- Agricultural wilding: rewilding for agricultural landscapes through an increase in wild productive systems. But would it be sparing or sharing?
- Disentangling Domestication from Food Production Systems in the Neotropics. “Wild” is a contested concept in the Neotropics anyway.
- Evidence for Multiple Teosinte Hybrid Zones in Central Mexico. Maize systems are already pretty wild in Mexico.
- Maize intercropping in the milpa system. Diversity, extent and importance for nutritional security in the Western Highlands of Guatemala. And they’re doing pretty well, thank you very much.
- Extensive introgression among North American wild grapes (Vitis) fuels biotic and abiotic adaptation. Plenty of wilding in American grapevines too.
- Conservation status assessment of banana crop wild relatives using species distribution modelling. There’s a danger of banana de-wilding.
- A route to de novo domestication of wild allotetraploid rice. The upside of dewilding.
- Landrace added value and accessibility in Europe: what a collection of case studies tells us. Landraces can maybe help with that rewilding of agriculture in Europe, as they are mostly adapted to marginal, low-input systems.
- The Analysis of Italian Plant Agrobiodiversity Databases Reveals That Hilly and Sub-Mountain Areas Are Hotspots of Herbaceous Landraces. Like I said, landraces can help.
- Locally Adapted and Organically Grown Landrace and Ancient Spring Cereals—A Unique Source of Minerals in the Human Diet. Plus they’re good for you.
- Not my cup of coffee: Farmers’ preferences for coffee variety traits – Lessons for crop breeding in the age of climate change. Which is not to say landraces don’t need improvement every now and then.
- The potential for income improvement and biodiversity conservation via specialty coffee in Ethiopia. But in the end, it’s about the value added.
- From anger to action: Differential impacts of eco-anxiety, eco-depression, and eco-anger on climate action and wellbeing. Does any of the above make you angry? Good!
Brainfood: GBIF, CWR hotspots, Feralization, Gene editing, Japanese seeds, Campesino maize, Tunisian wheat, Dietary diversity, Seed storage, GHUs
- Data integration enables global biodiversity synthesis. Biodiversity data is not enough.
- Review of congruence between global crop wild relative hotspots and centres of crop origin/diversity. Vavilov is enough.
- Feralization: Confronting the Complexity of Domestication and Evolution. Centres of diversity are not enough.
- De novo domestication of wild species to create crops with increased resilience and nutritional value. Conservation is not enough.
- Evaluating plant genetic diversity maintained by local farmers and residents: A comphrehensive assessment of continuous vegetable cultivation and seed-saving activities on a regional scale in Japan. Economic incentives are not enough.
- Beyond subsistence: the aggregate contribution of campesinos to the supply and conservation of native maize across Mexico. Small farmers could be enough.
- Unlocking the Patterns of the Tunisian Durum Wheat Landraces Genetic Structure Based on Phenotypic Characterization in Relation to Farmer’s Vernacular Name. Small farmers could be enough.
- Linkages between dietary diversity and indicators of agricultural biodiversity in Burkina Faso. Production of diverse crops could be enough.
- Seed longevity of two nutrient-dense vegetables (Amaranthus spp.). 5°C and aluminium packets are enough.
- Phytosanitary Interventions for Safe Global Germplasm Exchange and the Prevention of Transboundary Pest Spread: The Role of CGIAR Germplasm Health Units. Genebanks are not enough.
Brainfood: Bird shit, Ancient Greece, Maize adaptation, Resistant peanut, Adaptive variation, Crop models, AA bananas, Wild wheat, Wild tomatoes, Switchgrass diversity, Phytosanitation, Rice breeding, Seeds 4 Needs double, Wild palm, Threatened biodiversity
- ‘White gold’ guano fertilizer drove agricultural intensification in the Atacama Desert from ad 1000. And maize was at the heart of it.
- What’s new during the first millennium BCE in Greece? Archaeobotanical results from Olynthos and Sikyon. Not maize, alas, but what you’d expect, plus pine and sesame.
- Local adaptation contributes to gene expression divergence in maize. Stress-response genes are the ones which have been selected. No word on whether any of them were important in the Atacama.
- Genotyping tools and resources to assess peanut germplasm: smut-resistant landraces as a case study. Ok, so it sounds like the resistant line that was previously used is virtually identical to an accession in the USDA collection.
- Do We Need to Identify Adaptive Genetic Variation When Prioritizing Populations for Conservation? No, but we’ll need it to prioritize use, surely?
- Incorporating Realistic Trait Physiology into Crop Growth Models to Support Genetic Improvement. We’ll need better growth models too.
- Wild to domesticates: genomes of edible diploid bananas hold traces of several undefined genepools. 3 of them, in fact, in both SE Asia and New Guinea.
- Evolution of the bread wheat D-subgenome and enriching it with diversity from Aegilops tauschii. Three lineages were involved in the hybridizations that led to bread wheat. Coincidence?
- De novo genome assembly of two tomato ancestors, Solanum pimpinellifolium and Solanum lycopersicum var. cerasiforme, by long-read sequencing. Thousands of genes not found in the cultivated crop, apparently.
- Genomic mechanisms of climate adaptation in polyploid bioenergy switchgrass. Introgression from the northern genepool (one of three) was really important in adaptation after the glaciers retreated. Gene duplication also involved in adaptation.
- Economic Studies Reinforce Efforts to Safeguard Specialty Crops in the United States. Where “safeguard” means “provide clean planting material.”
- Comparative analysis of genetic diversity of rice (Oryza sativa L.) varieties cultivated in different periods in China. Diversity went up, then down, between the 1980s and the 2010s.
- Wheat Varietal Diversification Increases Ethiopian Smallholders’ Food Security: Evidence from a Participatory Development Initiative. Why the diversity in breeding programmes is important, and how farmer participation can help maintain it.
- The tricot citizen science approach applied to on-farm variety evaluation: methodological progress and perspectives. How to do the above.
- Biodiversity and conservation of Phoenix canariensis: a review. A wild relative in trouble, and what to do about it.
- Tropical and Mediterranean biodiversity is disproportionately sensitive to land-use and climate change. As can be seen from the above.
Tweeting beans
Twitter is often a hellsite, but every once in a while, it really comes through. Case in point is this cool summary of a recent paper on the genetics and physiology of seed dormancy in common beans posted by one of the authors, Dr David Lowry.
https://twitter.com/DavidBLowry/status/1353358445710172161
Now, I know some of you are not going to want to click on the above, so here it is in ThreadReader. And if you just want the bottom line…
Brainfood: Pollinator decline, Diet diversity, Collectors, CBD indicators, Herbaria, Fusarium wilt, Genomic breeding, Niche markets, Study design, American CWR, Domestication limits
- No buzz for bees: Media coverage of pollinator decline. Nobody cares. Unless it’s linked to climate change.
- Climate impacts associated with reduced diet diversity in children across nineteen countries. Something else that’s linked to climate change and too few care about.
- People are essential to linking biodiversity data. Seriously, get an ORCID ID.
- Why European biodiversity reporting is not reliable. It’s the free indicator choice in CBD reporting is what it is. Also, not enough attention to genetic diversity. Now, where have I heard that before?
- Reversing extinction trends: new uses of (old) herbarium specimens to accelerate conservation action on threatened species. Not just useful in generating new knowledge (including on genetic diversity), can also be used as seed sources and in public awareness.
- Ex Ante Assessment of Returns on Research Investments to Address the Impact of Fusarium Wilt Tropical Race 4 on Global Banana Production. Conventional breeding for resistance could lift almost a million people out of poverty. That would be quite the indicator.
- Genomic resources in plant breeding for sustainable agriculture. Would help with the above.
- Can Niche Markets for Local Cacao Varieties Benefit Smallholders in Peru and Mexico? Maybe. Read it, it’s not that long.
- Quantifying and addressing the prevalence and bias of study designs in the environmental and social sciences. Everyone should use randomised designs and controlled observational designs with pre-intervention sampling. No, you did not just waste your time reading the above.
- Crop wild relatives of the United States require urgent conservation action. 60% of 600 native taxa need urgent help.
- Limits and constraints to crop domestication. Most of the world’s 2000 crops are not fully domesticated, for reasons such as trait architecture, lack of diversity in domestication traits, accumulation of genetic load and gene flow from the above. But something can be done about it.