Climate change

August 4, 2016

Agroforestry around the world

I’ve been looking for an excuse to play around with the Database of Places, Language, Culture and Environment (D-PLACE), which “contains cultural, linguistic, environmental and geographic information for over 1400 human ‘societies’”. It finally arrived today, in the form of a monumental study of carbon sequestration on farmland in Nature. The authors used remote sensing and fancy spatial modelling to work out the amount of tree cover, and hence the levels of biomass carbon, on agricultural land around the world. This is the global map they got for % tree cover in 2000 and 2010.

global tree cover

I was curious to see whether one could predict the areas of highest tree cover (or highest biomass C) from the much coarser data on agriculture that D-PLACE brings together from ethnographic studies. This is what the distribution of “major crop type” looks like, from D-PLACE.

agriculture-major-crop-type-map_1_

So the answer is no, I guess. It’s difficult to see any association between the amount of trees on farms and the main types of crops grown there, at least just by eyeballing the maps. There may be a hint of a preference for roots and tubers, but nothing really jumps out. I’ll keep playing though, there’s a whole range of cultural and ecological variables you can tweak.

July 22, 2016

Nibbles: Post-Roman Britain, World grapes, Ghana food security, Sheep stomachs, Alpaca trouble, CIMMYT genebank

Anglo-Saxons may not have dropped spelt as quickly as we thought.
The history of South Africa’s Kristaldruif grape. And where to find it.
It was colonization that messed up Ghana’s food security. Boris take note.
The brotherhood of manouls. They can keep it.
Alpaca farmers out in the cold.
CIMMYT annual report highlights the genebank.

July 19, 2016

Nibbles: African fruits, Old apple, Ancient barley, GRAIN study, Desertification, Biodiversity loss

ICRAF helps us understand little-understood African fruit trees.
The apple is pretty well understood, but this one important, 200-year-old tree is dying. Tissue culture to the rescue.
I see your 200-year-old-tree and I raise you 6000-year-old barley.
GRAIN takes aim at FTAs.
Desertification may not be a thing.
Biodiversity loss is, though, right?

July 11, 2016July 11, 2016

Brainfood: African land use, Sorghum double, NUS trifecta, Grape hybrids, Sunflower genome, Fungi, Tree dispersal

Africa’s Land System Trajectories 1980–2005. Biomass harvest increase has mainly come from expansion, save in the north and south.
Status, genetic diversity and gaps in sorghum germplasm from South Asia conserved at ICRISAT genebank. Still a lot of work to do.
Indirect estimates reveal the potential of transgene flow in the crop–wild–weed Sorghum bicolor complex in its centre of origin, Ethiopia. Could be relevant if transgenic sorghum were ever to be developed, and deployed in Ethiopia.
Are Neglected Plants the Food for the Future? The latest hope is the SDGs.
Potential of Kersting’s groundnut [Macrotyloma geocarpum (Harms) Maréchal & Baudet] and prospects for its promotion. Not enough mutations, apparently. Hope that won’t be an issue for the SDGs.
Back to the Future – Tapping into Ancient Grains for Food Diversity. They need to pay their way. Enough mutations, though, I guess.
Genomic ancestry estimation quantifies use of wild species in grape breeding. 11-76% cultivated ancestry across 60-odd hybrids, one third 50%. More back-crosses to cultivated needed.
Genome scans reveal candidate domestication and improvement genes in cultivated sunflower, as well as post-domestication introgression with wild relatives. Wild introgressions cover 10% of cultivated genome, and there is some in every modern cultivar tested.
MycoDB, a global database of plant response to mycorrhizal fungi. Monumental.
Contrasting effects of defaunation on aboveground carbon storage across the global tropics. Loss of dispersal animals bad for C sequestration, but only in African, American and South Asian forests.

July 6, 2016

Nibbles: Indian ag, West African rice, Interdependence day, Animal cryo, NASA, Biopiracy?

“…nor could they survive during inclement phases of a seasonal climate with a cheery hardiness the way our traditional varieties could.
“How does the centrality of rice production mediate social reality among the Jola?”
“When we say, ‘As American as apple pie,’ we think of baseball and hot dogs without ever considering not one ingredient in apple pie originates from what we call the United States.”
“The absolute minimum we should do is preserve tissues from these animals in such a way they can be thawed and grown again.”
“We’re botanists; we’re plant experts. Plus we had this humongous network of students, citizen scientists who were eager to do so much research that scientists at Kennedy simply didn’t have time to do.”
“It is essential that all countries join and ratify the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Nagoya Protocol.”