Domestication

August 20, 2012August 20, 2012

Nibbles: Bees, Honey, Sequipedalis, Website, Conference

“Most people are not aware of the fact that 84% of the European crops are partially or entirely dependent on insect pollination.” Right. I could have sworn it was 82%.
That’s not their main concern in Nilgiris Biosphere Reserve in India, where Honey is Life.
I had no idea yardlong bean was really a cowpea. The genes say so.
Crop Wild Relatives & Climate Change, a new website from the Global Crop Diversity Trust, with just the right number of RSS feeds.
And if it’s conference information you’re after, previews from the ASA, CSSA and SSSA Annual meetings:

As ever, if you’re there and want an outlet, we’re here.

August 20, 2012August 20, 2012

Brainfood: Lathyrus sativus, Leafy green porridge, iDArTs, Pungency, Earth ovens, Domestication, Recovery, Maize genomics

Exploring the genetic diversity of Ethiopian grass pea (Lathyrus sativus L.) using EST-SSR markers. They’re variable, especially in Gonder, and future collecting missions need to give “due attention to underrepresented regions”.
Green leafy porridges: how good are they in controlling glycaemic response?. Pretty good, but the leafy greens may not be what you’re expecting.
iDArTs: increasing the value of genomic resources at no cost. No cost for genotyping, that is; the analysis probably does cost.
A versatile PCR marker for pungency in Capsicum spp. Beats having to taste each progeny plant, I suppose.
Earth Ovens (Píib) in the Maya Lowlands: Ethnobotanical Data Supporting Early Use. The food preparation method is as old as the food itself; 3400-3000 bce.
Patterns and processes in crop domestication: an historical review and quantitative analysis of 203 global food crops. Terrific, broad survey, worth more of a write-up.
Changes in Avian and Plant Communities of Aspen Woodlands over 12 Years after Livestock Removal in the Northwestern Great Basin. Removing livestock leads to “recovery of biological integrity”. Because livestock are not integral to anything.
Historical genomics of North American maize. Fascinating analysis indicates selection based on a limited set of ancestor lines, and “decreased diversity in the ancestry of individual lines”.

July 26, 2012October 15, 2012

Nibbles: Aspergillus domestication, Aurochs resynthesis, Drought resistance, Protected areas, Ford Denison, Ancient diets

The National Fungus of Japan explains itself.
The aurochs recreated in fact and fiction. And more.
Yes, that’s what we need to make good on all those GM drought-resistance promises: a new model system. And now for something a little more serious.
Some protected areas don’t work terribly well. Here comes the science.
Darwinian Agriculture explained by the man himself.
Ancient diets deduced from teeth crap and crap crap.

June 28, 2012June 28, 2012

Nibbles: Impact evaluation reviews, Coffee podcast, Pretty on sustainable intensification, Patient capital, Searching for species names, Searching in general, Palestinian agriculture, Korean Neolithic, Mesquite in Africa, CIMMYT-China, Banana trade, UK plant science, Breadfruit, Weed, Beans in Mexico, Macadamia, Organic Cali

How to do impact evaluation. Required reading.
Podcast on the history of coffee from Linn. Soc. Required listening.
How to intensify agriculture sustainably. Meah.
It may well involve patient capital though.
This thing will look for all the species names in a piece of text or website. Bound to come in useful one of these days.
How to use Google properly. And a vaguely agricultural quiz to see if you’ve been listening in class.
Protecting ancient irrigation system on the West Bank.
And finding the oldest agricultural site in East Asia.
The good and bad side of Prosopis in Africa.
CIMMYT in China.
The banana as a weapon.
Touring UK plant science sites.
Mapping breadfruit to save the world.
“Over 78 million Europeans (15–64 years) have tried cannabis…” Purely medicinal purposes, man.
“We wanted to see how farmers are reacting to this global climate change…” Bean farmers, not cannabis farmers.
If you’re at the Noosa Botanic Gardens, Cooroy, you can see rare macadamias. Yeah but can you smoke ’em?
Organic seed systems in California. No, not cannabis, settle down.

June 25, 2012June 25, 2012

Brainfood: Synthetic wheat, Pisum, Maize products, Seed predation, Cajanus, Tripsacum, Horse domestication, Cicer genomics, Cereal vulnerability, Allotments, Conservation units, Chilie diversity, Endophytes

Sources of resistance in primary synthetic hexaploid wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) to insect pests: Hessian fly, Russian wheat aphid and Sunn pest in the fertile crescent. Domestication do-over continues to show promise. Closest thing to a jetpack?
Evaluation of seed yield and seed yield components in red–yellow (Pisum fulvum) and Ethiopian (Pisum abyssinicum) peas. Weird pea species show promise in Serbia, of all places.
Consumer preferences for maize products in urban Kenya. Most still like it white. Not much promise there.
Bush pig (Potamochoerus porcus) seed predation of bush mango (Irvingia gabonensis) and other plant species in Democratic Republic of Congo. It’s pretty unpromising for seeds, especially right under the tree.
Phenotypic diversity in Cajanus species and identification of promising sources for agronomic traits and seed protein content. 14 accessions of 8 seem promising (out of a total of 198 accessions of 18 species from the ICRISAT collection).
Genetic relations among Tripsacum species revealed by genomic variation. They might be promising.
Reconstructing the origin and spread of horse domestication in the Eurasian steppe. Wild Equus ferus moves out of eastern Eurasian steppe 160 kya, shows promise, gets domesticated in the western part, but continues to introgress with local wild horses as it moves out from there.
Large-scale development of cost-effective SNP marker assays for diversity assessment and genetic mapping in chickpea and comparative mapping in legumes. What can I tell you. It’s large-scale. It’s cost effective. It’s promising. I’m still waiting for my jetpack.
The socioeconomics of food crop production and climate change vulnerability: a global scale quantitative analysis of how grain crops are sensitive to drought. It’s the middle income countries that are especially vulnerable, and thus where all that promise needs to come good.
Deskilling, agrodiversity, and the seed trade: a view from contemporary British allotments. Please promise to keep open-pollinated heirlooms out of the marketplace.
Harnessing genomics for delineating conservation units. But you need to combine information from neutral and adaptive markers in fancy ways to fulfill the promise.
Why are not all chilies hot? A trade-off limits pungency. It’s all about how much water is available.
Endophytic Insect-Parasitic Fungi Translocate Nitrogen Directly from Insects to Plants. Suppose we better promise to conserve these things too then. And here’s the slightly longer short version.