- ProMusa goes all social.
- Belgian flora goes online.
- Plant breeding goes to the people.
- FAO and ICARDA go together.
- Brits go all in on wheat pre-breeding.
- Modern dog breeds don’t go all the way back to the grey wolf.
Brainfood: Spanish emmer, Lathyrus breeding, Vitis in N Africa, European tree niche models over time
- Remnant genetic diversity detected in an ancient crop: Triticum dicoccon Schrank landraces from Asturias, Spain. Strong geographic differentiation even at small scales.
- Grass pea (Lathyrus sativus): Is there a case for further crop improvement? Yes, but then they would say that, wouldn’t they.
- Highly polymorphic nSSR markers: A useful tool to assess origin of North African cultivars and to provide additional proofs of secondary grapevine domestication events. North African cultivars do not derive from North African wild strains. Did anyone really think they did? Well, I guess it’s good to have the data.
- Building the niche through time: using 13,000 years of data to predict the effects of climate change on three tree species in Europe. You have to take into account past distributions when predicting future ones.
Nibbles: Olives, Sweet potatoes, Kew’s kitchens, Markets, Easy-SMTA
- Ancient olives not that old after all. But still attractive.
- Giving up tobacco – in favor of purple sweet potatoes?
- Kew is now as much about cooking as growing. Visit the 18th century kitchens.
- Linking small farmers to markets, video from a conference.
- The International Treaty’s SMTA made easy. Well, kinda. It would have been even easier if they had linked to the site. Good thing there’s us, eh?
Arnold Arboretum goes mobile
The Arnold Arboretum has a nifty new app which lets you access information about individual plants right on your mobile phone as you walk around the grounds. And that of course includes lots of crop wild relatives…
Brainfood: Species prioritization, In situ costs, Mycorrhiza, Crop diversity indicator, Diet diversity indicator, Ag & Nutrition, Chestnut blight, Oyster translocation, Maize introgression, Italian asses, New hosts for pests
- Species vulnerability to climate change: impacts on spatial conservation priorities and species representation. Yes, you can focus on sensitive species, but it comes at the cost of representativeness.
- Estimating management costs of protected areas: A novel approach from the Eastern Arc Mountains, Tanzania. Those are $ costs per pixel on the map, which I’ve never seen before. Don’t think they took into account the effects of climate change, though. Maybe they should get in touch with the Aussies above?
- The use of mycorrhizal inoculation in the domestication of Ziziphus mauritiana and Tamarindus indica in Mali (West Africa). It would help.
- A new integrative indicator to assess crop genetic diversity. Includes varietal richness, spatial evenness, between-variety genetic diversity, and within-variety genetic diversity. Not much left, really. Anyway, remember this from last week? Anyone out there going to put 2 and 2 together?
- Assessing Nutritional Diversity of Cropping Systems in African Villages. A new tool! Different from the integrative indicator above! Anyone going to put 4 and 2 together?
- Agriculture-Nutrition Pathways Recognising the Obstacles. “The pathways between agriculture and nutrition seem to be laden with impediments, particularly in the form of intricate household preferences.” Those pesky preferences.
- The chestnut blight fungus world tour: successive introduction events from diverse origins in an invasive plant fungal pathogen. Asia to N. America to Europe, but more than once. All very complicated. The surprising thing is that low diversity and low admixture have nevertheless still resulted in success in disparate places. What fiendish molecular or biochemical mechanism is behind this? Only more research will show, natch.
- Translocation of wild populations: conservation implications for the genetic diversity of the black-lipped pearl oyster Pinctada margaritifera. Introducing some wild individuals near farms leads to more diverse farmed populations, right? Nope. The farmed populations are way diverse already and if anything the diversity is moving the other way.
- Maize x Teosinte Hybrid Cobs Do Not Prevent Crop Gene Introgression. That’s because the hybrid cobs break apart much more easily than maize.
- Detecting population structure and recent demographic history in endangered livestock breeds: the case of the Italian autochthonous donkeys. Microsatellites confirm existence of 8 breeds of Italian donkey, though there is also significant substructuring within each by farm. This apparently calls for a “synergic management strategy at the farm level,” which basically means using the breed as the unit of conservation but being careful about inbreeding.
- Evolutionary tools for phytosanitary risk analysis: phylogenetic signal as a predictor of host range of plant pests and pathogens. Work out host susceptibility by looking at existing pest preferences and phylogenetic distance from the stuff the pest is known to like.