- Seed Hunter visits genebank. Not many people hurt.
- I’d like to visit this Corn Palace.
- Rice domestication: not once, not twice, three times. Well, really, who’s to say maybe even more than that? Maybe even in Australia?
- Solomon Islands cacao wins award. Looking forward to tasting it one day. But is it certified?
- Bread, Wine, Chocolate: The Giveaway.
- Researchers hoping to science the shit out of threat to Thanksgiving.
- Genetic resources and gastronomy in Brazil.
- Pineapple gets a genome.
- Sunflower saves soybean? What wizardry is this?
Nibbles: EATx Cali, Gourds, Armenian wine, Wheat chemistry, Genomics of domestication, Soybean breeding
- Svalbard among things being discussed at EATx Cali today. Who knows, maybe other genebanks too?
- The cucumber’s wilder relatives.
- Armenian wine going back to the future.
- Whole grains deconstructed.
- Unpicking domestication in chickens and cattle. And the original paper on the latter, featuring the aurochs genome.
- Breeders have bred omega-3 alpha-linolenic acid (ALA) out of soybeans, but are now going back to wild relatives to breed it back in.
Brainfood: Forage diversity, Chinese cherry, Meta-diversity, Sunflower ecogeography, Lima bean domestication, Dog breeding, Goat ethnogenetics, Pigs vs chickens
- Complementary effects of species and genetic diversity on productivity and stability of sown grasslands. Species diversity good for total production, genetic diversity good for regular production throughout the year, regardless of water. And more, and more.
- Genetic Diversity and Population Structure Patterns in Chinese Cherry (Prunus pseudocerasus Lindl) Landraces. Perhaps 2 domestication sites.
- Inter-individual variation promotes ecological success of populations and species: evidence from experimental and comparative studies. More diverse populations are less vulnerable to environmental changes, more stable in population size, less extinction prone, have better establishment success and larger ranges, especially under stress.
- Ecogeography and utility to plant breeding of the crop wild relatives of sunflower (Helianthus annuus L.). Many close relatives of the crop in extreme environments.
- Domestication of small-seeded lima bean (Phaseolus lunatus L.) landraces in Mesoamerica: evidence from microsatellite markers. Two domestications events. Maybe.
- Trends in genetic diversity for all Kennel Club registered pedigree dog breeds. Popular sires have made for a lot of inbreeding, but this has been getting better of late.
- The N’Dama dilemma: ethnogenetics and small ruminant breed dynamics in the tsetse zone, The Gambia. Saving the name is not enough.
- The Pig and the Chicken in the Middle East: Modeling Human Subsistence Behavior in the Archaeological Record Using Historical and Animal Husbandry Data. Chickens replaced pigs in the first millennium Middle East because they were smaller and more efficient. Oh, and eggs.
Brainfood: Cowpea evaluation, Varietal mixtures, Eragrostis core, Nigerian cassava diversity, Turkish alfalfa, Italian wild grapes, Cleome veggie, AnGR history
- Genotypic difference in salinity tolerance during early vegetative growth of cowpea (Vigna unguiculata L. Walp.) from Myanmar. 3 out of 21 seems a pretty good proportion.
- Epidemiological and evolutionary management of plant resistance: optimizing the deployment of cultivar mixtures in time and space in agricultural landscapes. Best to combine with rotations.
- Barnyard millet global core collection evaluation in the submontane Himalayan region of India using multivariate analysis. Three groups: India, Japan, and everything else.
- Determinants of on-farm cassava biodiversity in Ogun State, Nigeria. Experience and size of farm.
- Historical Alfalfa Landraces Perform Higher Yield Under Dry Farming in Turkey. At least at these two locations in Kars. One does wonder why breeders bother, though.
- Identification and characterization of Vitis vinifera subsp. sylvestris populations in north-western Italy. Was thought to be lost in Piedmont, but 5 small wild populations found, in danger of contamination from the crop.
- Cleome viscosa: a promising underutilized minor crop. Worth a try, though the name is hardly promising.
- Changing values of Farm Animal Genomic Resources. From historical breeds to the Nagoya Protocol. Everything is political now. Welcome to my world.
Brainfood: Olive oil composition, Storing rice, Fair Trade, Red List, Farmer seed systems, Dipterocarp genetic structure, Italian bread wheat, Nepal crop diversity, Rice origins
- In situ evaluation of the fruit and oil characteristics of the main Lebanese olive germplasm. Some may have levels of ∆-7-stigmastenol which are on the high side. This is a chemical used in fraud detection, apparently.
- Viability monitoring intervals for genebank samples of Oryza sativa. Wait for fail (<85% germination) in the active collection before testing the corresponding seedlot in the base collection.
- Fair Trade and Free Entry: Can a Disequilibrium Market Serve as a Development Tool? Busted.
- Green Plants in the Red: A Baseline Global Assessment for the IUCN Sampled Red List Index for Plants. 20% of species assessed are threatened with extinction, mainly from tropical rain forest, mainly as a result of conversion to agriculture and harvesting of natural resources.
- Farmer seed networks make a limited contribution to agriculture? Four common misconceptions. They’re not inefficient, they’re not closed and conservative, and they’re not doomed. But they could work better and in a more egalitarian way.
- Understanding local patterns of genetic diversity in dipterocarps using a multi-site, multi-species approach: Implications for forest management and restoration. In most of these species, genetically similar individuals cluster together, resulting in inbreeding, especially after fragmentation due to logging. But you can do something about that through management.
- Morpho-physiolological and qualitative traits of a bread wheat collection spanning a century of breeding in Italy. The ideotype has changed significantly in Italy over the past 100 years.
- Assessing links between crop diversity and food self-sufficiency in three agroecological regions of Nepal. Whether greater crop diversity translates into more stable livelihoods depends on access to markets.
- A Population Genomics Insight into the Mediterranean Origins of Wine Yeast Domestication. Closest wild population to wine yeast comes from Mediterranean oak, and diverged at about the right time.
- Modelling the Geographical Origin of Rice Cultivation in Asia Using the Rice Archaeological Database. Two centres of origin, in Middle Yangtze and Lower Yangtze valleys.