- Assessing soil biodiversity potentials in Europe. The hotspots are the pastures and grasslands of Ireland, Slovenia and Sweden.
- Into the vault of the Vavilov wheats: old diversity for new alleles. VIR has diversity that’s not in CIMMYT and Australian cultivars. No word on where ICARDA fits in.
- Disembedding grain: Golden Rice, the Green Revolution, and heirloom seeds in the Philippines. There are parallel and competing rice worlds, which differ in how they valorize the local. Or, it could be argued, though not by the authors, demonize the “other.”
- Microsatellite DNA marker for molecular characterization of African maize (Zea mays L.) landraces. The Somali material is weird.
- Genetic architecture of cold tolerance in rice (Oryza sativa) determined through high resolution genome-wide analysis. 42 QTLs. Is that a lot? It seems like a lot.
- Humans as Agents in the Termination of the African Humid Period. Damn livestock. Back to hunting and gathering.
- Future climate effects on suitability for growth of oil palms in Malaysia and Indonesia. Well that’s ironic.
- Golden bananas in the field: elevated fruit pro-vitamin A from the expression of a single banana transgene. Gene from Fe’i biofortifies Cavendish. Now to do something about taste, texture, general suckiness etc etc.
Brainfood: ABS data, Spanish chestnuts, Norwegian CWR, Bambara genome, AnGR, Jakar sheep decline, Ashanti pig, Bactris biopiracy, Avocado core, Brassicacea phylogeny
- Access and Benefit Sharing under the Convention on Biological Diversity and Its Protocol: What Can Some Numbers Tell Us about the Effectiveness of the Regulatory Regime? That not much has happened. Between 1996 and 2015, out of the 14 countries with ABS legislation in force, 2 agreements for commercial researches per year.
- Genetic monitoring of traditional chestnut orchards reveals a complex genetic structure. The diversity in Spain is in the rootstocks.
- Climate change and national crop wild relative conservation planning. Well, for Norway anyway.
- Integrating genetic maps in bambara groundnut [Vigna subterranea (L) Verdc.] and their syntenic relationships among closely related legumes. Synteny to the rescue.
- Stakeholder involvement and the management of animal genetic resources across the world. Breeders’ associations and cooperatives are the key.
- Decline of Jakar sheep population in pastoral communities of Bhutan: A consequence of diminishing utility, alternate income opportunities and increasing challenges. It’s the fault of the caterpillar fungus.
- Origin and phylogenetic status of the local Ashanti Dwarf pig (ADP) of Ghana based on genetic analysis. It’s a bit of a mongrel.
- Genetic analysis identifies the region of origin of smuggled peach palm seeds. Genebank confirms biopiracy.
- Genetic Structure and Selection of a Core Collection for Long Term Conservation of Avocado in Mexico. 36 of 318 accessions recover 80% of total alleles, which seems a bit low.
- Genome sequencing supports a multi-vertex model for Brassiceae species. More than just “triangle of U”.
Brainfood: Wheat elements, Coconut movement, Wild lettuce, Pacific yams, Wild VIR oats, PREDICTS, Potato leaves, Perennial wheat, Wheat adoption
- Genetic Nature of Elemental Contents in Wheat Grains and Its Genomic Prediction: Toward the Effective Use of Wheat Landraces from Afghanistan. Only one significant marker, for Zn.
- Strategies for exchange of coconut germplasm in Brazil. Zygotic embryos in Petri dish containing Y3 culture medium without sucrose can last a couple of days without bacterial infection.
- Phylogenetic relationships within Lactuca L. (Asteraceae), including African species, based on chloroplast DNA sequence comparisons. The African species are probably not Lactuca at all.
- The Pacific yam (Dioscorea nummularia Lam.), an under-exploited tuber crop from Melanesia. It can be improved through crossing with itself, or with other species.
- Eco-geographical assessment of Avena L. wild species at the VIR herbarium and genebank collection. Some more collecting to be done.
- The database of the PREDICTS (Projecting Responses of Ecological Diversity In Changing Terrestrial Systems) project. Including 15,000 plants. No word on whether any of them Avena.
- Your Poison in My Pie—the Use of Potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) Leaves in Sakartvelo, Republic of Georgia, Caucasus, and Gollobordo, Eastern Albania. Only used as first vegetable in spring in isolated high mountain areas in the southern Balkans.
- Toward a taxonomic definition of perennial wheat: a new species ×Tritipyrum aaseae described. Not entirely clear why naming it as a new species is necessary, but it’s still pretty cool.
- Dynamics of variety change on wheat farms in Pakistan: A duration analysis. For marginal farmers, it’s about yield, for others, quality. No word on how perennial wheat might do.
Brainfood: CO2 & domestication, Amaranth double, Nordic apple double, Chinese alfalfa, Sheep double, Moroccan lentils, SE Asian veggies, Cattle relative
- Yield responses of wild C3 and C4 crop progenitors to subambient CO2: a test for the role of CO2 limitation in the origin of agriculture. It was tough for CWR in the last glacial period, better afterwards.
- Analysis of phylogenetic relationships and genome size evolution of the Amaranthus genus using GBS indicates the ancestors of an ancient crop. Three cultivated species derived from one wild relative in different geographic regions.
- Genomic and phenotypic evidence for an incomplete domestication of South American grain amaranth (Amaranthus caudatus). Maybe because of continued geneflow with the CWR.
- Unravelling genetic diversity and cultivar parentage in the Danish apple gene bank collection. Only 10% duplicates among 448 accessions, many unique.
- Redundancies and Genetic Structure among ex situ Apple Collections in Norway Examined with Microsatellite Markers. 14 synonyms among 181 accessions. No word on the overlap between Danish and Norwegian collections.
- The Current Status, Problems, and Prospects of Alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.) Breeding in China. 77 registered cultivars for the whole of China seems very few.
- Assessment of genetic diversity and structure of major sheep breeds from Pakistan. They cluster based on use rather than geographic origin.
- Mapping molecular diversity of indigenous goat genetic resources of Asia. Chinese goats are different.
- On-farm Conservation of Zaer Lentil Landrace in Context of Climate Change and Improved Varieties Competition. People like everything about the landrace except its yield.
- Conservation of Indigenous Vegetables from a Hotspot in Tropical Asia: What Did We Learn from Vavilov? Not much, it seems.
- Assessment of genetic diversity of Mithun (Bos frontalis) population in Bhutan using microsatellite DNA markers. Also known as gayal.
Brainfood: New communities, New journal, New sustainability indicators, New rice yields, New chickpeas, New tree map, Old barley, New wheat dataset, New oat “core”, New ABS guide, New threats
- Mapping climatic mechanisms likely to favour the emergence of novel communities. New climate combinations are rare (3.4% of evaluated cells), but mean displacement moderately rapid (3.7 km per decade) and divergence high (>60° for 67% of cells). What will all this mean for CWR? As many are ruderals, maybe nothing?
- Why biodiversity matters. Inaugural issue of Nature Ecology & Evolution. Not much on agricultural biodiversity, alas.
- Bridging the practitioner-researcher divide: Indicators to track environmental, economic, and sociocultural sustainability of agricultural commodity production. Again, no surprise that biodiversity is hardly considered by either researchers or practitioners in monitoring sustainability, though that’s not the point of the paper.
- Plausible rice yield losses under future climate warming. More even than IFPRI thought: −8.3 ± 1.4% per degree.
- Recent breeding programs enhanced genetic diversity in both desi and kabuli varieties of chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.). But from a low baseline?
- EU-Forest, a high-resolution tree occurrence dataset for Europe. Want European tree diversity, go to the Pyrenees.
- Farmer fidelity in the Canary Islands revealed by ancient DNA from prehistoric seeds. New barley same as old barley.
- Evaluation of 19,460 Wheat Accessions Conserved in the Indian National Genebank to Identify New Sources of Resistance to Rust and Spot Blotch Diseases. 45 accessions had known resistance genes against all three rusts as well as a QTL for spot blotch resistance.
- Promoting the Use of Common Oat Genetic Resources through Diversity Analysis and Core Collection Construction. Interesting, but 21 out of 91 is hardly a core collection.
- Utilization of genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge in academic research. A good practice guide for access and benefit-sharing. Well there’s no excuse now.
- Identifying species threat hotspots from global supply chains. Global maps of which countries, and which commodities they consume, most endanger threatened species around the world.