agriculture.
- But where are heirloom grown? Rice, say?
- And where are all the pomegranate farmers?
- I’m sure there are plenty of grape maps of France somewhere. But what’s with all these varieties? And are there more than in pomegranate?
- IUCN launches a new Red List website.
- Laos launches a sort of Red List website on traditional foods. Here it is. No word on linkages with Ark of Taste.
- Belgian lambic beer threatened by climate change. Now it’s personal.
- In Italy, the landscape needs people to keep it safe.
- Even olive landscapes, which maybe need to be more promiscuous.
- Early agricultural migrations fuelled by cheese.
- Early eggplant migrations fuelled by elephants.
- Microbes to the rescue.
Brainfood: Campesino maize, DELLA proteins, CC response, Nematodes, Collection duplication, Epidemics
- Evolutionary and food supply implications of ongoing maize domestication by Mexican campesinos. Effective population of 500 million plants potentially feeds 50 million people.
- Modulating plant growth–metabolism coordination for sustainable agriculture. Short AND sweet.
- Cracking the Code of Biodiversity Responses to Past Climate Change. Quite a bit of adaptation, not just migration and extinction.
- Plant-Parasitic Nematodes and Food Security in Sub-Saharan Africa. The greatest biotic threat to productivity on the continent, and probably going to get worse.
- Efficient curation of genebanks using next-generation sequencing reveals substantial duplication of germplasm accessions. Out of 1143 accessions of a wild wheat in 3 collections, 564 are unique.
- Emerging plant disease epidemics: Biological research is key but not enough. Not just about the money.
Brainfood: Quinoa boom, Diet affordability, Insect boom and bust, Organic & pests, Maize agroforestry, Landraces, Wheat roots, Conservation costs, Sustainable intensification, Defences & domestication, Polyploid niches, Mexican CWR, Danish apples, Diversity proxies, Grassland nutrient hotspots
- Foods and fads: The welfare impacts of rising quinoa prices in Peru. Modest.
- Measuring the Affordability of Nutritious Diets in Africa: Price Indexes for Diet Diversity and the Cost of Nutrient Adequacy. Maybe they could try quinoa.
- Impacts of climate warming on terrestrial ectotherms across latitude. Insects are in trouble in the tropics, but will make up for it at higher latitudes, which will be really bad for crops there, 10-25% more bad.
- Evidence that organic farming promotes pest control. Something for farmers in those higher latitudes to think about.
- The global distribution of Bacillus anthracis and associated anthrax risk to humans, livestock, and wildlife. 63.8 million rural poor livestock keepers are at risk. No word on effect of climate change.
- Do open-pollinated maize varieties perform better than hybrids in agroforestry systems? Maybe in Rwanda, but in Ethiopia not so much.
- More than Yield: Ecosystem Services of Traditional versus Modern Crop Varieties Revisited. Landraces are liked for yield stability in marginal environments, and for cultural reasons.
- Root and shoot traits in parental, early and late generation Green Revolution wheats (Triticum spp.) under glasshouse conditions. Modern wheat have smaller roots.
- Standardized reporting of the costs of management interventions for biodiversity conservation. Behind a paywall, so can’t tell whether includes genebanks. But I bet it doesn’t. Tell me I’m wrong.
- Global assessment of agricultural system redesign for sustainable intensification. Apparently 30% of farms and 10% of agricultural land worldwide, which is both more and less than I would have guessed.
- Genetic homogeneity of North-African goats. The Berber breeds are different, everything else is a big mixed up mess.
- Plant domestication decreases both constitutive and induced chemical defences by direct selection against defensive traits. In cabbage, even the tissues that are not eaten are more edible than in the wild relative.
- Polyploid plants have faster rates of multivariate climatic niche evolution than their diploid relatives. Relevant for domestication?
- An Initiative for the Study and Use of Genetic Diversity of Domesticated Plants and Their Wild Relatives. In Mexico.
- Population structure, relatedness and ploidy levels in an apple gene bank revealed through genotyping-by-sequencing. There’s a lot of inter-relatedness in the Danish collection.
- Biases induced by using geography and environment to guide ex situ conservation. “Although geographic and environmental diversity have proven to be reliable predictors of allele frequency differences and ecotypic differentiation across species ranges, they appear to be poor predictors of allelic diversity per se.” At least for 3 species.
- Examining the spectra of herbarium uses and users. Herbaria mostly used by taxonomists shock.
- Ancient herders enriched and restructured African grasslands. Shit. You heard me.