- Plant Health, Animal Health, Human Health and Environmental Health. What’s not to like?
- It used to be thought that tobacco and sugar could help with the above. Go figure.
- La Cuna del Maíz Mexicano.
- The same, but for rice in Asia.
- Backyard seed saving, and science.
Brainfood: Red Listing, Name checking, Diversification, New breeding, Seed data, Tea genome, Sampling strategies, Plum diversity, Fruit taste, Enset seeds, Maize & nutrition, Emilian grapes
- Caution Needed When Predicting Species Threat Status for Conservation Prioritization on a Global Scale. Automated rapid preliminary assessments are all well and good, but…
- WorldFlora: An R package for exact and fuzzy matching of plant names against the World Flora Online Taxonomic Backbone data. Automated rapid taxonomic name checking is all well and good, but…
- Diverse approaches to crop diversification in agricultural research. A review. Too diverse.
- Reinventing quantitative genetics for plant breeding: something old, something new, something borrowed, something BLUE. Retire additive variance.
- Nikolaeva et al.’s reference book on seed dormancy and germination. A treasure trove of data comes to light.
- The reference genome of tea plant and resequencing of 81 diverse accessions provide insights into genome evolution and adaptation of tea plants. Three groups, originating in SW China.
- Taxonomic similarity does not predict necessary sample size for ex situ conservation: a comparison among five genera. The old rule-of-thumb of 50 individuals was not all that far off after all.
- Genetic assessment of the pomological classification of plum Prunus domestica L. accessions sampled across Europe. 93 unique accessions out of 104 across 14 partners. Pretty good, no?
- Genome‐wide association of volatiles reveals candidate loci for blueberry flavor. Can predict taste from genetics.
- Germination ecology of wild and domesticated Ensete ventricosum: Evidence for maintenance of sexual reproductive capacity in a vegetatively propagated perennial crop. Seeds from domesticated material are not much different from the wild ones, except in germination niche.
- Mining maize diversity and improving its nutritional aspects within agro‐food systems. Biofortification is only the beginning.
- Genetic Characterization of Grapevine Varieties from Emilia-Romagna (Northern Italy) Discloses Unexplored Genetic Resources. About half (62) of the unique accessions (122) in a collection (178) are hardly known.
Brainfood: Community seedbanks, Habitat conservation, Maize breeding, NWFP, Neolithic dairy, Straw, Double burden, Species protection, Salty rice, Barley landraces, Scicomm
- Do community seed banks contribute to the social-ecological resilience of communities? A case-study from Western Guatemala. Yes, but they have to move with the times.
- Reconciling global priorities for conserving biodiversity habitat. Only about 20% of high value habitat is protected.
- Genome-wide selection and genetic improvement during modern maize breeding. Breeding in the US and China converged.
- Non-wood forest products in Europe – A quantitative overview. Value of berries, mushrooms etc. amounts to almost three quarters of the value of the wood harvest, ten times the usually estimate.
- Latitudinal gradient in dairy production with the introduction of farming in Atlantic Europe. Was there a taboo against fish?
- Recent Advances in Dual Purpose Rice and Wheat Research: a synthesis. It was worth focusing on straw in breeding, and still is.
- Mapping local patterns of childhood overweight and wasting in low- and middle-income countries between 2000 and 2017. Hotspots in Indonesia, Thailand, southeastern China, Botswana, Cameroon and central Nigeria. Surely dietary diversity could help in those places?
- Is there a peaceful cohabitation between human and natural habitats? Assessing global patterns of species loss. Yes, there is, in very poor and very rich places. Would be interesting to mash up with the above.
- Back to the Wild: On a Quest for Donors Toward Salinity Tolerant Rice. Need to move beyond rufipogon.
- Insights into phylogeny, age and evolution of Allium (Amaryllidaceae) based on the whole plastome sequences. Monophyletic, amazingly, with 3 evolutionary lineages.
- Barley Landraces: Ecological heritage for edaphic stress adaptations and sustainable production. Use landraces as recipients, rather than donors. Before it’s too late.
- Ten simple rules for innovative dissemination of research. More in the breach, I suspect…
Brainfood: French Neolithic, African forages, Sorghum inflorescences, Root morphology, Folium, Tillage, Sparing, Food localness, Indian diet diversity, Sourdough, Genomics costs, Breeding strategies
- Early Neolithic (ca. 5850-4500 cal BC) agricultural diffusion in the Western Mediterranean: An update of archaeobotanical data in SW France. Agriculture came to southern France from southern Italy around 5700 BC, initially focusing on hulled wheats, then transitioned to naked cereals as it moved inland.
- Improved feeding and forages at a crossroads: Farming systems approaches for sustainable livestock development in East Africa. Adoption of tropical forages at scale can make a big difference to livelihoods in East Africa, but will need careful consideration of agroecological and socioeconomic settings. My mother-in-law unavailable for comment.
- Comprehensive 3D phenotyping reveals continuous morphological variation across genetically diverse sorghum inflorescences. Fancy gadgets and maths show that botanical sorghum races overlap more in morphology than genetics.
- Using clear plastic CD cases as low‐cost mini‐rhizotrons to phenotype root traits. Now do roots.
- A 1000-year-old mystery solved: Unlocking the molecular structure for the medieval blue from Chrozophora tinctoria, also known as folium. 6′-hydroxy-4,4′-dimethoxy-1,1′-dimethyl-5′-{[3,4,5-trihydroxy-6-(hydroxymethyl)tetrahydro-2H-pyran-2-yl]oxy}-[3,3′-bipyridine]-2,2′,5,6(1H,1′H)-tetraone, if you must know.
- Generating a rule-based global gridded tillage dataset. The most amazing thing about this is that there are only 6 types of tillage.
- The global cropland-sparing potential of high-yield farming. We could give up 40% of current farmland if yields of 16 major crops were higher. Unclear what all those farmers would do. Or what kind of tillage they would use.
- Local food crop production can fulfil demand for less than one-third of the population. Still going to need global supply chains.
- Regional differences in agricultural and socioeconomic factors associated with farmer household dietary diversity in India. And national supply chains for that matter.
- Influences of Ingredients and Bakers on the Bacteria and Fungi in Sourdough Starters and Bread. Bakers are part of bread.
- Strategies for reducing per‐sample costs in target capture sequencing for phylogenomics and population genomics in plants. Down to $22 per sample, if you play your cards right.
- Evolutionary insights into plant breeding. When you’ve played those cards, target selective sweeps for introgression, among other things. Oh, and gene editing. Here, read these tweets from one of the authors.
Nibbles: Olives, Figs, Columbian Exchange, Flour, landraces Newsletter, DOIs
- Is there any doubt that olives are important?
- Or figs, for that matter.
- Spanish botanical garden exhibit on Latin American plants that changed the European diet. Stunning.
- Old mills making a comeback.
- Latest issue of the Landraces newsletter from Farmer’s Pride. See also here for previous issues.
- Huge PDF on DOIs in genebanks.