- Genotyping by sequencing provides new insights into the diversity of Napier grass (Cenchrus purpureus) and reveals variation in genome-wide LD patterns between collections. Complementarity between ILRI and Embrapa collections.
- Breaking Free: the Genomics of Allopolyploidy-facilitated Niche Expansion in White Clover. From two quite different, specialized habitats, to a global presence, through polyploidy.
- Likes, comments, and shares of marine organism imagery on Facebook. Use really nice pictures, and don’t worry too much about the captions.
- African Orphan Crops Consortium (AOCC): status of developing genomic resources for African orphan crops. 150 African breeders trained, one or more forms of sequence data produced for 60 crops, reference genome sequences for 6 species published, 6 near completion, 19 in progress.
- The role of genetics in mainstreaming the production of new and orphan crops to diversify food systems and support human nutrition. Well it’s a good job there’s the above, then.
- Evaluation of sites for the reestablishment of the American chestnut (Castanea dentata) in northeast Georgia, USA. Overwhelmingly on federal land, which may or may not be a good thing.
- Patterns of nitrogen‐fixing tree abundance in forests across Asia and America. Much rarer in Asia than in the Americas.
- Tracking Five Millennia of Horse Management with Extensive Ancient Genome Time Series. Iberian and Siberian domesticated horse lineages went extinct, but the Muslim conquests injected some much-needed diversity.
- Chinese Mongolian horses may retain early domestic male genetic lineages yet to be discovered. Wait, does Mongolian=Siberian?
- Cannabis in Asia: its center of origin and early cultivation, based on a synthesis of subfossil pollen and archaeobotanical studies. The northeastern Tibetan Plateau, to be precise, with the first steppe communities.
- Paleomedicine and the use of plant secondary compounds in the Paleolithic and Early Neolithic. Self-medication goes back a long time.
- Genetic characterization of tertiary relict endemic Phoenix theophrasti populations in Turkey and phylogenetic relations of the species with other palm species revealed by SSR markers. Probably endangered.
- Genome wide association analysis of sorghum mini core lines regarding anthracnose, downy mildew, and head smut. 9 photo-sensitive and 4 photo insensitive accessions are multiple sources for resistance to anthracnose, SDM and head smut.
Brainfood: More than yield, Cotton breeding, Chickpea genome, Mutations & domestication, Holy Grail, Restoration, Watermelon diversity, Language diversity, Ocimum diversity, Clean cassava, Neolithic feasting, Amazonian agriculture, Sharecropping
- The paradox of productivity: agricultural productivity promotes food system inefficiency. It’s the cheap calories, stupid.
- Genetic Evaluation of Exotic Chromatins from Two Obsolete Interspecific Introgression Lines of Upland Cotton for Fiber Quality Improvement. Yield from one species, fibre quality from the other.
- Resequencing of 429 chickpea accessions from 45 countries provides insights into genome diversity, domestication and agronomic traits. Including drought tolerance.
- Genome of ‘Charleston Gray’, the principal American watermelon cultivar, and genetic characterization of 1,365 accessions in the U.S. National Plant Germplasm System watermelon collection. Four genetic groups reflecting geography.
- Genome-wide nucleotide patterns and potential mechanisms of genome divergence following domestication in maize and soybean. The best candidates for domestication are plants that are willing to mutate a bit, but not too much.
- Crop Biodiversity: An Unfinished Magnum Opus of Nature. “Linking genotype and phenotype remains the holy grail of crop biodiversity studies.”
- Meeting global land restoration and protection targets: What would the world look like in 2050? Very nice. It would look very nice.
- The ecological drivers of variation in global language diversity. High year-round productivity leads to lots of languages. And lots of biodiversity, but that’s another story.
- Product authenticity versus globalisation—The Tulsi case. The division of Indian Holy Basil into 3 types based on traditional knowledge is only partially supported by genetic and phytochemical studies.
- A method for generating virus-free cassava plants to combat viral disease epidemics in Africa. Let the distribution commence.
- Cereal processing at Early Neolithic Göbekli Tepe, southeastern Turkey. They must have been some feasts.
- Persistent Early to Middle Holocene tropical foraging in southwestern Amazonia. On the cusp of agriculture 10,000 years ago in Bolivia. That’s about the same time as Göbekli Tepe, give or take a thousand years.
- Moral Hazard: Experimental Evidence from Tenancy Contracts. Tenant farmers should keep a higher share to increase productivity and diversity, but of course the landlords won’t let them so what’s needed is revolution.
Brainfood: Thlaspi domestication, WDPA, PA benefits, Oil palm benefits, Stunting, Production synchronicity, Bean nutrients, Caprine domestication, Roots of tuber eating, Cassava shovelomics, Intensification, Extinction prediction, Pistachio genome
- Progress toward the identification and stacking of crucial domestication traits in pennycress. Thank goodness it’s closely related to Arabidopsis.
- Sixty years of tracking conservation progress using the World Database on Protected Areas. Will increasingly expand to informally protected ares and link to other databases.
- Evaluating the impacts of protected areas on human well-being across the developing world. Pretty positive impacts for communities living near protected areas, with some tourism.
- Does oil palm agriculture help alleviate poverty? A multidimensional counterfactual assessment of oil palm development in Indonesia. Not in remote, mainly subsistence villages. So I guess that means the best outcomes come from oil palm plantations near protected areas?
- Perspective: What Does Stunting Really Mean? A Critical Review of the Evidence. Not as much as some think, but not nothing.
- Synchronized failure of global crop production. Lower production synchrony within crops, but higher among crops, meaning calorie production very vulnerable to climate change.
- Comparative analysis of perennial and annual Phaseolus seed nutrient concentrations. Ca, Cu, Fe, Mg, Mn, and P higher in wild annuals.
- Urine salts elucidate Early Neolithic animal management at Aşıklı Höyük, Turkey. May show the transition from hunting caprines to keeping them penned up about 10,000 years ago outside the Fertile Crescent.
- Cooked starchy food in hearths ca. 120 kya and 65 kya (MIS 5e and MIS 4) from Klasies River Cave, South Africa. Earliest evidence of parenchyma as food, apparently.
- Phenotypic variation of cassava root traits and their responses to drought. Phancy phenotyping.
- Conventional land‐use intensification reduces species richness and increases production: A global meta‐analysis. Especially in mid-intensity systems, but in low- and high-intensity systems you can get closer to win-wins.
- Projecting impacts of global climate and land‐use scenarios on plant biodiversity using compositional‐turnover modelling. All the intensification in the world is not going to help if climate change isn’t curbed.
- Whole genomes and transcriptomes reveal adaptation and domestication of pistachio. Salinity tolerance related to jasmonic acid synthesis pathway.
Brainfood: GI, Collection representativeness, Miracle tree, Brave new world, Wheat roots, Dry beans, Seedling roots, Ecotourism, Citrus evolution, Mango evolution, Aboriginal translocation, Carrot cores, Potato breeding
- Impact of Geographical Indication schemes on traditional knowledge in changing agricultural landscapes: An empirical analysis from Japan. GI encouraged sharing of traditional knowledge.
- Genetic diversity in British populations of Taxus baccata L.: Is the seedbank collection representative of the genetic variation in the wild? Yes, though marginal populations could be collected more.
- The miracle mix of Moringa: Status of Moringa research and development in Malawi. Needs breeding.
- New plant breeding technologies for food security. Genome editing, basically. Meet the new boss…
- Evolutionary agroecology: Trends in root architecture during wheat breeding. In China, wheat breeding has involved unconscious group selection for simpler, less branched, deeper roots in higher-yielding modern varieties.
- Root and shoot variation in relation to potential intermittent drought adaptation of Mesoamerican wild common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.). Deeper-rooted, and more drought-tolerant, wild beans are found in dry regions.
- Seedling traits predict drought-induced mortality linked to diversity loss. Species with longer seedling roots survive drought better.
- Is ecotourism a panacea? Political ecology perspectives from the Sundarban Biosphere Reserve, India. Well, what do you think?
- Genotyping by sequencing can reveal the complex mosaic genomes in gene pools resulting from reticulate evolution: a case study in diploid and polyploid citrus. Citrus evolution in one beautiful diagram. I just wish I could remember the details from one day to the next.
- Population genomic analysis of mango (Mangifera indica) suggests a complex history of domestication. Two genepools, and no bottleneck. No cool diagram though.
- Aboriginal Translocations: The Intentional Propagation and Dispersal of Plants in Aboriginal Australia. More than just replanting tubers after harvest, although plenty of that.
- Comparison of Representative and Custom Methods of Generating Core Subsets of a Carrot Germplasm Collection. It’s a numbers game.
- Potato Breeding by Many Hands? Measuring the Germplasm Exchange Based on a Cultivated Potatoes Database. Most use of varieties in breeding is within countries.
Brainfood: African rice domestication, Ancient aliens, Durum landraces, Horticultural landraces, Breeding double, Pollinator research, Sacred forests, Traditional Hawaiian ag, Conserving tomatoes, Mapping impacts, Rewilding, Economic growth, Aquaculture impacts, Phenotyping colours
- The complex geography of domestication of the African rice Oryza glaberrima. Domesticated in multiple places, and the formerly putative ancestor population unlikely to be so.
- Prehistoric cereal foods of southeastern Europe: An archaeobotanical exploration. Including Panicum millet as far back as the Bronze Age, interestingly.
- Genetic diversity in Ethiopian Durum Wheat (Triticum turgidum var durum) inferred from phenotypic variations. Some landraces are better than some improved varieties, sometimes, somewhere.
- Editorial: Rediscovering Local Landraces: Shaping Horticulture for the Future. See above.
- Enhancing the rate of genetic gain in public-sector plant breeding programs: lessons from the breeder’s equation. What do they have to say about the genetic diversity term, I hear you ask? “For many species, the primary value of exotic genetic variation is the identification and deployment of rare alleles with large effects that can be introduced into elite breeding programs via a thoughtful implementation of marker-assisted selection…”
- The many‐faced Janus of plant breeding. It’s more than just genetics.
- The need for coordinated transdisciplinary research infrastructures for pollinator conservation and crop pollination resilience. Mine historical data and mobilize the citizenry.
- Human disturbance impacts the integrity of sacred church forests, Ethiopia. Even the small forests are important.
- The potential of indigenous agricultural food production under climate change in Hawaiʻi. They could have fed today’s population, and could still do so.
- Managing plant genetic resources using low and ultra-low temperature storage: a case study of tomato. Nothing is perfect.
- A spatial framework for ex-ante impact assessment of agricultural technologies. I do love a map, but I have to wonder if you can have too much of a good thing.
- Why we should let rewilding be wild and biodiverse. Well, why not?
- Increasing impacts of land use on biodiversity and carbon sequestration driven by population and economic growth. The 2008 financial crisis was good for biodiversity.
- Rapid growth in greenhouse gas emissions from the adoption of industrial-scale aquaculture. Crab ponds are worse than paddy fields for greenhouse gas emissions.
- ColourQuant: a high-throughput technique to extract and quantify colour phenotypes from plant images. Remind me to tell you my story about characterizing the colours of a taro collection in Vanuatu.
- Phenotypic analysis of leaf colours from the USDA, ARS sweetpotato (Ipomoea batatas) germplasm collection. Never mind, this story is better.