- Breeding grass while high. Probably not what you’re thinking.
- When life gives you ancient lemons.
- Potato Museum gets new website.
- Mango gets a database.
- So do France’s genebanks.
- The oldest living cultivated fruit tree in North America? I think not, but interesting nevertheless.
- Whiskey goes heirloom.
- Excerpt from Spencer Wells’ Pandora’s Seed on the Neolithic Revolution.
- Our occasional contributor Robert Hijmans sings the praises of mapping with R.
Brainfood: Sustainable Brazil, Epigenetic variation, Global conservation, Rice nutrition, Austronesian societies, Saharan domestication, GM wheat, Smallholders, Bos introgression
- Sustainable diet from the urban Brazilian consumer perspective. Healthiness, basically.
- Comparison of the Relative Potential for Epigenetic and Genetic Variation To Contribute to Trait Stability. Genetic >> epigenetic.
- Global mismatch of policy and research on drivers of biodiversity loss. Except for climate change.
- Carbon dioxide (CO2) levels this century will alter the protein, micronutrients, and vitamin content of rice grains with potential health consequences for the poorest rice-dependent countries. And not in a good way. But some variation among varieties = breeding opportunity?
- Coevolution of landesque capital intensive agriculture and sociopolitical hierarchy. Among Austronesian-speaking societies, no evidence that agricultural intensification drives social complexity; if anything, it’s the other way around.
- Plant behaviour from human imprints and the cultivation of wild cereals in Holocene Sahara. Weediness has been good to humans in the past.
- Gene Flow in Genetically Modified Wheat. Would probably only be a problem within fields.
- How much of the world’s food do smallholders produce? FAO: 70%. New paper: 30-34%.
- Pervasive introgression facilitated domestication and adaptation in the Bos species complex. Miscegenation has been rampant.
Brainfood: Cassava domestication, Phylogenomics review, Flavour breeding, Anticolonialism, Arid beet, Arid Vigna, Arid maize, ABS double, Trout stem cells
- Patterns of nuclear and chloroplast genetic diversity and structure of manioc along major Brazilian Amazonian rivers. No structure related to river basins. Separate histories for sweet and bitter types, with the sweet domesticated and spreading first.
- Practical considerations for plant phylogenomics. Use the right tool for the job.
- The genetics of fruit flavour preferences. Here’s a “molecular roadmap to flavour improvement,” breeders. Now go crazy.
- Beyond Culinary Colonialism: Indigenous Food Sovereignty, Liberal Multiculturalism, and the Control of Gastronomic Capital. Multiculturalism is incompatible with food sovereignty.
- Predicting genotypes environmental range from genome‐environment associations. Fraction of aridity-associated alleles in wild beet could accurately predict adaptation to aridity in independent set of cultivated individuals.
- Diversity of drought tolerance in the genus Vigna. No word on genotypes. But wilds more tolerant of drought in Vigna too.
- Identification of Drought, Heat, and Combined Drought and Heat Tolerant Donors in Maize. Only 2 out of 300 inbreds are resistant to both drought and heat. No word on how teosinte does.
- Benefit sharing mechanisms for agricultural genetic diversity use and in-situ conservation. Show me the money.
- The Nagoya Protocol could backfire on the Global South. It’s not just about the money.
- Invasion of a legume ecosystem engineer in a cold biome alters plant biodiversity. Biosafety first.
- Interspecific germ cell transplantation: a new light in the conservation of valuable Balkan trout genetic resources? Maybe.
Nibbles: Cloisters, Plum breeding, Wild tomatoes, Phytosanitary regulations, Public breeding, EU regulations, Svalbard @10, Local grains, Chips, ICRAF double
- Medieval monastery gardens deconstructed.
- Burbank’s plums decoded.
- The wild tomatoes of the Galapagos evaluated.
- Germplasm exchange expedited.
- Public sector plant breeding advocated.
- Farmer-saved seeds saved?
- Svalbard Global Seed Vault celebrated.
- Local flour milled.
- Potato chips (crisps) invented.
- Indigenous trees taken seriously. Very seriously.
Brainfood: Genebanks genomics, Improving forages, 3000 rices, Sweet potato dispersal, Diversity on farm double, Herbaria double, Phenotyping box, Invasives, Meta-meta-analysis, Rice domestication, Soil depth
- Role of genomics in promoting the utilization of plant genetic resources in genebanks. Genebanks don’t need to do genomics themselves to benefit from genomics.
- Improving the Yield and Nutritional Quality of Forage Crops. Case in point.
- Genomic variation in 3,010 diverse accessions of Asian cultivated rice. Case in point. Multiple independent domestications. Tomorrow, the world.
- Sweet potato dispersal or human transport? Maybe no evidence one way or another after all. Rebuttal of: Reconciling Conflicting Phylogenies in the Origin of Sweet Potato and Dispersal to Polynesia. And the counter to the rebuttal. This genomics stuff not so easy after all.
- Review: Meta-analysis of the association between production diversity, diets, and nutrition in smallholder farm households. It’s not always there. But that would have been a high bar.
- Agricultural diversification as an important strategy for achieving food security in Africa. Case in point. More diverse households and farming systems are more food secure, but only up to a point, and it depends on various factors. 43% of African cropland will be difficult to diversify.
- Using herbaria to study global environmental change. Have been used to monitor the effects of climate change, habitat change, pollution and invasives on plants.
- Green Digitization: Online Botanical Collections Data Answering Real‐World Questions. Gotta get the stuff digitized first though.
- The ‘PhenoBox’, a flexible, automated, open‐source plant phenotyping solution. Somebody mention digitizing?
- Dissecting the null model for biological invasions: A meta-analysis of the propagule pressure effect. The success of aliens is down to their numbers. Wonder if it works for pest and disease organisms too.
- Are systematic reviews and meta-analyses still useful research? We are not sure. All righty then. Scrap the above.
- Shattering or not shattering: that is the question in domestication of rice (Oryza sativa L.). From one of the authors, Debarati Chakraborty: Loss of shattering through sh4 is not a crucial step for rice domestication. Genetics, cultural anthropology and archaeology suggests that primitive agrarians were dependent on wild or semi-domesticated shattering rice.
- Rooting for food security in Sub-Saharan Africa. Sub-Saharan Africa probably hasn’t the rootable soil depth for monster maize yields.