- Evidence of an Eleventh-Century AD Cola Nitida Trade into the Middle Niger Region. Before then, there was not much trade between the savannah and forest zones of West Africa, which is kind of remarkable.
- Risk factors and plant management activities for the terraced agricultural systems on the Amalfi coast (Italy): an interdisciplinary approach. The terrace walls need agriculture just as much as agriculture needs the walls. Had me wondering whether those terraces were there when the cola trade started up in West Africa.
- Nexus of the awareness of ecosystem services as a “public-benefit value” and “utility value for consumption”: an economic evaluation of the agricultural culture of Satoyama in Japan. Ecosystem services are hard to sell. Probably in Amalfi too, I bet.
- Values and Beliefs That Shape Cattle Breeding in Southwestern Burkina Faso. Community-based breeding programmes need trusted leadership. Don’t we all.
- Limited effects of tree planting on forest canopy cover and rural livelihoods in Northern India. Decades of tree planting wasted. If only there had been better leadership.
- Unplanned but well prepared: A reinterpreted success story of international agricultural research, and its implications. Yeah, but even when an intervention is a success, as in this case, the reasons are beyond the control of researchers. The lesson: plan for the unplannable…
- Smallholder farmer engagement in citizen science for varietal diversification enhances adaptive capacity and productivity in Bihar, India. …and bet on diversity, of course…
- Introducing Beneficial Alleles from Plant Genetic Resources into the Wheat Germplasm. …like wheat breeders have been doing…
- A B73 x Palomero Toluqueño mapping population reveals local adaptation in Mexican highland maize. …and maize farmers too for that matter.
- Developing climate-resilient crops: improving plant tolerance to stress combination. And the need for diversity is only going to increase.
- Suitability of root, tuber, and banana crops in Central Africa can be favoured under future climates. I wouldn’t plan on it though…
- A review of global gridded cropping system data products. …but it’s good to finally know how all the different products that can be used to make these predictions stack up against each other.
Nibbles: Genebanks in Brazil, Tunisia, Ghana, Ethiopia, Goan rice, Wheat adoption, Peruvian hot peppers & cacao, Amazonian fruits and nuts, Dates, Great Hedge of India, Conservation genetics presentation
- Safety duplicating a chickpea collection.
- Tunisia’s genebank in the news.
- Ghana’s genebank trying to save taro.
- Using a genebank to improve Elephant grass.
- On-farm conservation of rice in Goa.
- Molecular tools show that a couple of varieties account for about half the wheat acreage in Bangladesh and Nepal. Hope all the landraces are in genebanks, and safety duplicated.
- Celebrating Peruvian pepper diversity.
- Peru’s cacao diversity doesn’t need help, apparently.
- However, the Amazon’s wild-extracted fruits (including cacao and a wild relative) could be in trouble. Hope they’re in genebanks, just in case.
- How the date came to the US. Including its genebanks.
- India had a precursor of the Green Wall of Africa but nobody remembers it. Glad it wasn’t used as a genebank of sorts.
- Conservation genetics (i.e., most of the above) explained in 48 slides.
Brainfood: Pollinators double, C4 grasses, Pre-breeding, Lupins resources, New wild coffees, Refugee deforestation, Tuber niches, Sampling strategy, Infection risk, Levant Bronze & Iron Age
- A global-scale expert assessment of drivers and risks associated with pollinator decline. “Key findings: 1) risks to human well-being from pollinator decline are higher in the Global South; 2) there is a clear lack of knowledge about pollinator decline in Africa; 3) loss of managed pollinators (e.g. honey bees) is only a serious risk to people in North America.” That’s according to the main author Dr Lynn Dicks on Twitter.
- Agrochemicals interact synergistically to increase bee mortality. Stress on pollinators is more than the sum of its parts.
- Evolutionary innovations driving abiotic stress tolerance in C4 grasses and cereals. Major C4 crops need more stress.
- Deep scoping: a breeding strategy to preserve, reintroduce and exploit genetic variation. You may not need a separate pre-breeding programme to introduce new diversity into your breeding programme without wrecking it.
- Genomic resources for lupins are coming of age. Maybe we could have a pre-breeding programme now?
- Six new species of coffee (Coffea) from northern Madagascar. Including 4 really narrow endemics. I wonder what they taste like. Start evaluation and pre-breeding?
- Refugee camps and deforestation in Sub-Saharan Africa. Much, much less of an impact that you’d think.
- Suitability of root, tuber, and banana crops in Central Africa can be favoured under future climates. More than you’d have thought.
- Proportional sampling strategy often captures more genetic diversity when population sizes vary. Sample more than you normally would from bigger populations of rare wild species.
- Plant pathogen infection risk tracks global crop yields under climate change. Where yields go up, fungal/oomycete infection risk goes up; where yields go down, so does infection risk. Assemblages will change especially in temperate regions.
- Developments in Subsistence Practices from the Early Bronze Age through the Iron Age in the Southern Levant. From pigs, wild animals and emmer to zebu, camelids, and free-threshing wheats.
Brainfood: Diversification, Diverse diet, Urban forests, Local seed systems, Heterosis, Oil palm core, Black Sigatoka resistance, Pearl millet diversity, Alfalfa diversity, Barley evaluation x2, Ganja origins, Apple origins, Millet diversity, Pepper diversity, Grapevine domestication, Vanilla diversity
- A global database of diversified farming effects on biodiversity and yield. Always good to have the data.
- Dietary agrobiodiversity for improved nutrition and health outcomes within a transitioning indigenous Solomon Island food system. Maybe we should have a database of diversified farming effects on health and nutrition too?
- Exploring ‘beyond-food’ opportunities for biocultural conservation in urban forest gardens. Always good to have more trees.
- Community seed network in an era of climate change: dynamics of maize diversity in Yucatán, Mexico. Always good to have landraces. And neighbours.
- Microbe-dependent heterosis in maize. Maize hybrids need microbes.
- Assessment of genetic diversity and population structure of oil palm (Elaeis guineensis Jacq.) field genebank: A step towards molecular-assisted germplasm conservation. 30% seems a lot for a core collection. But it’s good to have the data.
- Sources of resistance to Pseudocercospora fijiensis, the cause of black Sigatoka in banana. 11 resistant accessions out of 95 seems pretty good, on the other hand.
- GWAS unveils features between early- and late-flowering pearl millets. Based on a national-level core collection in Senegal. Presumably this will scale?
- Germplasm Collection, Genetic Resources, and Gene Pools in Alfalfa. Lots of work has been done. More work is needed on the wild relatives though.
- Assessment and modeling using machine learning of resistance to scald (Rhynchosporium commune) in two specific barley genetic resources subsets. Fancy maths helps to identify the barley genebank accessions you really need.
- Strategic malting barley improvement for craft brewers through consumer sensory evaluation of malt and beer. More fancy maths, this time applied to a hedonic data in the service of beer. Germplasm evaluation we can all get behind. No FIGS, alas.
- Large-scale whole-genome resequencing unravels the domestication history of Cannabis sativa. 4 genetic groups: primordial (located in China, not Central Asia, and going back 12,000 years), 2 medicinal, 1 fibre. Now for the hedonic evaluation.
- The Origins of the Apple in Central Asia. Probably domesticated to cope with the munchies.
- Genetic Divergence and Population Structure in Weedy and Cultivated Broomcorn Millets (Panicum miliaceum L.) Revealed by Specific-Locus Amplified Fragment Sequencing (SLAF-Seq). There are interesting genetic differences between wild and feral forms, and between eastern and central-western cultivated forms. The Silk Road trifecta.
- Global range expansion history of pepper (Capsicum spp.) revealed by over 10,000 genebank accessions. Spoke too soon. The Silk Road had a role in pepper movement too. Among other trade routes. Interesting, and unsurprising, that genes for pungency show distinct geographic patterns.
- Genomic evidence supports an independent history of Levantine and Eurasian grapevines. First domestication in the Caucasus, and then in the Levant, but not clear if from local sources. No word on hedonic evaluation.
- Genotyping-By-Sequencing diversity analysis of international Vanilla collections uncovers hidden diversity and enables plant improvement. Belize seems to be a real hotspot. The Silk Road not involved.
Nibbles: Deforestation, Grizzly genetics, Animal domestication, Wheat drones, Okra experiments, Millet survey, The Common Table
- 26 million hectares of forest were lost in 2020.
- Genetic groups in grizzly bears line up with Indigenous languages in British Columbia. How about the trees, though?
- But why weren’t grizzly bears domesticated? Because they’re not friendly, feedable, fecund and family-friendly.
- Drones and wheat breeding.
- Crowdsourcing okra evaluation. No drones involved.
- Health-conscious urban Indians eat millet for health reasons. Goes great with okra.
- The Common Table: sharing stories about reforming the food system. Like a couple of the above.