- Towards the Understanding of Important Coconut Endosperm Phenotypes: Is there an Epigenetic Control? Maybe.
- Dogs accompanied humans during the Neolithic expansion into Europe. All part of the Fertile Crescent package.
- Genomic Insights into Date Palm Origins. Domesticated in the Gulf region, but in a more complicated way than used to be thought.
- Speed breeding orphan crops. Worth the extra cost.
- Malus sieversii: the origin, flavonoid synthesis mechanism, and breeding of red-skinned and red-fleshed apples. Not just good for pest and disease resistance.
- Can you make morphometrics work when you know the right answer? Pick and mix approaches for apple identification. Good job they differ in colour too.
- Systematic establishment of colour descriptor states through image-based phenotyping. Doesn’t work for brown, though.
- High-throughput method for ear phenotyping and kernel weight estimation in maize using ear digital imaging. And the colour doesn’t matter.
- Amplifying plant disease risk through assisted migration. Making AM great.
- Characterization of a diverse USDA collection of wild soybean (Glycine soja Siebold & Zucc.) accessions and subsequent mapping for seed composition and agronomic traits in a RIL population. One of the parents of the RIL population was a wild accession.
- Plant Responses to an Integrated Cropping System Designed to Maintain Yield Whilst Enhancing Soil Properties and Biodiversity. So far, so good.
- Seed longevity phenotyping: recommendations on research methodology. Ok, now there’s no excuse.
Oh, well, except for the paywall. - Evolutionary and domestication history of Cucurbita (pumpkin and squash) species inferred from 44 nuclear loci. All 6 crop taxa in one clade, and some novel relationships with wild species.
- Value Chain Development and the Agrarian Question: Actor Perspectives on Native Potato Production in the Highlands of Peru. Difficult to penetrate the socio-economic jargon, especially without access to the full text, but I think it’s saying that to understand why some value chains for native potatoes work and others don’t, you have to understand that different players want different things. Which seems kinda obvious so I probably don’t have that right.
- Perception of livestock ecosystem services in grazing areas. Not all bad.
Nibbles: Australian wheat, Heirloom apple, Olive trouble, The Queen’s Mulberries, Watermelon breeding, Phancy phenotyping, Chefs & NUS, Cacao origins
- An encomium for CIMMYT Down Under.
- A paean for the Albemarle pippin. That’s an apple.
- A threnody for the Italian olive.
- An honour for British mulberries.
- A tribute to USDA watermelon genomics.
- An auto-panegyric from BASF. Yeah, I know auto is Latin, sue me.
- A celebration of millet-loving chefs.
- A reflection on the origin of that cacao origin paper, by the author.
Nibbles: CBD, NPGS, Greek celery, Rodomiro Ortiz interview, Amazonian fruits, In vitro, Maize archaeology, Asian seed companies, Victorian root
- Courtesy of Bioversity, useful summary of agricultural biodiversity events at the CBD COP, starting in a few days.
- The USDA National Plant Germplasm System, justified.
- The ancient symbolism of celery. Spoiler alert: death.
- A breeding professor calls for a major change in breeding. Spoiler alert: productivity is not enough.
- What’s the next açaí? And will it save the Amazon?
- Saving threatened species. Spoiler alert: seeds are not enough.
- 9000 years of maize history, decoded.
- The Access to Seeds Index 2019 report for South and Southeast Asia is out. Spoiler alert: I feel a guest post coming on.
- UK supermarket to stock salsify.
US strawberries set to invade UK
It looks like UC Davis is making a move after declaring victory in the Strawberry Wars.
The University of California has entered into a master agreement with Global Plant Genetics, Ltd., based in Norfolk, England, for the sublicensing of new strawberry varieties in selected countries within Europe, the Mediterranean and South America. The agreement governs the commercialization of new varieties from the UC Davis Public Strawberry Breeding Program located at the University of California, Davis.
I wonder how the other side is doing.
Brainfood: Conserving rice, Cypriot olives, Bambara groundnut bioactives, Chinese spuds, Ancient pastoralism, Epigenetics, Diverse rice systems, Detecting evolution, CWR & pollution, VAM, Bacterial taxonomy
- Securing Diversity for Food Security: The Case of Conservation and Use of Rice Genetic Resources. Great achievements, but “… 95% of the rice genepool remains untapped and unexploited in rice improvement.”
- Characterization and Identification of Indigenous Olive Germplasm from Cyprus Using Morphological and Simple Sequence Repeat Markers. 125 trees, 32 accessions, 16 genotypes, 3 groups.
- Quantification of Selected Anti-nutrients and Bioactive Compounds in African Bambara Groundnut (Vigna subterranea (L.) Verdc.). Nothing to worry about, but if you insist on worrying, try the cream-coloured ones.
- DNA Fingerprinting and Genetic Diversity Analysis with Simple Sequence Repeat Markers of 217 Potato Cultivars (Solanum tuberosum L.) in China. Cultivars released since 1950 have a narrow genetic base.
- Pastoralism may have delayed the end of the green Sahara. What have pastoralists ever done for us?
- Epigenetic Diversity and Application to Breeding. Some epigenetic differences can be inherited independently of genetic differences. But how to use it?
- Complex rice systems to improve rice yield and yield stability in the face of variable weather conditions. The more azolla, fish and ducks the better.
- Can plants evolve to meet a changing climate? Yes, and we can detect it: the potential of field experimental evolution studies.
- Wheat’s wild relatives vary in their response to nitrogen and ozone. In situ populations may be at risk.
- Little evidence that farmers should consider abundance or diversity of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi when managing crops. One less thing to worry about? Ok, one fewer thing to worry about.
- Exclusivity offers a sound yet practical species criterion for bacteria despite abundant gene flow. Taxa do exist if you take the whole genome into account.