- The Use of Crop Wild Relatives in Maize and Sunflower Breeding. In maize, unlike sunflower, it just hasn’t been worth it. Yet.
- Securing sustainable and nutritious food systems through mainstreaming agricultural biodiversity: an interdisciplinary study. What works in Brazil won’t necessarily fly in India.
- Duplication assessments in Brassica vegetable accessions. Half of 13 accession pairs/triplets with identical names from VIR and NordGen turned out to be morphologically identical.
- Beans (Phaseolus ssp.) as a Model for Understanding Crop Evolution. 7 independent domestication “events” spread across 5 species and 2 continents makes for some interesting natural experiments.
- A Mesoamerican origin of cherimoya (Annona cherimola Mill.). Implications for the conservation of plant genetic resources. Compare and contrast with above.
- Highly productive forage legume stands show no positive biodiversity effect on yield and N2-fixation. Sometimes diversity doesn’t add much.
- Genetic Resources of Pearl Millet: Status and Utilization. 22,888 accessions from 51 countries. Indian landraces: earliness, high tillering, high harvest index and local adaptation; African: bigger panicles, large seed size, and disease resistance.
- Use of natural diversity and biotechnology to increase the quality and nutritional content of tomato and grape. Both are needed.
- Rhubarb (Rheum species): the role of Edinburgh in its cultivation and development. From China, via Russia, with love.
- Will phenotypic plasticity affecting flowering phenology keep pace with climate change? If the change is smaller than about 13 days.
- Seed dispersers help plants to escape global warming. Because they move seed >35 m per decade uphill.
Nibbles: Wheat-barley hybrid, Father of Wheat Revolution, Medieval bread, Tomato history, SOWP2, Domestication, Red Data, Taro benefits, Hummus!, Textile book, Healthy rice, Avocado Wars
- Tritodendrum hits the market.
- DS Athwal would have approved. RIP.
- Medieval bakers too, I bet.
- Want some cherry tomatoes on your bread? No? Try these then.
- Lots of crop wild relatives among newly discovered plants. See (some of) them on the new State of the World’s Plants report from Kew. And no, Kew, none of them are “miserable.”
- Early farmers unintentionally produced vegetables with larger seeds simply by cultivating them. And cereals too.
- Head of IUCN Red Data List Unit in impassioned plea for IUCN Red Data List process.
- What is taro good for? I’m glad you asked.
- I missed International Hummus Day? How could this happen?
- Textilia Linnaeana! What do you mean I’ve just had my birthday?
- Lowering the glycemic index of rice for the Chinese market.
- Fighting for avocados. Literally.
Brainfood: Canola model, Saline dates, High rice, Perennial wheat, European cowpea, Mesoamerican oil palm, Seed viability, Citrus identity, Poor cassava, Horse domestication, Wild tomatoes, Tea genome, Veggie breeding, Classical brassicas
- Development of a Statistical Crop Model to Explain the Relationship between Seed Yield and Phenotypic Diversity within the Brassica napus Genepool. Look for primary raceme area.
- Screening of Date Palm (Phoenix dactylifera L.) Cultivars for Salinity Tolerance. In Oman, Manoma and Umsila are particularly tolerant.
- Genetic structure and isolation by altitude in rice landraces of Yunnan, China revealed by nucleotide and microsatellite marker polymorphisms. Geneflow is horizontal, adaptation vertical.
- Breeding Perennial Grain Crops Based on Wheat. By adding a wild genome.
- European cowpea landraces for a more sustainable agriculture system and novel foods. 24 of them, no less. But you have to start somewhere, I suppose.
- Genetic diversity of Elaeis oleifera (HBK) Cortes populations using cross species SSRs: implication’s for germplasm utilization and conservation. From 532 palms in 19 populations to 34 individuals.
- Large-Scale Screening of Intact Tomato Seeds for Viability Using Near Infrared Reflectance Spectroscopy (NIRS). Good-bye germination tests?
- Genetic identification of ‘Limau Kacang’ (Citrus sp.), a local mandarin cultivated in West Sumatra by sequence-related amplified polymorphism (SRAP). It’s a ponkan.
- Cassava haplotype map highlights fixation of deleterious mutations during clonal propagation. Cassava is decaying genetically, but breeders are helping.
- Ancient genomic changes associated with domestication of the horse. The ancient DNA of immediate post-domestication horses suggests that the stallion bottleneck happened later.
- Genetic Diversity and Population Structure of Two Tomato Species from the Galapagos Islands. They mirror island formation.
- The Tea Tree Genome Provides Insights into Tea Flavor and Independent Evolution of Caffeine Biosynthesis. It evolved caffeine independently of coffee but not cacao. And flavour is down to a whole genome duplication.
- The contribution of international vegetable breeding to private seed companies in India. It can still make one, but for traits rather than varieties.
- Domestication, diversity and use of Brassica oleracea L., based on ancient Greek and Latin texts. Their use as a hangover cure has a long and august pedigree. No word on their raceme area.
Nibbles: Aeroponic yams, Ancient crops, Kumara, Informal food vendors, Foxy, Salumi, Corn whiskey, Doomed cassava
- Yams up in the air, but in a good way.
- Yet another couple of things on how “ancient crops” will save us all. All crops are ancient. Well, except the kiwi.
- Lovely little film on a lovely sweet-potato-growing New Zealand couple to make up for that uncalled-for dig at the kiwi. Made my day.
- Engage with kiosk holders, don’t hassle them.
- Review of a book on the quixotic attempt to resynthesize the dog. Why bother?
- More Italian salami than you can shake a stick at.
- Might go well with some artisanal Mexican corn whiskey.
- Cassava is “pointed in the direction of extinction.” Thank goodness for genebanks, eh?
Brainfood: Tomato chemicals, Photoperiod, Grain phenotyping, Hawaiian ag, Domestication primer, Symbionts, Turkish wheat, Yam bean diversity, Crop health, Walnut diversity, Agrobiodiversity theorising, Sea pigs, NERICA impacts, Nutrient production
- Multi-perspective evaluation of phytonutrients – Case study on tomato landraces for fresh consumption. Fancy maths proves different tomato varieties taste different.
- Adaptation to the Local Environment by Modifications of the Photoperiod Response in Crops. It’s all down to a few mutations in all crops.
- Evaluation of the SeedCounter, A Mobile Application for Grain Phenotyping. Seems like a lot of work to just be able to measure wheat seeds, but boys will have their toys.
- Indigenous Polynesian Agriculture in Hawaiʻi. Both intensive and extensive.
- How to make a domesticate. It takes a long time, and involves lots of genes.
- Symbiosis limits establishment of legumes outside their native range at a global scale. Non-symbiotic legumes have spread further than symbiotic ones into non-native areas.
- Wheat Landraces Currently Grown in Turkey: Distribution, Diversity, and Use. More than half of morphotypes (59%) lost since 1920 overall, but none in some areas.
- Ecotypic differentiation under farmers’ selection: Molecular insights into the domestication of Pachyrhizus Rich. ex DC. (Fabaceae) in the Peruvian Andes. Separate Amazonian and Andean lineages, and P. tuberosum arising from P. ahipa.
- Crop health and its global impacts on the components of food security. To better understand acute impacts, model systemic ones.
- Climate-Related Local Extinctions Are Already Widespread among Plant and Animal Species. About half of about 1000 species showed local extinction.
- Rethinking the history of common walnut (Juglans regia L.) in Europe: Its origins and human interactions. Expansion from glacial refugia, followed by human exploitation. Compare and contrast with Asia. Or read about the whole thing in AramcoWorld.
- Agrobiodiversity and a sustainable food future. Apparently all you need to do to support the “use of biological diversity in sustainable agricultural and food systems” is to recognize that there are 4 interconnected themes: (1) genetic resources, ecology and evolution; (2) governance policy, institutions and legal agreements; (3) food, nutrition, health and disease; and (4) global change drivers with social ecological interactions.
- Eastern Mediterranean Mobility in the Bronze and Early Iron Ages: Inferences from Ancient DNA of Pigs and Cattle. Anatolia to southeastern Europe and back to the Levant across the Bronze-Iron Age transition. The Sea Peoples had pigs?
- Contribution of improved rice varieties to poverty reduction and food security in sub-Saharan Africa. NERICA adoption increased annual per capita income by US$4 per year from 2000, despite yields going down a bit.
- Farming and the geography of nutrient production for human use: a transdisciplinary analysis. Need to try to maintain production diversity as farm size increases. But let Jess Fanzo explain it better.