- 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.
Brainfood: Genomics trifecta, Ex/in situ, Oat disease resistance, Drying beads, Biodiversity assessment, Maize models, Trees & nutrition, NTFP, Fortification
- Maintaining Food Value of Wild Rice (Zizania palustris L.) Using Comparative Genomics. Cultivated cultivated rice assists in the breeding of cultivated wild rice. If you see what I mean.
- Mining the Genus Solanum for Increasing Disease Resistance. The key is distinguishing the alleles from the paralogs.
- Genetic Dissection of Aluminium Tolerance in the Triticeae. And the trifecta from the Genomics of Plant Genetic Resources book. Rye has most, barley least, and we know how they do it.
- Dual Threats of Imperiled Native Agroecosystems and Climate Change to World Food Security: Genomic Perspectives. Genebanks are necessary but not sufficient.
- Identification of new sources of resistance to powdery mildew in oat. In the wild species, natch.
- Optimum ratios of zeolite seed Drying Beads® to dry rice seeds for genebank storage. 1:1 by weight.
- The Biodiversity Forecasting Toolkit: Answering the ‘how much’, ‘what’, and ‘where’ of planning for biodiversity persistence. Yeah, but will it work with agricultural biodiversity?
- How do various maize crop models vary in their responses to climate change factors? Enough to make using an ensemble best, not enough to doubt that temperature will be the main factor affecting yields by the end of the century.
- Dietary quality and tree cover in Africa. More trees, more dietary diversity, more fruit & veg consumption, though up to a point.
- The importance of local forest benefits: Economic valuation of Non-Timber Forest Products in the Eastern Arc Mountains in Tanzania. $42 million a year, spread over 2000 households.
- Fortification: new findings and implications. It’s worked in the US for some nutrients, but not for others, and in some case we don’t understand how and why. We know in other cases it is unlikely to work. Nutritionists have to work together with plant breeders. And, we would add, the agricultural sector in general.