- How the truffle got its mate: insights from genetic structure in spontaneous and planted Mediterranean populations of Tuber melanosporum. More outbreeding in plantations, but strong structure still.
- Comparing genetic diversity of pig populations on the US mainland, Pacific Islands and China: Y chromosome evaluation. 16 breeds, 5 haplotypes, 10 breeds with only 1.
- What we use is not what we know: environmental predictors in plant distribution models. Edaphic factors are being ignored. ‘Twas ever thus.
Aurochs redux
A paper just out in Open Quaternary discusses “The Draft Genome of Extinct European Aurochs and its Implications for De-Extinction.” Not to boast about it, but we were onto that five years back.
Brainfood: Wilderness loss, Indian rice breeding, Wild barley, Korean millet, Jute mallow diversity, Wheat yields, Orange cassava
- Catastrophic Declines in Wilderness Areas Undermine Global Environment Targets. 10% of supposedly remote wilderness areas gone since the early 1990s.
- Genetic diversity trend in Indian rice varieties: an analysis using SSR markers. The diversity of rice varieties released in India has been decreasing, but only of late.
- Genotypic and phenotypic changes in wild barley (Hordeum vulgare subsp. spontaneum) during a period of climate change in Jordan. There were changes in climate on one side and phenotype and genotype on the other, but it was difficult to find a connection between the two.
- EST-SSR Based Genetic Diversity and Population Structure among Korean Landraces of Foxtail Millet (Setaria italica L.). As is often the case, there’s no geographic structure, unless there is.
- Domestication of jute mallow (Corchorus olitorius L.): ethnobotany, production constraints and phenomics of local cultivars in Ghana. Let the breeding begin.
- Similar estimates of temperature impacts on global wheat yield by three independent methods. Down by about 5% for a 1°C global temperature increase, no matter how you slice it.
- Genome-wide association mapping of provitamin A carotenoid content in cassava. SNPs associated with carotenoid content in cassava roots found in vicinity of known gene responsible for increase in accumulation of provitamin A carotenoids in cassava roots.
Brainfood: Organic penalty, Rye gaps, Sustainable diet indicators, Wheat evolution
- Commercial Crop Yields Reveal Strengths and Weaknesses for Organic Agriculture in the United States. The headline will be that organic yield is 80% of conventional, but the results are far more nuanced than that suggests.
- Genetic Distinctiveness of Rye In situ Accessions from Portugal Unveils a New Hotspot of Unexplored Genetic Resources. More collecting needed.
- A Consensus Proposal for Nutritional Indicators to Assess the Sustainability of a Healthy Diet: The Mediterranean Diet as a Case Study. 13 indicators of sustainability described, from “Vegetable/animal protein consumption ratios” to “Diet-related morbidity/mortality statistics.”
- Reconciling the evolutionary origin of bread wheat (Triticum aestivum). One slightly changed ancestral subgenome, one much-changed ancestral subgenome, and one weird hybrid subgenome involving the previous two plus another. Basically, we were insanely lucky to get wheat.
Brainfood: Lentil diversity, Cacao diversity, Larch distribution, Tea diversity, Salmon breeding, Ethiopian sorghum, Brassica differentiation, Biodiversity info, Human footprint
- Genetic Diversity of Cultivated Lentil (Lens culinaris Medik.) and Its Relation to the World’s Agro-ecological Zones. 352 accessions, 54 countries, 3 agro-ecological groups (South Asia, Mediterranean, N temperate) in USDA collection.
- Association mapping of seed and disease resistance traits in Theobroma cacao L. 6 and 1 markers, respectively, based on 483 unique trees in the International Cocoa Genebank, Trinidad (ICGT).
- Historic translocations of European larch (Larix decidua Mill.) genetic resources across Europe – A review from the 17th until the mid-20th century. Humans have moved material to areas outside its native distribution, and have mixed up genetically distinct populations in some places.
- Insights into the Genetic Relationships and Breeding Patterns of the African Tea Germplasm (Camellia sinensis (L.) O. Kuntze) Based on nSSR Markers and cpDNA Sequences. African material groups according to where it was bred.
- First the seed, next the smolt? Will salmon farmers learn the right lessons from plant biotechnology? I bet not.
- Geographic patterns of phenotypic diversity in sorghum (Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench) landraces from North Eastern Ethiopia. There aren’t any. Patterns, that is.
- Subgenome parallel selection is associated with morphotype diversification and convergent crop domestication in Brassica rapa and Brassica oleracea. Similar heading and tuberous morphotypes in the two species are due to parallel selection on genes that diverged after duplication event.
- Assessing the Cost of Global Biodiversity and Conservation Knowledge. Golly, it’s expensive!
- Sixteen years of change in the global terrestrial human footprint and implications for biodiversity conservation. Human footprint hasn’t increased by as much as might be feared, but still extends over 75% of world’s land surface. Let the mashing up with crop wild relatives hotspots begin!