- Genomic variation in Helianthus: learning from the past and looking to the future. Paleopolyploid events, transposable elements, chromosomal rearrangements. Is there anything these plants don’t have? But then these guys would say that, wouldn’t they.
- Assessment of genetic diversity and conservation priority of Omani local chickens using microsatellite markers. Unsurprisingly, the Dhofar (far S) and Musadam (far N) populations are the most different. I collected crops in both places way back when, and I bet you it would be the same for things like alfalfa and sorghum. Or cowpea, which brings me to…
- Just Eat Peas and Dance: Field Peas (Vigna unguiculata) and Food Security in the Ozark Highlands, U.S. Still important after all these years. (I suspect Gary Nabhan would have predicted this, but I can’t even get an abstract of his paper Food Security, Biodiversity and Human Health: Ethnobiology as a Predictive Science.)
- Amerindian Agriculture in an Urbanising Amazonia (Rio Negro, Brazil). Traditional systems survive move to cities just fine.
- Human-Induced Movement of Wild Food Plant Biodiversity Across Farming Systems is Essential to Ensure Their Availability. Just like in Brazil, people move wild species to their homegardens in Thailand too.
- Urban home food gardens in the Global North: research traditions and future directions. Uhm, could maybe Brazilian and Thai homegarden studies guide similar work in the North… Yep, and here’s how.
- Priorities for Research and Development in the Management of Pollination Services for Agricultural Development in Africa. Old and traditional may not mean weak and out of date, but change gonna come anyway.
- Social and Ecological Drivers of the Economic Value of Pollination Services Delivered to Coffee in Central Uganda. No wait, change here already.
- Use it or lose it: measuring trends in wild species subject to substantial use. Wild species which are being used by people tend to be doing better than those that are not. Yeah, but settle down, the data are not that great.
- An assessment of wheat yield sensitivity and breeding gains in hot environments. The successes have been coming from the lower potential material, not the elite of the elite.
- Adaptation Patterns and Yield Stability of Durum Wheat Landraces to Highland Cold Rainfed Areas of Iran. It’s not always about heat. Anyway, in either case, thank goodness for diverse worldwide germaplasm collections.
- Karyological and genome size insights into cardoon (Cynara cardunculus L., Asteraceae) in Tunisia. The wild populations from Sicily and Tunisia are closest to the crop.
- Ex situ conservation of underutilised fruit tree species: establishment of a core collection for Ficus carica L. using microsatellite markers (SSRs). Fancy maths allows Spanish researchers to recover all microsats within a collection of 300 figs in only about 10% of the accessions. So who gives a fig for the rest, right?
- Assessing the genetic diversity of Spanish Allium cepa landraces for onion breeding using microsatellite markers. Alas, all the Spanish Allium cepa landraces fall in the same cluster, so a core could be tricky. These guys really know their onions.
- Biodiversity of non-Saccharomyces yeasts in distilleries of the La Mancha region (Spain). Gonna need some booze to wash down the figs and onions, right?
Nibbles: Peanut history, Capsicum history, Sequencing history, Globalized rice, Sustainable salmon, Women & agriculture, Climate change & yields, Forest conservation, Bumblebee conservation
- Lots to catch up on, strap yourselves in.
- The South’s original peanut is the Carolina African runner, and it is in need of help.
- Saudi Aramco World does its usual class number, this time on chili peppers. And, in a similar vein, more than you probably want to know about Tabasco sauce.
- The evolution of DNA sequencing. In 76 slides, no less, but worth it.
- Japanese rice grown in Uruguay for U.S. hipsters. Gotta love globalization.
- Sustainable salmon at long last?
- Mind the gender gap.
- Latest modelling suggests 2% crop yield decline per decade, assuming modest 2 degree C rise in temperatures by 2050. The original paper. We are so screwed. (Well, Uruguayan rice growers and U.S. hipsters aren’t, not so much.) No, really. No, wait…
- You know, if we need supercomputers to tell us that forest corridors are good for seed dispersal, it’s no wonder we can’t stop global warming. Just kidding, I think it’s great that supercomputers get a break from climate models every once in a while. Oh, and isolated trees not entirely useless either.
- Native wild bumblebees also in trouble, not just honeybees.
- So did you miss us? Even more tomorrow to clear the decks.
Brainfood: Intercropping, Biodiversity loss, Fisheries evolution, Pigeonpea diversity, Upland framing, Alpine agroforestry, Italian core tomatoes, Madagascar adaptation
- Is there an associational resistance of winter pea–durum wheat intercrops towards Acyrthosiphon pisum Harris? Yep. Which is important for organic systems, apparently, because they are martyrs to this aphid.
- Interactions between climate change and land use change on biodiversity: attribution problems, risks, and opportunities. Interactions make things complicated, but fortunately there are some pretty simple things you can do that address multiple drivers of biodiversity loss. Including for crop wild relatives?
- What can selection experiments teach us about fisheries-induced evolution? Harvesting can lead to rapid genetic change and lower fisheries yields.
- Genetic Diversity and Demographic History of Cajanus spp. Illustrated from Genome-Wide SNPs. Asia species different to Australian. Madhya Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh centres of origin and domestication. More diversity within populations and landraces than between states.
- Mixed Grazing Systems Benefit both Upland Biodiversity and Livestock Production. Livestock grazing management on upland farms influences economic outputs, biodiversity and greenhouse gas emissions, all at once. Mixed upland grazing systems consisting of sheep and cattle is your win-win-win. Heirloom breeds no help, alas. Because they don’t count as biodiversity, I guess.
- What plant traits tell us: Consequences of land-use change of a traditional agro-forest system on biodiversity and ecosystem service provision. Both abandonment and intensification of traditionally managed larch agroforestry in the Alps are bad.
- Genetic diversity in Italian tomato landraces: Implications for the development of a core collection. You may need up to 25% of a southern Italian collection of open-pollinated tomato landraces to get a decent core. But since the collection is only 75 landraces anyway…
- Extreme vulnerability of smallholder farmers to agricultural risks and climate change in Madagascar. Main coping strategy seems to be eating less food. And moving from rice to cassava, beans and wild yams. Scary.
Nibbles: Resilience conference, Farmer conservation, Goat smell, grape genes
- If you were thinking of registering for Resilience 2014 in Montpellier, you better get your skates on. It closes on 10 March.
- UK pays farmers to conserve biodiversity – but not crop biodiversity.
- Eau de goat is “citrus-scented” shock.
- A web-based resource to understand the 30,000 genes that make grapes.
Brainfood: Turkey genome, Nigerian livestock conservation, Seed viability, Peruvian pepper marketing, Wild D wheats, Rationalizing collections, English heirloom sheep, Model potatoes, Sweet potato leaves
- Next-generation sequencing strategies for characterizing the turkey genome. It never ends, does it. Meanwhile, we patiently await our jetpacks.
- Community-Based Management of Animal Genetic Resources (AnGR): Constraints and Prospects of AnGR Conservation in the Tropics. Best thing to do is improve the local breeds through village-level schemes. In Nigeria, that is.
- Comparison of seed viability among 42 species stored in a genebank. 80% loss in melon seed viability over 10 years sounds a bit high to me.
- Market Participation and Agro-Biodiversity Loss: The Case of Native Chili Varieties in the Amazon Rainforest of Peru. Selling to local retailers good for diversity, selling to wholesalers not so much.
- Stem and leaf rust resistance in wild relatives of wheat with D genome (Aegilops spp.). They all have it.
- Assessing rice and wheat germplasm collections using similarity groups. You can go quite far in identifying possible duplicates just with. passport data.
- Genetic Distinctiveness of the Herdwick Sheep Breed and Two Other Locally Adapted Hill Breeds of the UK. Close to each other geographically and ecologically, but quite genetically distinct. No word on whether village-level improvement necessary for their continued existence.
- Managing Potato Biodiversity to Cope with Frost Risk in the High Andes: A Modeling Perspective. Fancy maths confirms better to grow mixtures. Andean farmers nonplussed.
- Sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas L.) leaves as nutritional and functional foods. But they taste like shit. Just kidding, they’re good and good for you.