- A global database of diversified farming effects on biodiversity and yield. Always good to have the data.
- Dietary agrobiodiversity for improved nutrition and health outcomes within a transitioning indigenous Solomon Island food system. Maybe we should have a database of diversified farming effects on health and nutrition too?
- Exploring ‘beyond-food’ opportunities for biocultural conservation in urban forest gardens. Always good to have more trees.
- Community seed network in an era of climate change: dynamics of maize diversity in Yucatán, Mexico. Always good to have landraces. And neighbours.
- Microbe-dependent heterosis in maize. Maize hybrids need microbes.
- Assessment of genetic diversity and population structure of oil palm (Elaeis guineensis Jacq.) field genebank: A step towards molecular-assisted germplasm conservation. 30% seems a lot for a core collection. But it’s good to have the data.
- Sources of resistance to Pseudocercospora fijiensis, the cause of black Sigatoka in banana. 11 resistant accessions out of 95 seems pretty good, on the other hand.
- GWAS unveils features between early- and late-flowering pearl millets. Based on a national-level core collection in Senegal. Presumably this will scale?
- Germplasm Collection, Genetic Resources, and Gene Pools in Alfalfa. Lots of work has been done. More work is needed on the wild relatives though.
- Assessment and modeling using machine learning of resistance to scald (Rhynchosporium commune) in two specific barley genetic resources subsets. Fancy maths helps to identify the barley genebank accessions you really need.
- Strategic malting barley improvement for craft brewers through consumer sensory evaluation of malt and beer. More fancy maths, this time applied to a hedonic data in the service of beer. Germplasm evaluation we can all get behind. No FIGS, alas.
- Large-scale whole-genome resequencing unravels the domestication history of Cannabis sativa. 4 genetic groups: primordial (located in China, not Central Asia, and going back 12,000 years), 2 medicinal, 1 fibre. Now for the hedonic evaluation.
- The Origins of the Apple in Central Asia. Probably domesticated to cope with the munchies.
- Genetic Divergence and Population Structure in Weedy and Cultivated Broomcorn Millets (Panicum miliaceum L.) Revealed by Specific-Locus Amplified Fragment Sequencing (SLAF-Seq). There are interesting genetic differences between wild and feral forms, and between eastern and central-western cultivated forms. The Silk Road trifecta.
- Global range expansion history of pepper (Capsicum spp.) revealed by over 10,000 genebank accessions. Spoke too soon. The Silk Road had a role in pepper movement too. Among other trade routes. Interesting, and unsurprising, that genes for pungency show distinct geographic patterns.
- Genomic evidence supports an independent history of Levantine and Eurasian grapevines. First domestication in the Caucasus, and then in the Levant, but not clear if from local sources. No word on hedonic evaluation.
- Genotyping-By-Sequencing diversity analysis of international Vanilla collections uncovers hidden diversity and enables plant improvement. Belize seems to be a real hotspot. The Silk Road not involved.
Nibbles: Deforestation, Grizzly genetics, Animal domestication, Wheat drones, Okra experiments, Millet survey, The Common Table
- 26 million hectares of forest were lost in 2020.
- Genetic groups in grizzly bears line up with Indigenous languages in British Columbia. How about the trees, though?
- But why weren’t grizzly bears domesticated? Because they’re not friendly, feedable, fecund and family-friendly.
- Drones and wheat breeding.
- Crowdsourcing okra evaluation. No drones involved.
- Health-conscious urban Indians eat millet for health reasons. Goes great with okra.
- The Common Table: sharing stories about reforming the food system. Like a couple of the above.
Brainfood: Predicting society, Andean Neolithic, Ancient watermelon, Iberian silos, Scythian lifeways, Rabbit domestication, British cockerels, Azeri buffaloes, E African caprines, Persian fruit miniatures
- Duration of agriculture and distance from the steppe predict the evolution of large-scale human societies in Afro-Eurasia. Large, complex human societies arise where there is a long history of agriculture and war; and not, interestingly, where potential productivity is highest.
- Diet, Mobility, Technology, and Lithics: Neolithization on the Andean Altiplano, 7.0–3.5 ka. It seems the rise of large, complex societies arose in the Andes is associated with the change in projectile technology from atlatl to archery.
- Three-dimensional X-ray-computed tomography of 3300- to 6000-year-old Citrullus seeds from Libya and Egypt compared to extant seeds throws doubts on species assignments. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, people were snacking on watermelon seeds.
- From the earliest farmers to the first urban centres: a socio-economic analysis of underground storage practices in north-eastern Iberia. You can track socioeconomic changes in ancient Iberian cultures (c. 5600–50 BC) via the size and morphology of their grain silos. No word on projectile technologies nor watermelons though.
- Re-evaluating Scythian lifeways: Isotopic analysis of diet and mobility in Iron Age Ukraine. Meanwhile, back on those steppes, 700-200 BC, some people were relatively settled, with their agro-pastoralism and millet agriculture, while others moved. So much for warlike nomads. Must have had watermelons by then, surely.
- Why were New World rabbits not domesticated? Because they’re solitary, dispersed and there’s too many different types. Most North American evidence of management comes from Teotihuacan, ~AD 1–550.
- Estimating the age of domestic fowl (Gallus gallus domesticus L. 1758) cockerels through spur development. In Britain, Iron Age and Roman cockerels died way too old to have been kept for meat, and were thus probably also used for rituals and cockfighting. No word on the Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog.
- The earliest water buffalo in the Caucasus: shifting animals and people in the medieval Islamic world. The water buffalo came to Azerbaijan with Islam in the 7-9th centuries.
- Collagen fingerprinting traces the introduction of caprines to island Eastern Africa. Goats from the 7th century CE, sheep a couple hundred years later. No word on water buffaloes.
- An illustrated review on manifestation of pome fruit germplasm in the historic miniatures of ancient Persia. 14-18th century Persian artists had a thing for pears, quinces and apples, and drew them very accurately.
Boffins unravel mandarins
I was just going to include the paper Diversification of mandarin citrus by hybrid speciation and apomixis in a forthcoming Brainfood, but the very different approaches taken in the two articles on the paper that I have seen convinced me to give it a bit more space.
The piece in The Packer has very much the industry take, and highlights the contribution of the University of Florida authors: this new information will make breeding easier, including to fight citrus greening.
On the other hand, the press release from the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology makes much more of how the paper unravels the origin of shiikuwasha and tachibana, which are culturally important citrus fruits in Japan, though not very significant economically.
Something for everyone.
Nibbles: Black sheep, Salty rice, Spanish melons, Olive diversity, Food sculpture, Seed art, Navajo peaches, Grain amaranth, PNG yams, Avocado recipes, Abbasid cooking
- Just back from a nice holiday, and greeted by Jeremy’s latest newsletter, which includes, among many delights, a post from Old European Culture on black sheep in the Balkans.
- Traditional salt-tolerant rice varieties making a comeback in India.
- Traditional melon varieties exhibited by genebank in Spain.
- Trying to make the most of traditional olive varieties.
- Traditional foods are depicted in stone on Seville’s cathedral.
- And more recent attempts to celebrate biodiversity in art.
- I guess one could call traditional these old peaches that used to be grown by the Navajo. Have blogged about them before, check it out.
- No doubt that amaranth is a traditional crop in Central America. I doubt that it will “feed the world,” but it can certainly feed a whole bunch more people. Thanks to people like Roxanne Swentzell.
- There’s nothing more traditional than yams in Papua New Guinea. For 50,000 years.
- How to remix a traditional food like stuffed avocado.
- How many of the traditional recipes in these Abbasid and later Arab cookbooks have been remixed, I wonder?