- Did Homeric heroes eat a lot of meat? The answer will surprise you. A thread.
- Social food atlas to be launched.
- Atlas of West African food systems already launched. Very different thing.
- Saving chocolate through biotech.
- What makes foods smart?
- Pros and cons of the Lancet/EAT thing. And more.
- Waking up the wine industry to the beauty grapevine wild relatives.
- The magos of maize, from Mexico to the US, and back again.
- Plant breeding training in Africa.
- Pre-colonial North America: not wilderness, not dense forest, and not just the Three Sisters, lots of Apios too. Lots.
- Food AND biodiversity.
- Nutritious OR affordable.
A survey on genebank learning materials
A request from Gayle Volk (USDA-ARS) and Pat Byrne (Colorado State University). Please respond by 15 March.
The plant genetic resources conserved by genebanks around the world are the essential raw materials for increasing crop genetic diversity and improving the global supply of food and other agricultural products. Colorado State University and USDA-ARS have developed a short survey (5-10 minutes) to assess the needs for various types of learning materials to educate the next generation of plant genebank managers, as well as to inform students about the value and use of plant genetic resources in breeding and research programs. The survey link can be found here.
Nibbles: Fox burials, Myammar genebank, Wild rice, Community genebanks, Breeding cowpeas & EAH bananas, Doherty pics, Pulque ecotourism, Tree diversity maps, Horizontal genes, Polish hop breeding
- Did ancient Iberians domesticate foxes?
- Myanmar genebank staff receive training in Australia.
- Why genebanks are important. Though not so much for wild rice. No, not that wild rice, we’re talking Zizania here.
- Genebanks can be community-friendly.
- Improving cowpea and banana. Need genebanks for that.
- Picturing genebanks.
- Drinking for conservation.
- Mapping tree diversity.
- Some grasses steal genes from neighbours.
- Polish hops for Polish beer.
Crowdsourcing variety evaluation data
Jacob van Etten has a new paper out which uses information on variety performance crowdsourced from farmers to support climate change adaptation. He’s been tweeting about it. A lot. Here’s a taste:
Yesterday I promised to write some tweets about our recent article in @PNASNews. A nerdy thread on technical details first! We used a cool model to analyze farmers' crop variety evaluation and test if seasonal climate could explain differences. https://t.co/4DD7eSVq1l pic.twitter.com/xF9MSCiJ4I
— @jacobvanetten@mastodon.online (Jacob van Etten) (@Jacobvanetten) February 20, 2019
The threads are unrolled here, here and here if you prefer to stay away from Twitter.
We’re hoping Jacob will answer any questions you might have on the paper right here on the blog in the near future. If you do have any questions, tweet them at him, or leave them here.
And let me take this opportunity of linking to this “field guide” to methods for making new crop diversity available to farmers which sort of sets Jacob’s paper in context.
Brainfood: Improvement recapitulates domestication, Functional variation, Intensification, Gender & nutrition, Collaboration double, Losses, AgRenSeq , Crocus domestication, Saffron evolution, Mascarene CWR, Mexican CWR, ABS, Sweet cocoa, Tasty fruits, Baobab diversity
- How can developmental biology help feed a growing population? By figuring out how domestication hacked developmental processes.
- Distinct characteristics of genes associated with phenome-wide variation in maize (Zea mays). Analyzing a lot of traits at a time identifies a different set of phenotypically causal genes than more conventional single-trait approaches. What it all means in practice I have no idea, you tell me.
- Sunflower pan-genome analysis shows that hybridization altered gene content and disease resistance. Not only is one trait not enough, one genome is not enough.
- Agriculturally productive yet biodiverse: human benefits and conservation values along a forest-agriculture gradient in Southern Ethiopia. Depends what you mean by productive.
- Does providing agricultural and nutrition information to both men and women improve household food security? Evidence from Malawi. Yes.
- Principles of effective collaboration in agricultural development and research for impact. Learn from the birds.
- Opening the dialogue: Research networks between high‐ and low‐income countries further understanding of global agro‐climatic challenges. See above. Maybe.
- The global burden of pathogens and pests on major food crops. About 20%. We talked about this…
- Resistance gene cloning from a wild crop relative by sequence capture and association genetics. A new way to reduce the above, using crop wild relatives.
- Adding color to a century‐old enigma: multi‐color chromosome identification unravels the autotriploid nature of saffron (Crocus sativus) as a hybrid of wild Crocus cartwrightianus cytotypes. Which means you can now re-synthesize it.
- Crop wild relative diversity and conservation planning in two isolated oceanic islands of a biodiversity hotspot (Mauritius and Rodrigues). Basically coffee.
- Diversity and conservation priorities of crop wild relatives in Mexico. Over 300 species, but not coffee.
- Benefit sharing mechanisms for agricultural genetic diversity use and on-farm conservation. Profit-sharing is better for conservation than technology transfer.
- Are Cocoa Farmers in Trinidad Happy? Exploring Factors Affecting their Happiness. Well, those whose main crop was not cacao are happier, which must say something.
- Edible fruits from Brazilian biodiversity: A review on their sensorial characteristics versus bioactivity as tool to select research. Eat Anacardium occidentale, Passiflora edulis and Acrocomia aculeata to be happiest. Seems very unadventurous, though.
- Genetic differentiation in leaf phenology among natural populations of Adansonia digitata L. follows climatic clines. Anyone going to do this for all those Brazilian fruits?