Domestication

December 5, 2023December 4, 2023

Eat this maize podcast

Jeremy’s latest podcast is out, and it’s a doozie. Plus it saves me adding it to the next Brainfood, which is coming soon, don’t worry people.

Modern maize has long been a puzzle. Unlike other domesticated grasses, there didn’t seem to be any wild species that looked like the modern cereal and from which farmers could have selected better versions. For a long time, botanists weren’t even sure which continent maize was from. That seemed to be settled with the discovery in lowland Mexico of teosinte, a wild and weedy relative of maize. But there was a problem. A lot of the later genetic work to understand the transformation of teosinte into maize found remnants of different types of teosinte.

Jeffrey Ross-Ibarra and his colleagues have sorted out the story, which is now more complicated, better understood, and offers some hope for future maize breeding. Their paper was published last week in Science.

November 7, 2023November 7, 2023

Nibbles: Fonio beer, ICRISAT seed kits, Dark Emu, China potatoes, 3D genebank, Bioculture, Microbiome genebank, Nutrition, Michigan kiwi

You can make beer from fonio.
ICRISAT providing Niger and Chad with sorghum and pearl millet seed kits. Fonio next?
No, Echinochloa turneriana next. In Australia. I love the Dark Emu Hypothesis, and not least for its name.
CIP is helping China improve its potato crop.
Won’t be long before China’s genebank has 3D images of all its holdings. I’d love to see the potatoes.
Want to see the earliest known site of domestication of teosinte?
UK builds first crop biome cryobank.
How the private sector can help with a more nutrition-sensitive agriculture. Should it want to.
You can grow kiwi in Michigan. Should you want to.

October 23, 2023October 20, 2023

Brainfood: Maize, Chickpea, CWR, Canola, Coconut, Avocado, Eggplant, Carrot, Watermelon, Citrus, Potato, Pearl millet, Roses

A New Methodological Approach to Detect Microcenters and Regions of Maize Genetic Diversity in Different Areas of Lowland South America. Multiple disciplines identify 4 microcenters of maize diversity in the lowlands of South America.
Historical Routes for Diversification of Domesticated Chickpea Inferred from Landrace Genomics. Genomics identifies both Indian and Middle Eastern traces in Ethiopian chickpeas.
Crop wild relatives in Lebanon: mapping the distribution of Poaceae and Fabaceae priority taxa for conservation planning. Spatial analysis identifies a couple of key ex situ and in situ conservation areas for CWR in Lebanon.
Analysis of gaps in rapeseed (Brassica napus L.) collections in European genebanks. Spatial analysis identifies a few key ex situ and in situ conservation areas for rapeseed wild relatives in Europe.
Genomic and population characterization of a diversity panel of dwarf and tall coconut accessions from the International Coconut Genebank for Latin America and Caribbean. Characterization of various sorts identifies different Atlantic and Pacific coconut genepools in the Western Hemisphere.
Pleistocene-dated genomic divergence of avocado trees supports cryptic diversity in the Colombian germplasm. Genomics identifies a uniquely Colombian avocado genepool.
Analysis of >3400 worldwide eggplant accessions reveals two independent domestication events and multiple migration-diversification routes. Genomics identifies separate Southeast Asia and Indian areas of domestication, and limited exchange between them.
Population genomics identifies genetic signatures of carrot domestication and improvement and uncovers the origin of high-carotenoid orange carrots. Genomics identifies wester-central Asia as the area of carrot domestication in the Early Middle Ages, and western Europe as the place where the orange variant was selected in the Renaissance.
A Citrullus genus super-pangenome reveals extensive variations in wild and cultivated watermelons and sheds light on watermelon evolution and domestication. Pangenomics identifies a gene in wild Kordofan melons as promoting the accumulation of sugar in watermelon.
Pangenome analysis provides insight into the evolution of the orange subfamily and a key gene for citric acid accumulation in citrus fruits. Pangenomics identifies south central China as the primary centre of origin of the genus Citrus.
Pangenome analyses reveal impact of transposable elements and ploidy on the evolution of potato species. Pangenomics identifies wild species from North and Central America as having lots of genes for abiotic stress response, but also fewer transposable elements.
Pangenomic analysis identifies structural variation associated with heat tolerance in pearl millet. Pangenomics identifies the key genes and structural variations associated with pearl millet accessions from the most hot and dry places.
Dark side of the honeymoon: reconstructing the Asian x European rose breeding history through the lens of genomics. Genomics and other data identifies a shift from a European to a mainly Asian genetic background in cultivated roses during the 19th century, leading to a narrowing of genetic diversity.

October 2, 2023September 29, 2023

Branfood: Salinity tolerance, Comestibles, Underused species, On farm diversity, Minor cereals, Fragrant millet, Wild yams, Fonio, Winged bean, Giant taro, Nutmeg, Mungbean, Finger millet, Amaranth

Salt-Tolerant Crops: Time to Deliver. Sure, breeding for salt tolerance using crop wild relatives is great, but have you tried just domesticating salt-tolerant wild species?
Wild and cultivated comestible plant species in the Gulf of Mexico: phylogenetic patterns and convergence of type of use. No word on how many are salt-tolerant.
Underutilized plants increase biodiversity, improve food and nutrition security, reduce malnutrition, and enhance human health and well-being. Let’s put them back on the plate! No word on how many are salt-tolerant.
Indigenous crop diversity maintained despite the introduction of major global crops in an African centre of agrobiodiversity. If you want local crop diversity in Highland Ethiopia, look for it on the farms of the poorest. No word on how many are “underutilized”.
The role of minor cereals in food and nutrition security in Bangladesh: constraints to sustainable production. Low yields, apparently. I think it could do with having aromatic grains. If only there was a way to make that happen…
De novo creation of popcorn-like fragrant foxtail millet. Yeah, sometimes neither the crop not its wild relatives has the genes for it. Still, if you can edit in aroma, why not salt-tolerance?
Global Genepool Conservation and Use Strategy for Dioscorea (Yam). I wonder how many of these 27 wild species could usefully be domesticated. Or are salt-tolerant.
Towards conservation and sustainable use of an indigenous crop: A large partnership network enabled the genetic diversity assessment of 1539 fonio (Digitaria exilis) accessions. This is how you start to undo underutilization. I’m sure someone will edit it next.
Diversity Assessment of Winged Bean [Psophocarpus tetragonolobus (L.) DC.] Accessions from IITA Genebank. Same as above, but with one hundredth as many accessions. I guess winged bean is even more underutilized than fonio.
The forgotten giant of the Pacific: a review on giant taro (Alocasia macrorrhizos (L.) G.Don). Sad to say it doesn’t seem to be salt-tolerant. Maybe it’s aromatic, though. Or could be gene-edited to become so. Wouldn’t that be something.
Retracing the center of origin and evolutionary history of nutmeg Myristica fragrans, an emblematic spice tree species. No need for editing, let’s just conserve the really diverse populations of the North Moluccas.
Demographic history and distinct selection signatures of two domestication genes in mungbean. Domesticating the mungbean wasn’t all that easy. Hope it’s easier for some random salt-tolerant wild species.
A plausible screening approach for moisture stress tolerance in finger millet (Eleusine coracana L.) germplasm accessions using membership function value at the seedling stage. Will it work on fonio? Or salt-tolerance?
Adoption and impact of improved amaranth cultivars in Tanzania using DNA fingerprinting. So can we stop calling it underutilized? And start gene-editing it for aroma?

September 15, 2023September 15, 2023

Nibbles: Heirloom pean, Genebanks, Students, Community seedbanks, Kunming fund, Kenyan sorghum, Italian grapes, Wild tomatoes, Mouflon, Coffee poster, Early modern watermelons, Korean language, Farmers’ rights

Why heirloom seeds matter.
Why genebanks full of heirloom seeds matter. Even to kids.
Why community seedbanks full of heirloom seeds matter.
Just how much agrobiodiversity matters, according to FAO.
Why heirloom seeds of neglected crops matter.
Why heirloom seeds of sorghum matter in Kenya. No, really.
Why heirloom grapes matter in Italy.
Why seeds of wild tomatoes matter.
Even wild sheep matter.
Why visualizing coffee diversity matters.
Why watermelons mattered in the 17th century.
Why bottle gourds mattered to Koreans.
Why farmers’ rights matter.