Forests & trees

May 7, 2017May 3, 2017

Targeting germplasm in an age of climate change

Let me expand a little on yesterdays’s teaser about the Seedlot Selection Tool.

Say you have an accession of maize, for example, collected 20 years ago, for example, somewhere in the middle the NW zone of Mexico defined by Orozco-Ramírez, Perales & Hijmans (2017), for example.

Say that you’d like to know where you could grow that material 20 years from now.

Say you have a few minutes to learn how to use the USDA’s Seedlot Selection Tool.

This is what you would get, more or less, depending on the details.

The blue dot is your collecting site, the red bits are the places where that material will be adapted in 2040. And you can run the thing the other way around too. That is, given that you want to grow something in 2040 where that blue dot is now, where would you have to have collected it in the past?

The Seedlot Selection Tool seems to be aimed primarily at forest and landscape managers, but I see no reason why it couldn’t be used in agricultural applications too, as above, subject to the same provisos.

The Seedlot Selection Tool (SST) is a web-based mapping application designed to help natural resource managers match seedlots with planting sites based on climatic information. The SST can be used to map current climates or future climates based on selected climate change scenarios. It is tailored for matching seedlots and planting sites, but can be used by anyone interested in mapping climates defined by temperature and water availability. The SST is most valuable as a planning and educational tool because of the uncertainty associated with climate interpolation models and climate change projections. The SST allows the user to control many input parameters, and can be customized for the management practices, climate change assumptions, and risk tolerance of the user.

Would love to get my hands on a global version.

May 6, 2017May 4, 2017

Deconstructing restoration

Just to remind ourselves that conserved seeds are not just there to be used in breeding, let us “deconstruct symbolic promises of fertility and rebirth carried by domesticated seeds and look at the reality of the seeds that have never been at our service,” think as holistically as we can, and consider taking the MOOC on “Landscape Restoration for Sustainable Development: a Business Approach.” And, if we live in the western bit of North America, let us play around with the USDA’s Seedlot Selection Tool too.

April 27, 2017May 2, 2017

Nibbles: ICARDA genebank, Mexican honeys, NWFP news, Schisandra, Swimming camels, Barley genome, Silly video, Tasty breeders, Tall maize, Praying for the prairie, Rosaceous breeding, Millet fair, Sesame entrepreneurs, European AnGR, Thai gardens, Apple resistance, Native Californians

Latest on the ICARDA genebank from the author of The Profit of the Earth.
Honey diversity in Mexico.
Speaking of which, did we already point to the new, improved Non-wood Forest Products Newsletter?
The schisandra berry is apparently helping save the panda. Yeah, I never heard of it either, but more power to its elbow.
Make your day better by looking at pictures of aquatic camels.
Oh, here we go, cue the endless stream of stories about how genomics will save beer.
“In the last century, 94% of the world’s seed varieties have disappeared.” No, they bloody haven’t. Only linking to this for completeness.
Breeders get into flavour. Because celebrity chefs.
That’s one tall maize plant. No, but really tall.
The Great Plains are in Great Trouble: “Hundreds of species call the prairie home… A cornfield, on the other hand, is a field of corn.”
A project dedicated to the genetic improvement of US rosaceous crops. Love that word. Rosaceous.
Eat those millets!
Sesame opens doors in Tanzania. See what I did there?
Interview on conserving Europe’s livestock diversity.
WorldVeg empowers women through gardening. I know how they feel. Well, kinda.
Want a Forbidden Apple? You know you do. #resist
“Accustomed to seeing crops planted in straight rows featuring one or a few different varieties, Muir and his European predecessors were not prepared to recognize this subtler form of horticulture. And so they viewed California Indians as lazily gathering the fat of a landscape they had hardly touched.”

April 26, 2017April 26, 2017

Nibbles: Investing in food, Henna botany, Buckwheat promotion, Mapping India, Optimism, Genetic diversity, Forest cocktails

Psst, you have any examples of investments for healthy food systems? What do you mean, you don’t.
Paint it henna.
Pleading for pseudocereals. In Switzerland?
Mapping India’s trees. Among other things.
To save biodiversity, look on the bright side. Easy for you to say.
The genetic level of biodiversity makes important contribution to ecosystem services. In birds. Right.
Taste the forest. In cocktails.

April 24, 2017April 10, 2017

Brainfood: Tomato chemicals, Photoperiod, Grain phenotyping, Hawaiian ag, Domestication primer, Symbionts, Turkish wheat, Yam bean diversity, Crop health, Walnut diversity, Agrobiodiversity theorising, Sea pigs, NERICA impacts, Nutrient production

Multi-perspective evaluation of phytonutrients – Case study on tomato landraces for fresh consumption. Fancy maths proves different tomato varieties taste different.
Adaptation to the Local Environment by Modifications of the Photoperiod Response in Crops. It’s all down to a few mutations in all crops.
Evaluation of the SeedCounter, A Mobile Application for Grain Phenotyping. Seems like a lot of work to just be able to measure wheat seeds, but boys will have their toys.
Indigenous Polynesian Agriculture in Hawaiʻi. Both intensive and extensive.
How to make a domesticate. It takes a long time, and involves lots of genes.
Symbiosis limits establishment of legumes outside their native range at a global scale. Non-symbiotic legumes have spread further than symbiotic ones into non-native areas.
Wheat Landraces Currently Grown in Turkey: Distribution, Diversity, and Use. More than half of morphotypes (59%) lost since 1920 overall, but none in some areas.
Ecotypic differentiation under farmers’ selection: Molecular insights into the domestication of Pachyrhizus Rich. ex DC. (Fabaceae) in the Peruvian Andes. Separate Amazonian and Andean lineages, and P. tuberosum arising from P. ahipa.
Crop health and its global impacts on the components of food security. To better understand acute impacts, model systemic ones.
Climate-Related Local Extinctions Are Already Widespread among Plant and Animal Species. About half of about 1000 species showed local extinction.
Rethinking the history of common walnut (Juglans regia L.) in Europe: Its origins and human interactions. Expansion from glacial refugia, followed by human exploitation. Compare and contrast with Asia. Or read about the whole thing in AramcoWorld.
Agrobiodiversity and a sustainable food future. Apparently all you need to do to support the “use of biological diversity in sustainable agricultural and food systems” is to recognize that there are 4 interconnected themes: (1) genetic resources, ecology and evolution; (2) governance policy, institutions and legal agreements; (3) food, nutrition, health and disease; and (4) global change drivers with social ecological interactions.
Eastern Mediterranean Mobility in the Bronze and Early Iron Ages: Inferences from Ancient DNA of Pigs and Cattle. Anatolia to southeastern Europe and back to the Levant across the Bronze-Iron Age transition. The Sea Peoples had pigs?
Contribution of improved rice varieties to poverty reduction and food security in sub-Saharan Africa. NERICA adoption increased annual per capita income by US$4 per year from 2000, despite yields going down a bit.
Farming and the geography of nutrient production for human use: a transdisciplinary analysis. Need to try to maintain production diversity as farm size increases. But let Jess Fanzo explain it better.