DNA – Page 43 – Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

June 9, 2014June 9, 2014

Nibbles: Genomes galore: beans, sheep, citrus, Breeding from “weeds”, Talks, Old wheat, Adaptation, Popped sorghum, Managing BXW

Can’t move for genomes today.

First off, Phaseolus vulgaris.
Next up, sheep: one genome, three stories:

And citrus diversity: “Citrus has incestuous genes. Nothing is pure.”

But there is other stuff too.

How weeds could feed billions. Not by eating them but by breeding from them. Are crop wild relatives really all weeds?
TED talks on biodiversity. I suppose we should be grateful for 1.5 out of 30.
A New York baker has been exploring tumminia wheat. Without telling us.
Adaptation to climate change hardly worth it, according to econ 101.
So you want to make your own popped sorghum? All you need is a microwave and a paper bag.
ProMusa reports on an easier and better way for banana farmers to manage Xanthomonas wilt.

June 8, 2014June 8, 2014

Nibbles: ICARDA barley, Trade wars, Aquaculture risks, Local vs organic, Chicken genetics, Dog origins, SSEx health, Diversity loss

ICARDA DG breaks down barley research. Surprisingly without mentioning the germplasm collection.
Great interactive infographic of all the world’s trade disputes, many of which of course involve agricultural products.
Intensifying aquaculture comes with some risks.
Local doesn’t mean organic. And vice versa.
“Chickens are polymaths.” A new project will scratch around into the genetics of that.
Only Alaskan dog breeds are truly American.
Seed Savers Exchange busy making their seed happy.
Forest and language diversity go together. Literally.

June 7, 2014June 7, 2014

Nibbles: Neolithic farmers, Minoan DNA, Cretan food, Olive history book, Organic dreams, Fairtrade experiment, Value chains, Jamaican breadfruit exports, Climate smart successes

Neolithic farmers spread into Europe by sea.
And it looks like the ones who got to Crete eventually gave rise to the Minoans.
And ate food not unlike what Cretans ate up to a hundred years ago.
Well of course the olive is important to all that.
Ten thousand years later, we find that organic is an impossible dream.
And Fairtrade may or may not work.
But value chains will make you free. Although that’s easier said than done.
And you have to be climate-smart to boot. Really, who’d be a farmer, in the Neolithic or now.

June 6, 2014June 6, 2014

Nibbles: Banana to SPC, Urban livestock, Ag & nutrition, Nutrition data, PPB, Brazil nut certification, Indian beer, Sheep genome

Banana germplasm gets around.
Kenyan urban cows get around. Not local breeds, though…
Can agriculture deliver both resilience and nutrition? FAO thinks so.
Yeah, about that: we’re gonna need better data.
Participatory varietal selection in Nepal. Not as novel as made out here, surely.
Brazil nut gets it all.
Today’s beer story comes from India.
Sorting the sheep from the goats, the molecular way.

June 2, 2014May 6, 2014

Brainfood: Lima been diversity, Cassava diversity, Urban soils, Oil palm seed supply, Ginger ploidy, Certification, Gene flow, Maize & drought, Coffee seed storage, Pathogens on seeds, Wheat breeding, Intensification tradeoffs

Genetic structure within the Mesoamerican gene pool of wild Phaseolus lunatus (Fabaceae) from Mexico as revealed by microsatellite markers: Implications for conservation and the domestication of the species. Three, not just two, genepools.
Farmer’s Knowledge on Selection and Conservation of Cassava (Manihot esculanta) Genetic Resources in Tanzania. Farmers exchange landraces, some of which are widespread and others more restricted in distribution. Only about 10% are new, but some have been lost.
Urban cultivation in allotments maintains soil qualities adversely affected by conventional agriculture. You can farm in cities without killing the soil.
Social institutional dynamics of seed system reliability: the case of oil palm in Benin. Farmers are being increasingly screwed.
Natural occurrence of mixploid ginger (Zingiber officinale Rosc.) in China and its morphological variations. About a quarter of plants have both diploid and tetraploid cells, and they look different; no plants are wholly tetraploid. Weird.
Conserving biodiversity through certification of tropical agroforestry crops at local and landscape scales. Certifying the coffee or cacao farm only is usually not enough.
Is gene flow the most important evolutionary force in plants? May well be, which means that conservationists, among others, need to take it into account. Fortunately, they have the data-rich genomic tools to do so.
Greater Sensitivity to Drought Accompanies Maize Yield Increase in the U.S. Midwest. It’s agronomy’s fault.
Desiccation and storage studies on three cultivars of Arabica coffee. Yeah, not orthodox. Didn’t we know that already though?
Seed-borne fungi on genebank-stored cruciferous seeds from Japan. There’s lots of them. And something needs to be done about it.
Delivering drought tolerance to those who need it; from genetic resource to cultivar. In making synthetic wheat, you can fiddle with the AB as well as the D genomes, but then you have to phenotype properly under target stress conditions, and have a way of tailoring the resulting global public goods to local needs.
The Effects of Agricultural Technological Progress on Deforestation: What Do We Really Know? Not as much as we thought we did.
Large-scale trade-off between agricultural intensification and crop pollination services. Intensification bad for pollinators in France, so bad for agricultural productivity and stability.
Achieving production and conservation simultaneously in tropical agricultural landscapes. Intensification good for smallholder income in Uganda, bad for birds. If only birds were pollinators.