- An encomium for CIMMYT Down Under.
- A paean for the Albemarle pippin. That’s an apple.
- A threnody for the Italian olive.
- An honour for British mulberries.
- A tribute to USDA watermelon genomics.
- An auto-panegyric from BASF. Yeah, I know auto is Latin, sue me.
- A celebration of millet-loving chefs.
- A reflection on the origin of that cacao origin paper, by the author.
Brainfood: Climate resilient crops, Food system limits, Phenotyping double, Sweet sorghum, Melon history, Paying4data, Beercalypse, Village chickens, Breeding 4.0, European maize, Brachiaria ROI
- Are agricultural researchers working on the right crops to enable food and nutrition security under future climates? No. Well, kinda.
- Options for keeping the food system within environmental limits. You need to pursue several. Including those discussed above, presumably.
- Deep Learning for Plant Stress Phenotyping: Trends and Future Perspectives. 3D CNN architectures applied to hyperspectral imaging is the future, apparently.
- Dealing with multi‐source and multi‐scale information in plant phenomics: the ontology‐driven Phenotyping Hybrid Information System. You’re going to need a fancy system to keep track to the data from the above.
- Sweet Sorghum Originated through Selection of Dry, a Plant-specific NAC Transcription Factor Gene. Could be applied to other cereals?
- Repeated domestication of melon (Cucumis melo) in Africa and Asia and a new close relative from India. Once was not enough.
- Paying for Digital Information: Assessing Farmers Willingness to Pay for a Digital Agriculture and Nutrition Service in Ghana. Cheaper is better. There’s a shocker. Oh, and women are more careful with their money.
- Decreases in global beer supply due to extreme drought and heat. 32% decrease in consumption in Argentina, 193% increase in price in Ireland. But clearly the authors have never heard of sorghum beer.
- The role of local adaptation in sustainable production of village chickens. Location, location, location.
- On the Road to Breeding 4.0: Unraveling the Good, the Bad, and the Boring of Crop Quantitative Genomics. Beyond breeding on predicted phenotypes, it’s sort of breeding for predicted environments.
- Maize yields over Europe may increase in spite of climate change, with an appropriate use of the genetic variability of flowering time. You don’t even need Breeding 1.0, if you deploy existing diversity optimally.
- Got forages? Understanding potential returns on investment in Brachiaria spp. for dairy producers in Eastern Africa. Definitely worth a flutter.
Brainfood: Emmer & drought, European legumes, Sainfoin, Alpine nomads, American domestication, Cereal domestication, Tree plantations, Garlic breeding, African veggies, African staple breeding, Sugarcane genome
- Genetic contribution of emmer wheat (Triticum dicoccon Schrank) to heat tolerance of bread wheat. It’s considerable.
- Warm Season Grain Legume Landraces from the South of Europe for Germplasm Conservation and Genetic Improvement. Ok ex situ, in situ not so much.
- Onobrychis viciifolia; a comprehensive literature review of its history, etymology, taxonomy, genetics, agronomy and botany. The fall and rise of an orphan forage.
- Interstitial but Resilient: Nomadic Shepherds in Piedmont (Northwest Italy) Amidst Spatial and Social Marginalization. Truly a vale of tears.
- Parallel vs. Convergent Evolution in Domestication and Diversification of Crops in the Americas. Still can’t tell which is more prevalent.
- Whole-Genome Analysis of Candidate genes Associated with Seed Size and Weight in Sorghum bicolor Reveals Signatures of Artificial Selection and Insights into Parallel Domestication in Cereal Crops. 63 seed size genes selected during domestication in sorghum, a significant number of which in maize and rice also.
- A systematic review of the socio-economic impacts of large-scale tree plantations, worldwide. Not a good idea.
- Recent Advances in Sexual Propagation and Breeding of Garlic. Restoration of flowering ability has done wonders for diversity. With diversity poster goodness.
- Core collection of two important indigenous vegetables; Gboma eggplant (Solanum macrocarpon L.) and Jute mallow (Corchorus olitorius L.) in Africa: An important step for exploitation of existing germplasm and development of improved cultivars. Interesting, of course, but I wouldn’t call these core collections. But I won’t complain again if it gets the stuff used more.
- Measuring the impact of plant breeding on sub-Saharan African staple crops. High ROI for the usual suspects. How about the traditional veggies et al., though. Anyway, do readers want more on this paper? Let me know in the comments if you want a full post on the main findings.
- Allele-defined genome of the autopolyploid sugarcane Saccharum spontaneum L. A lot of the good stuff is in wild-cultivated rearranged chromosomes.
Brainfood: Yak diversity, Wheat pre-breeding, Gene conservation, Genome conservation, Wild lentils, Biodiversity definition, Conservation reviews, Bananas treble, Cotton diversity, Pollinator health, Aurochs DNA, USDA cucumbers, Physalis editing, Tomato re-domestication
- Identification and diversity of Y‐chromosome haplotypes in Qinghai yak populations. 2 paternal lineages but weak genetic structure among the 9 populations and 3 breeds.
- Development and characterization of Triticum turgidum–Aegilops umbellulata amphidiploids. A bridge to bread wheat.
- Variation in total root length and root diameter of wild and cultivated lentil grown under drought and re-watered conditions. Some wild species have longer total root length under drought stress than crops. No word on whether bridges needed.
- The Peril of Gene-Targeted Conservation. Only warranted when said targeted genes are important for viability and have large phenotypic effects. Suspect crop breeders (see above) may beg to differ.
- Conservation of biodiversity in the genomics era. Need to target the whole genome, I guess.
- “What Matters Is Species Richness” — High School Students’ Understanding of the Components of Biodiversity. Must try harder.
- What Conservation Does. The right things, more or less, and not at all badly, so stop complaining.
- Absence of evidence for the conservation outcomes of systematic conservation planning around the globe: a systematic map. It’s not evidence of absence of conservation outcomes, but still. Maybe should get together with the above?
- East African diploid and triploid bananas: a genetic complex transported from South-East Asia. All introduced by Austronesian people, probably via Madagascar, but no longer to be found in Asia (much).
- Molecular and Cytogenetic Study of East African Highland Banana. Focuses on one of the 4 groups discussed in the above (Mutika). All derived from maybe a single hybrid clone.
- Sources of resistance to Xanthomonas campestris pv. musacearum, the causal agent of banana Xanthomonas wilt. Why bother with the above, you ask?
- Genetic diversity of day-neutral converted landrace Gossypium hirsutum L. accessions. Eastern and western hemisphere groups, with US varieties closer to the eastern.
- Crop Domestication Alters Floral Reward Chemistry With Potential Consequences for Pollinator Health. In highbush blueberry, domestication has decreased the chemical diversity of nectar and pollen, possibly increasing infection by bee gut pathogens.
- Ancient DNA analysis of Scandinavian medieval drinking horns and the horn of the last aurochs bull. Aurochs interbred with domestic cattle way back. In other news, you can extract aurochs DNA from medieval Scandinavian drinking horns.
- The USDA cucumber (Cucumis sativus L.) collection: genetic diversity, population structure, genome-wide association studies, and core collection development. Three groups, more or less: India, E. Asia, and everything else. A third of 1200 accessions recovers 96% of variation.
- Rapid improvement of domestication traits in an orphan crop by genome editing. Tomato orthologues in groundcherry mutated for more fruits and better plant architecture.
- Domestication of wild tomato is accelerated by genome editing. Or you can do it with the actual tomato genes. As suggested a couple of years ago.
Nibbles: CRS, Finger millet breeding, Amazonian cacao, Alelo & Genesys, Ag origins double, USDA genebank
- Q&A with Susan Bragdon of Seeds for All on the importance of agrobiodiversity and small farmers.
- Going wild for finger millet in Kenya.
- There’s maybe a previously unknown variety of cacao.
- Brazilian germplasm collection data online.
- A very Fertile Crescentic view of agricultural origins.
- Antidote to above.
- Ft Collins USDA genebank in the (local) news.