- Economic growth and biodiversity. “There is no fundamental conflict between economic growth and biodiversity.” Hmmmmn.
- Phytodiversity of temperate permanent grasslands: ecosystem services for agriculture and livestock management for diversity conservation. At heart, a plea for more interdisciplinary research.
- The Interaction between Seaweed Farming as an Alternative Occupation and Fisher Numbers in the Central Philippines. Alternative occupations don’t necessarily reduce over-harvesting.
- Genotyping of pedigreed apple breeding material with a genome-covering set of SSRs: trueness-to-type of cultivars and their parentages. Your papa aint your papa but your papa don’t know.
- The GCP molecular marker toolkit, an instrument for use in breeding food security crops. Marker-assisted selection is not yet used for Musa spp., coconut, lentils, millets, pigeonpea, sweet potato, and yam. For the other 12 crops, 214 molecular markers were found to be effectively used in association with 74 different traits.
- Ant diversity and bio-indicators in land management of lac insect agroecosystem in Southwestern China. When you’re managing for a wild insect, the wild species are secondary.
- Biofortification for combating ‘hidden hunger’ for iron. Swings and roundabouts apply, with a vengeance.
Brainfood: OSP adoption, Milk quality, Passport data quality, Historical collections, Sweet potato domestication, African veggies, Baobab diversity and domestication, Cassava diversity, Strawberry breeding, Barley GWA, Pest symbionts, Maize diversity and climate change
- A large-scale intervention to introduce orange sweet potato in rural Mozambique increases vitamin A intakes among children and women. Just 1 year of training worked just as well as a higher intensity intervention (3 years) in increasing OSP and vitamin A intake by younger children, older children and women, and decreasing prevalence of inadequate vitamin A intakes. OSP represented about half of all sweet potatoes consumed so I guess there was not complete replacement of local varieties.
- Composition of milk from minor dairy animals and buffalo breeds: a biodiversity perspective. There are significant interbreed and inter-species differences. Dromedary milk is closest to cow milk, mare and donkey milk maybe the healthiest, but moose milk is the one I’d like to try.
- Quality indicators for passport data in ex situ genebanks. That would be the genebanks in Eurisco. Verdict: not bad, but could do better. Most variation in quality is among institutes.
- Exploring the population genetics of genebank and historical landrace varieties. Old samples of dead seeds of 4 crops in Swedish museum jars more genetically variable than genebank accessions, but it’s not the genebank’s fault. And at least their seeds are still alive. Also no genetic correspondence between geographically matched museum and genebank samples.
- Combining chloroplast and nuclear microsatellites to investigate origin and dispersal of New World sweet potato landraces. Two areas of domestication, probably from a single wild progenitor species: lowland NW South America and lowland Central America/Caribbean. Genetic differences between these 2 genepools not accompanied by morphological differences, but then again nobody’s looked properly, and the current descriptors are useless anyway.
- The significance of African vegetables in ensuring food security for South Africa’s rural poor. Their huge potential is being thwarted by evil extensionists. Ok, but don’t we need to move beyond that?
- Comparative study on baobab fruit morphological variation between western and south-eastern Africa: opportunities for domestication. Hang on a minute, aren’t there a million factsheets about all this?
- Marriage exchanges, seed exchanges, and the dynamics of manioc diversity. Kinship structures determine cassava diversity patterns in Gabon. Matrilineal societies have more diversity.
- Interspecific hybridization of diploids and octoploids in strawberry. You get pentaploid and tetraploid plants.
- Genome wide association analyses for drought tolerance related traits in barley (Hordeum vulgare L.). Ok, deep breath. Over 200 accessions, both wild and cultivated, from 30 countries, so quite variable, but also structured. There were some QTLs that differed between dry and wet sites, but they didn’t explain much phenotypic variation, and they couldn’t be related to previous work. So GWA not much use, probably because of population structure. But couldn’t that have been predicted? And isn’t it possible to do something about structure in the analysis?
- Population genetics of beneficial heritable symbionts. Of insects, that is. Mostly proteobacteria. So my question is, could somehow attacking the symbionts form the basis of a pest management strategy?
- Projecting the effects of climate change on the distribution of maize races and their wild relatives in Mexico. Many races and wild relatives are predicted to shift in geographic distribution. Unless of course agronomy intervenes. Teocinte taxa should be collected.
Nibbles: Q&A, Zoopharmacognosy, Pigeonpea genome, Turkey, Wheat relatives
- Everyday agriculture mysteries solved.
- Other animals self-medicate too.
- Dueling pigeonpea genome sequencers? Who knew. Well spotted, James.
- I’m thankful for turkeys.
- And for the crop wild relatives in ICARDA’s genebank too.
Nibbles: Heirloom cattle, Saleb, Wheat protein, Dog domestication, Rooibos
- Why Highland Cattle? Because they look so cool, of course.
- It’s sahlib time!
- Australians find the extra gluten protein gene they need in Italian wheat.
- Where the hell was the dog domesticated?
- Rooibos tea is latest climate change victim.
Brainfood: Beans, Tree erosion, Climate space, Ecosystem services, Conservation, Pest management, Phenomics, Oca, Biodiversity research
- Seed Morphobiometry of Wild and Cultivated Taxa of Phaseolus L. (Fabaceae). Measurements confirm taxonomy; three big groups.
- Meta-Analysis of Susceptibility of Woody Plants to Loss of Genetic Diversity through Habitat Fragmentation. Pollination mechanism makes little difference.
- Running Out of Climate Space. Commentary on two paper in the same issue of Science; now, someone do the same for crops.
- The Future of Payments for Environmental Services. Any ag? Only in a negative way.
- Land, Food, and Biodiversity. Palm oil, pollution, pristine environments, population pressure.
- Avian Conservation Practices Strengthen Ecosystem Services in California Vineyards. Birds eat insects shock.
- Phenomics – technologies to relieve the phenotyping bottleneck. Just what we need for mo’ better characterization and evaluation.
- Diversification of the American bulb-bearing Oxalis (Oxalidaceae): Dispersal to North America and modification of the tristylous breeding system. Oca fans everywhere are agog.
- Global biodiversity research during 1900–2009: a bibliometric analysis. Somebody tell us; any ag?
Don’t forget the open Mendeley group for the papers we link to here.