- Training courses on multilateral environmental agreements, including CBD and Plant Treaty.
- CGIAR dashboard on the Genebank Platform. More data here.
- Some of the above are included in this list of the world’s most high profile genebanks.
- The latest spatial crop data from CGIAR. Useful for genebanks, among other things.
- Protecting fruit intellectual property. Wait, that didn’t come out right.
- I guess this fruit is next.
- Sikkim’s agricultural diversity as colours on a palette.
- Lavender is a nice colour, whether in France or Bulgaria.
- Book on nation-building through agricultural biodiversity. Bulgarians unavailable for comment.
- Poppy diversity being helped by solar panels to build something or other in Afghanistan.
- Palestinian paean to the bitinjan. Jeremy goes to town on it in his latest newsletter.
Brainfood: Perennial favourites, Feral grapevines, Silky cat, Damaged yams, Maize vs sorghum, Sunflower ecotypes, Fungal diversity, Pacific voyaging, Vitamin seeds, Biogeoinformatics, Natural language, Evaluation, Aquaculture
- Perennial vegetables: A neglected resource for biodiversity, carbon sequestration, and nutrition. Over 600 perennial veggies on 6% of global vegetable cropland.
- Genomic Evidences Support an Independent History of Grapevine Domestication in the Levant. Separate from what happened in the Caucasus, that is.
- Distribution, prevalence and severity of damages caused by nematodes on yam (Dioscorea rotundata) in Nigeria. A quarter of tubers and half of heaps showed nematode symptoms.
- Maize long-term genetic progress explains current dominance over sorghum in Argentina. Follow the money.
- Phenotypic and physiological responses to salt exposure in Sorghum reveal diversity among domesticated landraces. Salinity tolerance was acquired early but then lost in some geographic regions where it wasn’t needed. See what happens when you invest in a crop?
- Massive haplotypes underlie ecotypic differentiation in sunflowers. It’s the recombination-suppressing inversions, stupid.
- GlobalFungi, a global database of fungal occurrences from high-throughput-sequencing metabarcoding studies. Cool. Do landraces of a crop next.
- The earliest domestic cat on the Silk Road. Coincided with rapid urbanization in the 9th century.
- Native American gene flow into Polynesia predating Easter Island settlement. Yeah, but did Americans go west of their own accord or in Polynesian boats? And did they have sweetpotatoes with them? And cats?
- Genetic markers associated with seed longevity and vitamin E in diverse Aus rice varieties. 5 markers on 4 chromosomes.
- Biogeoinformatics for the management of Farm Animal Genetic Resources (FAnGR). Software for monitoring erosion and detecting locally adapted genotypes. Plus preserve traditional practices.
- Computing on Phenotypic Descriptions for Candidate Gene Discovery and Crop Improvement. Casually talk about a plant in the field –> fancy math –> the plant’s genotype.
- Data synthesis for crop variety evaluation. A review. Focus on ranking. Oh, to mash it up with the above.
- Scenarios for Global Aquaculture and Its Role in Human Nutrition. For aquaculture to contribute to nutrition it needs enabling trade and economic policies. Well I never.
Nibbles: Data storage, CG reform, Tequila, Seed saving trifecta, ROI, Jeremy
- A Svalbard for data, in Svalbard.
- IPES-Food critiques OneCGIAR as being insufficiently decentralized, context-specific, agroecological, and power-equitable.
- Tequila FAQ. Probably need a shot after the above.
- Seed saving made easy; maybe too easy.
- The above, applied, in the Pacific.
- The above, applied, everywhere.
- The ROI of conservation. In situ only, alas.
- Jeremy’s latest newsletter: Brazilian agribusiness, boycotts & slavery, cashew boom, peanut crash, Jay Rayner’s suggestions. Do subscribe.
Brainfood: SDGs, Ancient sustainability, Phenomics, Wheat phenotyping, Public breeding, Almond breeding, Ethiopian sorghum, Methane mitigation, Reindeer games, Raised fields, #ArtGenetics
- Living Links Connecting the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals: Small-Scale Farmers and Agricultural Biodiversity. Want to address a whole bunch of SDGs at once? Here’s a tip…
- Archaeology for Sustainable Agriculture. Sustainability is not forever.
- A Congo Basin ethnographic analogue of pre-Columbian Amazonian raised fields shows the ephemeral legacy of organic matter management. Another example of the above?
- Genebank Phenomics: A Strategic Approach to Enhance Value and Utilization of Crop Germplasm. A lot of useful phenotyping can be done fast and cheap, and genebanks should do it.
- LeafMachine: Using machine learning to automate leaf trait extraction from digitized herbarium specimens. This might help with the above.
- Affordable Phenotyping of Winter Wheat under Field and Controlled Conditions for Drought Tolerance. This certainly could. Basically a supermarket cart with a drone mounted on top of it.
- Plant Breeding Capacity in U.S. Public Institutions. It’s in trouble.
- Redomesticating Almond to Meet Emerging Food Safety Needs. Turning to peach, wild and cultivated, to reduce immunoreactivity and control aflatoxin and Salmonella. Somebody say public breeding is in trouble?
- Genetic variability among Ethiopian sorghum landrace accessions for major agro-morphological traits and anthracnose resistance. From 360 accessions to 10. Let’s hope at least the public sector can get hold of them.
- Review: Genetic and genomic selection as a methane mitigation strategy in dairy cattle. Gotta measure emissions on individual animals.
- Genome sequence and comparative analysis of reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) in northern Eurasia. Two domestications, affecting at least a dozen genes. No word on methane.
- Genomes on Canvas: Artist’s Perspective on Evolution of Plant-Based Foods. Crowdsourcing historical images to trace crop evolution.
Nibbles: Genebank manual, ABS UK, Mad veggies, Trad oysters, Egyptian diets, Cotton politics, #ArtGenetics
- How to run the Nepal genebank.
- UK government advice on ABS.
- Traditional vegetables in Madagascar get some help at last.
- Traditional, sustainable oyster management. Unfortunately the people who knew about it are now in Oklahoma.
- Eat like an (ancient) Egyptian.
- Pakistan and China make a very big thing of exchanging some cotton germplasm.
- Tracking crop evolution through paintings.