- Herbarium specimens reveal the footprint of climate change on flowering trends across north-central North America. 2.4 days per °C.
- Carotenoid profiling in tubers of different potato (Solanum sp) cultivars: Accumulation of carotenoids mediated by xanthophyll esterification. 60 cultivars, including landraces, fall into 3 main groups. Need to keep an eye out for those xanthophyll esters.
- Buckwheat honeys: Screening of composition and properties. In other news, there is monofloral buckwheat honey in Italy and E. Europe. But not as much as the producers say.
- Using geotagged photographs and GIS analysis to estimate visitor flows in natural areas. Very cool, but try as I might I cannot think of an application in agricultural biodiversity conservation. Maybe you can.
- Quiet sustainability: Fertile lessons from Europe’s productive gardeners. Food gardening in Europe’s cities is not about an “urban peasantry” putting essential food on the table. And it’s not about expousing a yuppie alternative lifestyle. It’s just about the sheer fun of it.
- Introgression and the fate of domesticated genes in a wild mammal population. Coat colour polymorphisms in wild Soay sheep was caused by admixture with more modern breed 150 years ago.
- Catholicism and Conservation: The Potential of Sacred Natural Sites for Biodiversity Management in Central Italy. So apparently there’s a “common view that Christianity is anti-naturalistic.” Well, it’s wrong. What’s Christianity’s view of agrobiodiversity, I wonder?
- Comparative transcriptomics reveals patterns of selection in domesticated and wild tomato. DNA differences due to selection at 50 genes, transcription differences at thousands.
Brainfood: Pear history, Markets & biodiversity, Conserving small populations, Niche & range, Sustainability in the US, Production forecasts, Sheep differences
- The Pear in History, Literature, Popular Culture, and Art. An oldie, but worth reading just for the analogy between the pear connoisseur and the opera aficionado.
- Effects of market integration on agricultural biodiversity in a tropical frontier. Darien, Panama. Roads are bad for crop diversity, of the interspecific kind at least.
- Conservation genetics and the persistence and translocation of small populations: bighorn sheep populations as examples. Bigger is definitely better.
- Niche breadth predicts geographical range size: a general ecological pattern. Specialist species tend to have small range sizes, making them doubly vulnerable. Trebly so if they have small populations too, I guess (see above).
- Sustainability and innovation in staple crop production in the US Midwest. …depends on on-farm diversity, and here’s three things you can do to promote it, because it ain’t getting any better: collect statistics, redirect subsidies, and think beyond peak yield. Ah but wait, you may have to change the IP system. As you were.
- Yield Trends Are Insufficient to Double Global Crop Production by 2050. For rice, wheat, maize and soybean, current rates of yield increase, if they continue, which I suppose is a big if, what with climate change and all, would mean about 50% production increases by 2050, rather than the supposedly needed 100%.
- Genome-Wide Genetic Diversity and Differentially Selected Regions among Suffolk, Rambouillet, Columbia, Polypay, and Targhee Sheep. Suffolk is different from the others, which we already knew were related. Ah, but now we know where exactly in the genome the differences are.
Dog domestication controversy growls away
Awesome, by @ewencallaway RT @mammuthus: Nice summary of recent research into dog evolution http://t.co/sZ92QM5wt4 (h/t @paleogenomics)
— Ed Yong is not here (@edyong209) June 18, 2013
Scientists investigating the transformation of wolves into dogs are behaving a bit like the animals they study, as disputes roil among those using genetics to understand dog domestication.
Sound familiar? Remember the chicken story? It’s a genomic jungle out there.
LATER: A jungle that goes way back.
Brainfood: Maize rhizosphere, Climate change vulnerability, Heterosis squared, African forests, Sequencing genebanks
- Diversity and heritability of the maize rhizosphere microbiome under field conditions. There’s a lot of it, but only measured in inbreds so far. One wonders about landraces.
- The Vulnerability of Biodiversity to Rapid Climate Change. We should focus on increasing the adaptive capacity of species and ecosystems, but predictions are difficult, especially about the future.
- The Capsella rubella genome and the genomic consequences of rapid mating system evolution. Sex is better with two.
- Progress Toward Understanding Heterosis in Crop Plants & Genomic and epigenetic insights into the molecular bases of heterosis. It’s the allelic interactions, stupid. Now to make use of this.
- Deforestation in an African biodiversity hotspot: Extent, variation and the effectiveness of protected areas. Protected areas have worked for the evergreen forest, but don’t forget the miombo! Would be intersting to know what this all means for crop wild relatives.
- Comprehensive genotyping of the USA national maize inbred seed bank. Ladies and gentlemen, I have seen the future of genebanks.
Nibbles: Hot peppers, Job, Hippy scientist, Seed law considered, Old seed, Rice and recovery
- Will the world ever tire of hot pepper stories?
- Would you like to work at the Millennium Seed Bank?
- The Guardian hymns Howard-Yana Shapiro, the “vegan hippy scientist” who wants to open orphan crop genomes.
- Patrick links to Arche Noah’s response to the new EU seed laws.
- Laws that don’t bother Gene Logsdon, planter of old seed.
- IRRI claims that rice seed aids Bangladesh’s cyclone recovery, but frankly, I can barely read it.
