- New emperor, new rice.
- Breeders discover GxE.
- The Millennium Seed Bank is not just for millennials.
- ICARDA’s genebank in the news again.
- ICRISAT’s gene-jockeys have their 15 minutes.
- Australia’s genebank in the news again too.
- Maybe they should sort out macadamia next.
- How botany works. Lots from Oz today.
- Foraging in Berlin.
- Kenya sees the agricultural biodiversity light.
- Video on CWR from Mexico.
Brainfood: Napier diversity, Clover expansion, Social media & conservation, Orphan crops double, Rewilding chestnut, N-fixing trees, Horse diversity double, Steppe weed, Old medicinals, Wild dates, Sorghum resistance
- Genotyping by sequencing provides new insights into the diversity of Napier grass (Cenchrus purpureus) and reveals variation in genome-wide LD patterns between collections. Complementarity between ILRI and Embrapa collections.
- Breaking Free: the Genomics of Allopolyploidy-facilitated Niche Expansion in White Clover. From two quite different, specialized habitats, to a global presence, through polyploidy.
- Likes, comments, and shares of marine organism imagery on Facebook. Use really nice pictures, and don’t worry too much about the captions.
- African Orphan Crops Consortium (AOCC): status of developing genomic resources for African orphan crops. 150 African breeders trained, one or more forms of sequence data produced for 60 crops, reference genome sequences for 6 species published, 6 near completion, 19 in progress.
- The role of genetics in mainstreaming the production of new and orphan crops to diversify food systems and support human nutrition. Well it’s a good job there’s the above, then.
- Evaluation of sites for the reestablishment of the American chestnut (Castanea dentata) in northeast Georgia, USA. Overwhelmingly on federal land, which may or may not be a good thing.
- Patterns of nitrogen‐fixing tree abundance in forests across Asia and America. Much rarer in Asia than in the Americas.
- Tracking Five Millennia of Horse Management with Extensive Ancient Genome Time Series. Iberian and Siberian domesticated horse lineages went extinct, but the Muslim conquests injected some much-needed diversity.
- Chinese Mongolian horses may retain early domestic male genetic lineages yet to be discovered. Wait, does Mongolian=Siberian?
- Cannabis in Asia: its center of origin and early cultivation, based on a synthesis of subfossil pollen and archaeobotanical studies. The northeastern Tibetan Plateau, to be precise, with the first steppe communities.
- Paleomedicine and the use of plant secondary compounds in the Paleolithic and Early Neolithic. Self-medication goes back a long time.
- Genetic characterization of tertiary relict endemic Phoenix theophrasti populations in Turkey and phylogenetic relations of the species with other palm species revealed by SSR markers. Probably endangered.
- Genome wide association analysis of sorghum mini core lines regarding anthracnose, downy mildew, and head smut. 9 photo-sensitive and 4 photo insensitive accessions are multiple sources for resistance to anthracnose, SDM and head smut.
Nibbles: Retiring Ellis, Teff patent, Rice in Bangladesh, Indian wild wheat, Livestock wild relatives, Bambara groundnut, Han diversity, Danone cultures, Drumming, IPBES, World Bee Day, Agroforestry
- Dave Ellis retires, world celebrates. Wait, that came out wrong…
- The Dutch teff patent saga.
- Saving rice diversity in Bangladesh.
- Conserving and using wild wheat in India.
- Livestock have wild relatives too.
- It’s the “minor” crops, stupid.
- The most expensive pistachios in the world.
- Human diversity and domestication in E Asia, summarized in a cool map.
- Open yoghurt.
- The connection between Nigerian music and watermelons. Yes, there is one.
- Summarizing reaction to IPBES.
- Happy World Bee Day.
- Oh, and I almost forgot, follow the livestream of the World Congress on Agroforestry.
Brainfood: More than yield, Cotton breeding, Chickpea genome, Mutations & domestication, Holy Grail, Restoration, Watermelon diversity, Language diversity, Ocimum diversity, Clean cassava, Neolithic feasting, Amazonian agriculture, Sharecropping
- The paradox of productivity: agricultural productivity promotes food system inefficiency. It’s the cheap calories, stupid.
- Genetic Evaluation of Exotic Chromatins from Two Obsolete Interspecific Introgression Lines of Upland Cotton for Fiber Quality Improvement. Yield from one species, fibre quality from the other.
- Resequencing of 429 chickpea accessions from 45 countries provides insights into genome diversity, domestication and agronomic traits. Including drought tolerance.
- Genome of ‘Charleston Gray’, the principal American watermelon cultivar, and genetic characterization of 1,365 accessions in the U.S. National Plant Germplasm System watermelon collection. Four genetic groups reflecting geography.
- Genome-wide nucleotide patterns and potential mechanisms of genome divergence following domestication in maize and soybean. The best candidates for domestication are plants that are willing to mutate a bit, but not too much.
- Crop Biodiversity: An Unfinished Magnum Opus of Nature. “Linking genotype and phenotype remains the holy grail of crop biodiversity studies.”
- Meeting global land restoration and protection targets: What would the world look like in 2050? Very nice. It would look very nice.
- The ecological drivers of variation in global language diversity. High year-round productivity leads to lots of languages. And lots of biodiversity, but that’s another story.
- Product authenticity versus globalisation—The Tulsi case. The division of Indian Holy Basil into 3 types based on traditional knowledge is only partially supported by genetic and phytochemical studies.
- A method for generating virus-free cassava plants to combat viral disease epidemics in Africa. Let the distribution commence.
- Cereal processing at Early Neolithic Göbekli Tepe, southeastern Turkey. They must have been some feasts.
- Persistent Early to Middle Holocene tropical foraging in southwestern Amazonia. On the cusp of agriculture 10,000 years ago in Bolivia. That’s about the same time as Göbekli Tepe, give or take a thousand years.
- Moral Hazard: Experimental Evidence from Tenancy Contracts. Tenant farmers should keep a higher share to increase productivity and diversity, but of course the landlords won’t let them so what’s needed is revolution.
Nibbles: Dog & bone, Giant maize, Edible Archive, Myanmar diversification, Colombian community seedbank, Sorghum grande, Coconut exhibit, Chinese ag history, African domestication, Japanese citrus, RivieraLigure DOP, Cactus candy, Hazelnut resistance, American crop rethinks, Public sector engagement
- Nice synthesis of dog (and chicken) domestication.
- Saving the Jala maize landrace in Mexico.
- Saving lots of rice landraces in India by eating them.
- Myanmar does not live by rice alone. And neither does India.
- Saving a whole bunch of stuff in Colombia.
- Saving a sorghum wild relative in Australia.
- How coconuts can help museums decolonize.
- Maybe agricultural development needs to decolonize too. Discuss.
- Africa’s Fertile Crescent is the Niger River Basin. Nice, but we saw that coming first.
- Citrus is big in Japan.
- Olive oil is big in Liguria.
- The visnaga cactus was big in the US Southwest once. As an ingredient in candy, of all things.
- Breeding filberts in the US.
- Tomato 2.0.
- And a bunch of other crops American farmers and breeders are having to adapt to climate change.
- And not just that, they have to deliver better nutrition too.
- Eat what you want, sure. But think what that means for climate change.
- Principles for GAIN engaging with the private sector (in all its diversity) on nutrition. Could be applied to engagement on climate change, I suppose, and crop diversity conservation for that matter. My question, though, is: runaway train, or Titanic?