- Archaeological expansions in tropical South America during the late Holocene: Assessing the role of demic diffusion. Some agricultural diffusion in lowland South America was the movement of ideas rather than people.
- The origins of Amazonian landscapes: Plant cultivation, domestication and the spread of food production in tropical South America. Where did the farming people and/or ideas move from? The sub-Andean montane forest of NW South America and the shrub savannahs and seasonal forests of SW Amazonia.
- Genetic Diversity, Nitrogen Fixation, and Water Use Efficiency in a Panel of Honduran Common Bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) Landraces and Modern Genotypes. Landraces showed better N fixation, but lower yields, than modern varieties.
- Maize genotypes with deep root systems tolerate salt stress better than those with shallow root systems during early growth. Ok, but? There’s always a but.
- Challenges for Ex Situ Conservation of Wild Bananas: Seeds Collected in Papua New Guinea Have Variable Levels of Desiccation Tolerance. Avoid the basal end of the infructescence. Among other things.
- Detection of banana plants and their major diseases through aerial images and machine learning methods: A case study in DR Congo and Republic of Benin. Yeah but can you apply it to collecting the wild relatives?
- Genetic and genomic resources for finger millet improvement: opportunities for advancing climate-smart agriculture. No way this can be called neglected any longer. But is it still under-utilized?
- Genotyping-by-Sequencing to Unlock Genetic Diversity and Population Structure in White Yam (Dioscorea rotundata Poir.). More landrace variation within countries than among.
- BRIDGE – A Visual Analytics Web Tool for Barley Genebank Genomics. Do white yam next?
- Pedigree analysis of pre-breeding efforts in Trifolium spp. germplasm in New Zealand. Not a huge number of parents have been used, but reasonable diversity in most species.
- Pleistocene climate changes, and not agricultural spread, accounts for range expansion and admixture in the dominant grassland species Lolium perenne L. Lots more unused diversity out there. For now.
- IUCN Red List and the value of integrating genetics. Applying some genetic rules of thumb make some endangered species even more so.
- Variation in Seed Metabolites between Two Indica Rice Accessions Differing in Seed Longevity. Candidate biochemical indicators of impending seed death detected.
- Sustainability strategies by companies in the global coffee sector. They are close to non-existent.
- Camel Genetic Resources Conservation through Tourism: A Key Sociocultural Approach of Camelback Leisure Riding. Camel rides could be used for conservation, but they’ll have to deliver more than just conservation.
Nibbles: Community seedbanks, Old ag, ICRAF resources, Pests & diseases, Archaeobotany, Oz seeds, Pakistani camels
- The future is community seedbanks.
- The past was crop mixtures. Among other things: two-year-old reviews of books on 18th century agriculture re-upped.
- The future is trees. But they need help, hence these resources.
- Australia looks to native tree seeds for its future. No help needed.
- There will probably be a crop pandemic in the future. There have certainly been ones in the past. Even the recent past. Though plant pathogens do have their uses.
- Turkish government seizes seized seeds from the past.
- The future of swimming camels is uncertain.
Brainfood: Dietary diversity, Farm diversity double, Neolithic dairy, Exotic breeds, Yam viruses, Cassava GWAS, Satellite phenotyping, Forest restoration & disturbance, Genetic rescue, Budwood cryo, SP cryo, Dry grasslands, Botanical gardens, Remote sensing
- Agricultural Food Production Diversity and Dietary Diversity among Female Small Holder Farmers in a Region of the Ecuadorian Andes Experiencing Nutrition Transition. Higher diversity of crops on family farms is only weakly associated with greater dietary diversity and lower household food insecurity among female caretakers. Better than nothing, though, right?
- Productive Capacity of Biodiversity: Crop Diversity and Permanent Grasslands in Northwestern France. Having a bigger percentage of permanent grassland on your French farm, or a greater diversity of crops, can increase cereal and milk yields. No word on diets.
- The influence of landscape composition and configuration on crop yield resilience. No effect on yield per se (see above), but proximity to semi-natural habitat does increase yield stability in UK farms.
- Living off the land: Terrestrial-based diet and dairying in the farming communities of the Neolithic Balkans. Ancient farmers had a varied diet, but possibly not involving consumption of raw milk, at least by adults.
- Food securers or invasive aliens? Trends and consequences of non-native livestock introgression in developing countries. In 40 countries, the proportion of livestock populations belonging to local breeds has been decreasing by about 1% a year for the past 20 years. Hey, but milk yield per cow has been going up, so there’s that.
- Potentials of Cultivated Varieties and Wild Yam Seeds as Efficient Alternative Plant Genetic Resources for Resistant Genotypes against Yam Mosaic Virus (YMV) in Togo. Work with seeds! But were they properly inoculated? Hopefully a virologist will tell us.
- Genome-wide association analysis reveals new insights into the genetic architecture of defensive, agro-morphological and quality-related traits in cassava. Lots of interesting markers for cassava breeders, or at least those working with material from W Africa. Do it for yams next?
- High-resolution satellite imagery applications in crop phenotyping: An overview. Clouds, you say? Not a problem any more. But can it distinguish landraces from modern varieties? What’s needed is a sort of mutant algorithm, I guess.
- Crop type identification and spatial mapping using Sentinel-2 satellite data with focus on field-level information. Still some way from being able to distinguish landraces from modern varieties, I see.
- Global forest restoration and the importance of prioritizing local communities. I’m shocked I tell you, shocked.
- Protection gaps and restoration opportunities for primary forests in Europe. A lot of restoration could usefully be done in currently protected areas, though it would be better if these were expanded. No word on local communities.
- Mapping the forest disturbance regimes of Europe. I guess this means that restoration, when it happens, will be monitored from space.
- Genetic rescue: A critique of the evidence supports maximizing genetic diversity rather than minimizing the introduction of putatively harmful genetic variation. When you do do restoration, don’t worry about genetic pollution, just go for as much diversity as possible. Well, for small relict populations. Of animals.
- Considerations for large-scale implementation of dormant budwood cryopreservation. It’s about the logistics.
- Development of a fast and user-friendly cryopreservation protocol for sweet potato genetic resources. It’s the axillary meristems. Among other things.
- The human–environment nexus and vegetation–rainfall sensitivity in tropical drylands. Dryland grasslands in Africa and Asia less able to respond to water availability overall, more able in Australia and S America, evens stevens in N America. Would be interesting to mash up particularly hard-hit areas with CWR and forage germplasm collecting localities.
- Botanic garden solutions to the plant extinction crisis. Expertise, tools, facilities, and networks are there. You know what’s missing, right?
Brainfood: Special citizen science edition
Something for the weekend. I hope you enjoy this special edition of Brainfood focusing on citizen science, Indigenous knowledge and participatory research. Do you like themed Brainfood editions like this? There will be another one on Monday, as it happens. They’re more tricky to produce, but if there’s significant interest I may make the extra effort. Let me know, and suggest topics.
- The value of climate-resilient seeds for smallholder adaptation in sub-Saharan Africa. Up to USD 2 billion in Malawi and Tanzania over the next 30 years.
- Agricultural productivity and deforestation: Evidence from input subsidies and ethnic favoritism in Malawi. Cheaper fertilizers increased yields and decreased deforestation. Better seeds would help too, no doubt (see above).
- Channels used to deliver agricultural information and knowledge to smallholder farmers. Farmer groups and demonstration plots work well to spread the news about fertilizers and seeds.
- Integrating Conventional and Participatory Crop Improvement for Smallholder Agriculture Using the Seeds for Needs Approach: A Review. Combine high-tech centralized and participatory decentralized germplasm evaluation and breeding approaches to get those better seeds to farmer groups and their demonstration plots.
- Citizen science breathes new life into participatory agricultural research. A review. Why do the participatory, decentralized bit? Here’s why. Fortunately, there’s an app for it…
- A global resource for exploring and exploiting genetic variation in sorghum crop wild relatives. If those seeds include sorghum, you could start with this lot.
- Gendered differences in crop diversity choices: A case study from Papua New Guinea. And don’t forget gender as you do all this participatory, decentralized stuff. For example, in PNG, the women are into marketing, the men into tradition.
- Crowd breeding of Danish apple cultivars. No word on gender differences, alas.
- Modelling illustrates that genomic selection provides new opportunities for intercrop breeding. Here’s the high-tech, centralized bit, or at least a model of it, ripe for mashing up with citizen science.
- Dissection of the domestication‐shaped genetic architecture of lettuce primary metabolism. More high-tech, centralized stuff, the real thing this time. Which can now be used to breed a better lettuce, hopefully by lots of citizens growing the stuff in their gardens and providing salad tasting results through a nifty app.
- Indigenous and Local Knowledge Practices and Innovations for Enhancing Food Security Under Climate Change: Examples from Mijikenda Communities in Coastal Kenya. Maybe farmers should run participatory programmes, with scientists as the citizens.
- Micronutrient composition and microbial community analysis across diverse landraces of the Ethiopian orphan crop enset. Don’t know how you’d do citizen science on this, but I bet somebody does.
- Discovering the indigenous microbial communities associated with the natural fermentation of sap from the cider gum Eucalyptus gunnii. Someone mention traditional fermentation practices?
- The Milpa Game: a Field Experiment Investigating the Social and Ecological Dynamics of Q’eqchi’ Maya Swidden Agriculture. Citizen science is not a game. No, wait…
- The Ancient Tree Inventory: a summary of the results of a 15 year citizen science project recording ancient, veteran and notable trees across the UK. Not a game indeed: very serious, but fun, definitely fun.
Brainfood: CGIAR, Genebank data, AI & diseases, Mentha CWR, Tree crops, Carrot diversity, Rice sampling, Perennial rice, Rice de-domestication, Malagasy deforestation, Saving pollinators, Sheep domestication, FFS, Wine signatures
- The development of the international center model for agricultural research: A prehistory of the CGIAR. The model didn’t start with those canonical US foundations, and owes more than a little to colonialism. Further integration is needed.
- Document or Lose It—On the Importance of Information Management for Genetic Resources Conservation in Genebanks. Standardization, openness and interoperability. Easier said than done, but if you’re looking for further integration…
- AI-powered banana diseases and pest detection. But can it tell bananas from plantains? Nice to link it up with the above.
- Crop Wild Relatives as Germplasm Resource for Cultivar Improvement in Mint (Mentha L.). 450 clones representing 34 taxa maintained by USDA. The next 2 are USDA things too.
- Germplasm Development of Underutilized Temperate U.S. Tree Crops. Sure, introduce species from abroad, but if they have local wild relatives you have another route to adaptation. Take the hazelnut, for example…
- Subspecies Variation of Daucus carota Coastal (“Gummifer”) Morphotypes (Apiaceae) Using Genotyping-by-Sequencing. One morphology and niche, 5 genetic groups.
- Comparisons of sampling methods for assessing intra- and inter-accession genetic diversity in three rice species using genotyping by sequencing. Some differences in results among sampling methods, but not huge.
- Combining ability analysis on rhizomatousness via incomplete diallel crosses between perennial wild relative of rice and Asian cultivated rice. If you want perennial cultivated(ish) rice, you have to pick your parents carefully.
- Something old, something new: Evolution of Colombian weedy rice (Oryza spp.) through de novo de‐domestication, exotic gene flow, and hybridization. Weedy rice is just local domesticated rice gone bad, at least in Colombia. Gosh I hope that perennial rice doesn’t get de-domesticated.
- It’s not just poverty: unregulated global market and bad governance explain unceasing deforestation in Western Madagascar. Stop blaming subsistence slash-and-burn.
- Climate change enforces to look beyond the plant – the example of pollinators. Create nice conditions for pollinators on farms, it’ll be worth it.
- Paternal Origins and Migratory Episodes of Domestic Sheep. 4 parental lineages, one with primitive features and another with fat tails.
- Women and Fish-for-Sex: Transactional Sex, HIV/AIDS and Gender in African Fisheries. Teach a man to fish, FFS.
- Use of Untargeted Liquid Chromatography–Mass Spectrometry Metabolome To Discriminate Italian Monovarietal Red Wines, Produced in Their Different Terroirs. A little wine with your fish? Ah no, wait, these are all reds. But at least you can tell them apart now.