- The ancient, wild, Georgian roots of bread wheat gluten.
- Wild relatives could help us save coffee. But we knew that. Right?
- Photosynthesis in wild rices responds more quickly to light changes than in the crop, stomata not so much. Sometimes domestication giveth, sometimes it taketh away.
- It gave us the Three Sisters for sure. With video goodness.
- Honeybees have wild relatives too. Well, maybe.
- But do the NDCs recognise any of the above?
Brainfood: Archaeological edition
- Do Pharaohs’ cattle still graze the Nile Valley? Genetic characterization of the Egyptian Baladi cattle breed. Maybe.
- Lessons on textile history and fibre durability from a 4,000-year-old Egyptian flax yarn. Pharaohs’ flax still being woven though.
- Wild cereal grain consumption among Early Holocene foragers of the Balkans predates the arrival of agriculture. Which made it easier to adopt cultigens when farmers arrived.
- The origins and spread of domestic horses from the Western Eurasian steppes. Horses from the lower Volga-Don spread all over Eurasia starting around 2000 BC along with equestrian material culture.
- The Japanese wolf is most closely related to modern dogs and its ancestral genome has been widely inherited by dogs throughout East Eurasia. Kinda too bad it’s extinct, but maybe it can be reconstructed?
- Late Pleistocene/Early Holocene sites in the montane forests of New Guinea yield early record of cassowary hunting and egg harvesting. Amazing. From looking at eggshells.
- Hallstatt miners consumed blue cheese and beer during the Iron Age and retained a non-Westernized gut microbiome until the Baroque period. Amazing. From looking at, well, there’s no easy way of saying it, paleofeces.
Brainfood: Coconut cloning, Apricot diversity, European ag double, Diet seasonality, Farm size, Ethiopian seeds, Biocultural diversity, Aquatic food, Grasslands, Pollinator mixtures
- Development of the first axillary in vitro shoot multiplication protocol for coconut palms. Cloning the tree of life, really fast.
- Frequent germplasm exchanges drive the high genetic diversity of Chinese-cultivated common apricot germplasm. Looking forward to the same being said about coconut.
- Crop diversity effects on temporal agricultural production stability across European regions. The effects are good.
- Are agricultural sustainability and resilience complementary notions? Evidence from the North European agriculture. They are indeed, but what about stability though?
- Seasonal variability of women’s dietary diversity and food provisioning: a cohort study in rural Burkina Faso. Do Europe now.
- The “Sweet Spot” in the Middle: Why Do Mid-Scale Farms Adopt Diversification Practices at Higher Rates? Spoiler alert: it’s got less to do with farm size than with access to resources and markets. At least for Californian lettuce farmers.
- Politics of seeds in Ethiopia’s agricultural transformation: pathways to seed system development. The Ethiopian seed system needs diversification just as much as Californian lettuce farmers.
- Biocultural Diversity for Food System Transformation Under Global Environmental Change. What we all need is biocultural diversity.
- Harnessing the diversity of small-scale actors is key to the future of aquatic food systems. Yes, all of us, whether in mountains or by the sea.
- Combatting global grassland degradation. It may be stretching a point, but biocultural diversity may also be a useful lens through which to look at grassland restoration and sustainable management. But then I would say that.
- Supporting wild pollinators in agricultural landscapes through targeted legume mixtures. Yeah, let’s not forget the pollinators while we’re at it.
Nibbles: Mustard, Sugar, Cassowary, Citrus, Beans
- Cologne has a mustard museum and I want to visit it.
- Lecture on the role of sugar in supporting slavery and capitalism. Where is the sugar museum?Ah here it is.
- The cassowary may have been domesticated in New Guinea ten thousand years ago (with sugarcane?). Deserves a museum.
- Speaking of domestication, here is how that of citrus happened. There’s actually a number of different citrus museums out there.
- Nice PhD opportunity Sweden studying beans in Rwanda. There are museums in both places, I’m pretty sure.
Brainfood: Domestication, Maize roots, Dental calculus, Psychedelic drugs, Green manures, Forage millet, VIR radish, Wild beans, Siberian dogs, Maize taxi, Dairying history
- Reconsidering domestication from a process archaeology perspective. De-colonising, and de-transitivising, domestication.
- Maize biochemistry in response to root herbivory was mediated by domestication, spread, and breeding. Not archaeology, but an example of the more expansive view of domestication being touted above.
- Tracking the transition to agriculture in Southern Europe through ancient DNA analysis of dental calculus. Agriculture was associated with some changes in oral microbiomes, but not nearly as big as happened relatively recently. One could perhaps argue that some oral commensals were domesticated? No? Too much? More on dental calculus below…
- The Failed Globalization of Psychedelic Drugs in the Early Modern World. Culture and religion affected why tobacco spread around and peyote didn’t. Wait, domestication had nothing to do with it?
- Estimating agronomically relevant symbiotic nitrogen fixation in green manure breeding programs. All the better to domesticate them.
- Assessing Forage Potential of the Global Collection of Finger Millet (Eleusine coracana (L.) Gaertn.) Conserved at the ICRISAT Genebank. The top 10 identified, and they’re not bad, considering forage potential was not what the crop was domesticated for. ILRI unavailable for comment :)
- Genetic Diversity of Phenotypic and Biochemical Traits in VIR Radish (Raphanus sativus L.) Germplasm Collection. More variable than was once thought. Ah, domestication, you never disappoint…
- Preliminary evaluation of wild bean (Phaseolus spp.) germplasm for resistance to Fusarium cuneirostrum and Fusarium oxysporum. Wait, domestication can disappoint after all. Deeply. At least we still have the CWR.
- Not so local: the population genetics of convergent adaptation in maize and teosinte. People moved maize about, post-domestication, usefully bringing it into contact with teosinte. But the main author Dr Silas Tittes says it better. Hail the maize taxi!
- Modern Siberian dog ancestry was shaped by several thousand years of Eurasian-wide trade and human dispersal. People moved dogs about, post-domestication. The doggie taxi?
- Dairying enabled Early Bronze Age Yamnaya steppe expansions. People moved around because of milk. But the main author Dr Shevan Wilkin says it better, and links this with other important papers. Dental calculus never disappoints.