- Valuing cultural ecosystem services: Agricultural heritage in Chiloé island, southern Chile. Willingness to pay at US$50.5 per person per year, and not related to distance from site.
- Assessments of genetic diversity and anthracnose disease response among Zimbabwe sorghum germplasm. New sources of resistance (for the US) in even a moderately diverse collection.
- Karyotype Analysis of Wild Rosa Species in Xinjiang, Northwestern China. It’s just amazing to me that people still do karyopypes.
- Explaining intraspecific diversity in plant secondary metabolites in an ecological context. Trait variance in these things is considerable, partly genetic and can evolve, maybe even faster than mean trait values.
- Identifying genetic diversity and a preliminary core collection of Pyrus pyrifolia cultivars by a genome-wide set of SSR markers. Close relationship between China and Japan, and Sichuan a bit of a nexus.
- Genomic Signature of Adaptation to Climate in Medicago truncatula. Found genes associated with position along 3 environmental clines in a set of populations, then were able to predict performance of other populations based on genotype.
- Could abiotic stress tolerance in wild relatives of rice be used to improve Oryza sativa? Yes, and from these particular places.
- An efficient method of developing synthetic allopolyploid rice (Oryza spp.). Should make using those wild relatives a bit easier.
- Can barley (Hordeum vulgare L. s.l.) adapt to fast climate changes? A controlled selection experiment. Maybe not. Not even the landrace.
- Coffee landscapes as refugia for native woody biodiversity as forest loss continues in southwest Ethiopia. “Coffee farms could support a considerable portion, though not all, of the woody biodiversity of disappearing forests.” No word on what it does to the coffee, though.
Nibbles: New potatoes, Wild species, Native maize, Conservation course, Indigenous fishery, Yield trends
- Wild relative rescues potatoes. Which wild relative? Well for that you’ll have to read the paper. The FAQ on that. Or if you want an alternative. More the better, I guess. And just to remember what makes it all possible: diversity in fields and genebanks.
- Wild species not just useful to food security as sources of genes, of course. And more.
- Indigenous peoples save corn.
- Maybe some of them would be interested in this MSc at Bangor.
- Indigenous peoples can catch — and save? — fish after all.
- So is there stagnation in yield increases or what? Lobell reviews book that says maybe not.
Nibbles: Nutrition, Economic plants, Forest food, Banana descriptions, Taro leaf blight, Rwandan gardens, ECHO seed workshop, Aquaculture
- Nutrition is so confusing.
- There are so many plants, for a start.
- And it’s so difficult to get them from the forest.
- And they’re difficult to describe.
- And they get all kinds of diseases.
- Could grow them in nutrition gardens, I suppose.
- Learn to save their seeds.
- Or just go for fish.
Nibbles: Agroforestry slides, Sub1 slides, Fish slides, Fish in Neolithic, Silver bullets, Carbon credits, Camel domestication, Cuneiform barley
- All of the presentations from the World Congress on Agroforestry.
- Scuba rice in 13 slides.
- You got off easy on that last one. Here’s 55 slides on fish biodiversity and the food supply.
- Not much fish in the food supply of early farmers in Britain.
- New IFPRI book highlights technologies to beat hunger. Includes plant breeding. But no fish?
- Kenyan agroforestry organization gets C credits. Details sketchy though.
- The Bible got it wrong on camels. And that’s all I’m saying about that.
- Cuneiform tablets are so beautiful. Especially when they depict agricultural biodiversity. Via.
French grape genebank on the move?
After Pavlovsk and Brogdale, it is now the turn of a French fruit genebank to feel the heat. According to Declan Butler’s somewhat breathless piece in Nature:
Uncertainty hangs over one of the world’s largest and most important grapevine collections. The Domaine de Vassal vineyard, on France’s Mediterranean coast, houses a vast sweep of grape biodiversity that is essential to research and winegrowers in France and around the world.
That would be the Station de Recherches Viticoles of the Institut national de la recherche agronomique (INRA). For those that know genebank-speak, that is institute FRA139. Plug that into the “institute code” slot on ECPGR’s Vitis database page to get the details of its holdings. Or you can get summary data from WIEWS. It’s actually not the only grape genebank in France, but there’s no word on overlap with other French collections, or indeed with collections in other parts of the world. Numbers vary among the sources, but this collection represents maybe half of France’s holdings of cultivated grape accessions, and a tenth of the world’s. 1
So it’s an important collection, large and well documented, both phenotypically and genotypically. What’s the problem? Well, the lease is running out on the land it’s been on for the past 138 years, and it needs to shift. The move will cost €4 million, and the money isn’t in the budget. INRA says it’s committed to maintaining the collection, and will find the cash. The boffins fret and worry about the disruption to research and possible losses in the process. I asked our friends at the Myles Lab in Canada for their opinion and they do see an upside:
@AgroBioDiverse @BrianFLloyd @plantbiology 1/2 The move is a good idea – offers chance to plant collection in specific experimental design
— Foodimprover (@foodimprover) February 7, 2014
But it is worrying. We’ll keep an eye on it for you.