- The Food Systems Dashboard is a new tool to inform better food policy. 140 indicators from over 30 sources. Launching soon. Always good to have the data.
- Using Living Germplasm Collections to Characterize, Improve, and Conserve Woody Perennials. Nice review of the conservation of your favourite fruits in field genebanks (about 6% of the total number of crop accessions).
- Moving threatened plants: Story and practice. It sounds easy but it isn’t.
- Seed Germination after 30 Years Storage in Permafrost. Drying, drying, drying.
- Why Seed Physiology Is Important for Genebanking. Well, don’t you want to know why a seed lot is showing no or low germination after 30 years in permafrost? Or, alternatively, how long another one will continue to show good germination? Thought so.
- Habitat management alternatives for conservation forests in the temperate zone: Review, synthesis, and implications. 4 intervention alternatives: minimal, traditional, non-traditional and species-based. But we need long-term studies to really know what works best. Presumably longer than 30 years. This is an old paper, but it came up again because of this very thorough Twitter thread.
- High richness of exotic trees in tropical urban green spaces: Reproductive systems, fruiting and associated risks to native species. Go native. At least in Brazil. Someone should mash up with all the papers above.
- Mashes to Mashes, Crust to Crust. Presenting a novel microstructural marker for malting in the archaeological record. Look for cell wall breakdown in the grain’s aleurone layer.
- Powerful detection of polygenic selection and environmental adaptation in US beef cattle. Local adaptation is being eroded.
- Genomic-Led Potato Breeding for Increasing Genetic Gains: Achievements and Outlook. The future is true seed-propagated F1 diploid hybrids produced by crossing inbred diploid lines. Oh, plus gene editing here and there.
- Reply to: Evaluating two different models of peanut’s origin. Did the polyploidization event which gave rise to Arachis hypogaea occur ~450,000 years ago or <10,000 years ago? The authors who said the former double down.
- Lost and Found: Coffea stenophylla and C. affinis, the Forgotten Coffee Crop Species of West Africa. Let the interbreeding commence.
- The proportion of soil-borne pathogens increases with warming at the global scale. Be afraid.
Nibbles: 4H, Plague medicine, Maize origins, Rice spread, Seed saving
- Plant Health, Animal Health, Human Health and Environmental Health. What’s not to like?
- It used to be thought that tobacco and sugar could help with the above. Go figure.
- La Cuna del Maíz Mexicano.
- The same, but for rice in Asia.
- Backyard seed saving, and science.
Brainfood: Red Listing, Name checking, Diversification, New breeding, Seed data, Tea genome, Sampling strategies, Plum diversity, Fruit taste, Enset seeds, Maize & nutrition, Emilian grapes
- Caution Needed When Predicting Species Threat Status for Conservation Prioritization on a Global Scale. Automated rapid preliminary assessments are all well and good, but…
- WorldFlora: An R package for exact and fuzzy matching of plant names against the World Flora Online Taxonomic Backbone data. Automated rapid taxonomic name checking is all well and good, but…
- Diverse approaches to crop diversification in agricultural research. A review. Too diverse.
- Reinventing quantitative genetics for plant breeding: something old, something new, something borrowed, something BLUE. Retire additive variance.
- Nikolaeva et al.’s reference book on seed dormancy and germination. A treasure trove of data comes to light.
- The reference genome of tea plant and resequencing of 81 diverse accessions provide insights into genome evolution and adaptation of tea plants. Three groups, originating in SW China.
- Taxonomic similarity does not predict necessary sample size for ex situ conservation: a comparison among five genera. The old rule-of-thumb of 50 individuals was not all that far off after all.
- Genetic assessment of the pomological classification of plum Prunus domestica L. accessions sampled across Europe. 93 unique accessions out of 104 across 14 partners. Pretty good, no?
- Genome‐wide association of volatiles reveals candidate loci for blueberry flavor. Can predict taste from genetics.
- Germination ecology of wild and domesticated Ensete ventricosum: Evidence for maintenance of sexual reproductive capacity in a vegetatively propagated perennial crop. Seeds from domesticated material are not much different from the wild ones, except in germination niche.
- Mining maize diversity and improving its nutritional aspects within agro‐food systems. Biofortification is only the beginning.
- Genetic Characterization of Grapevine Varieties from Emilia-Romagna (Northern Italy) Discloses Unexplored Genetic Resources. About half (62) of the unique accessions (122) in a collection (178) are hardly known.
Nibbles: Altitude coffee, Coffee audio, Grape breeding, Borlaug, Hunan genebank, Game of Thrones genetics
- Growing coffee at 2400m could be the new normal.
- A history of coffee rust, thanks to Prof. Stuart McCook and WCR. Not much of a problem at 2400m.
- Oh and here’s a podcast on the history of coffee, an interview with the author of Coffeeland: “drinking coffee is a symptom of working for other people.” Lot of that lately: In Our Time, Eat This Podcast.
- Breeding grapes the smart way. That just seems to mean have access to a germplasm collection and choose your parents carefully.
- Which is what Borlaug did. Ok, plus he was lucky.
- Hunan gets a genebank. Prosperity ensues.
- Could there have been a Green Revolution in Westeros? With that genetics?
Nibbles: Taste edition
- The Stairway to Heaven of barley breeding for whiskey involves thinking about taste a bit more.
- Taste comes into maize breeding too.
- Jeremy talks taste with Margot Finn. Oh and there’s his latest newsletter.
- Farmerama podcasts on cereals in small-scale farming in the UK and beyond.
- Nothing small-scale about ancient farming in the Nile Valley.
- Make ancient Roman bread during lockdown. Then compare and contrast with the Egyptian kind?
- What did the Romans ever do for the rural economy of Britain anyway?
- Course on communicating the value of biodiversity. Wasn’t all the above enough?