- Coffee botany resources.
- Uncovering the illegal agarwood trade.
- Developing the potato bean. First step: find a new name.
- Dog taxonomy explained.
- Project Baseline sets a, ahem, baseline, for studying plant diversity under climate change.
- Ok, random shout-out for my niece Francesca’s work on kudzu bug natural control. Because I can. And she’s fabulous.
- Blooming chickpeas!
- The inhabitants of Casas Grandes brewed maize beer in the 14th century. Well of course they did.
- Peruvian quinoa landscapes have a name: aynokas.
- Crop domestication 101.
- Where (commercial) breeders go wrong.
- Presumably none of above mistakes are made by EU plant breeding companies.
- Stimulating plant defences for faster response to pest and disease attack.
- Germany told to go for local meadow seeds.
- Use of shea butter trees goes way back.
Brainfood: Aquaculture food, Pacific bananas, Tepary genome, Mexican wheat, Legume pollinators, Brazilian coconuts, Soybean herbivory
- Environmental health impacts of feeding crops to farmed fish. Wild fish is being replaced by plant-based food, which is both good and bad.
- Traditional Banana Diversity in Oceania: An Endangered Heritage. Pacific starchy bananas are all AAB, but fall into 2 genetic subgroups and 3 morphotypes. Persistence of diversity is linked to persistence of traditions.
- Gene-based SNP discovery in tepary bean (Phaseolus acutifolius) and common bean (P. vulgaris) for diversity analysis and comparative mapping. Two groups in domesticated teparies, plus the even more distinct wild. Close similarity with common bean means genes could be moved between the two species.
- Unlocking the genetic diversity of Creole wheats. Wheat has had long enough to adapt to different Mexican environments.
- Enhancing Legume Ecosystem Services through an Understanding of Plant–Pollinator Interplay. Legume breeders should consider functional floral traits.
- Genetic Relationships among Tall Coconut Palm (Cocos nucifera L.) Accessions of the International Coconut Genebank for Latin America and the Caribbean (ICG-LAC), Evaluated Using Microsatellite Markers (SSRs). The Brazilian material came from Africa.
- Characterization of Natural and Simulated Herbivory on Wild Soybean (Glycine soja Seib. et Zucc.) for Use in Ecological Risk Assessment of Insect Protected Soybean. If transgenes conferring insect protection were to escape to the wild soybean in Japan, it would probably not have any effect on its weediness.
Brainfood: Genebanked clover, Breeding beans, Belgian dogs, Optimization, Migration & diversity, Vanuatu roots, Japanese rice history
- Morphological and phenological consequences of ex situ conservation of natural populations of red clover (Trifolium pratense L.). Regeneration has caused directional morphological changes.
- Breeding Common Bean for Resistance to Common Blight: A Review. A lot is known and has been done, but, still, “Andean and Middle American common bean cultivars with high levels of combined resistance to less-aggressive and aggressive bacterial strains in all aerial plant parts are not available.”
- Half of 23 Belgian dog breeds has a compromised genetic diversity, as revealed by genealogical and molecular data analysis. Especially native breeds with small populations, unsurprisingly.
- Neither crop genetics nor crop management can be optimised. Because of ever-present trade-offs.
- The Influence of Gender Roles And Human Migrations on the Distribution of Crop Biodiversity in Tharaka, Kenya. Crops move with people, and different genders move different crops.
- Somaclonal variants of taro (Colocasia esculenta Schott) and yam (Dioscorea alata L.) are incorporated into farmers’ varietal portfolios in Vanuatu. Farmers have lots of varieties, but they need more variety.
- Morphological and molecular genetics of ancient remains and modern rice (Oryza sativa) confirm diversity in ancient Japan. Modern Japanese rice is a subset of ancient Japanese rice.
Cooperation-88 featured in National Geographic
Farmers once cultivated a wider array of genetically diverse crop varieties, but modern industrialized agriculture has focused mainly on a commercially successful few. Now a rush is on to save the old varieties—which could hold genetic keys to de- veloping crops that can adapt to climate change. “No country is self-sufficient with its plant genetic resources,” says Francisco Lopez, of the secretariat of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. The group oversees the exchange of seeds and other plant materials that are stored in the world’s 1,750 gene banks. — Kelsey Nowakowski
That’s the introduction to a nice feature in the current National Geographic, part of the series The Future of Food. Problem is, I can’t find it online any more. I swear it was there, but it’s not any more. Maybe it was a copyright issue, and it will come back later, when National Gepgraphic is good and ready.
Anyway, the piece is entitled The Potato Challenge:
Potatoes in southwestern China had long been plagued by disease, so scientists began searching for blight-resistant varieties that could be grown in tropical highlands. By the mid-1990s researchers at Yunnan Normal University in China and the International Potato Center (CIP) in Peru had created a new resistant spud using Indian and Filipino potatoes.
The resistant spud is Cooperation-88, of course, and if and when the piece finds its way online you’ll be able to admire some fancy infographics summarizing how it was developed and the impact it has had.
CCAFS tells the world how agriculture can adapt to climate change
The CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security has prepared syntheses papers on two of the topics related to agriculture that are being considered by UNFCCC’s Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA) in 2016. The topics have incredibly unwieldy and confusing titles. They boil down, I think, to agricultural practices, technologies and institutions to enhance productivity and resilience sustainably, but you can read all the subordinate clauses in the CCAFS blog post which announces the publication of their reports.
Of course, what we want to know here is whether crop diversity is adequately highlighted among the said practices, technologies and institutions. The answer is, as ever, kinda sorta. The following is from the info note associated with the first paper, “Agricultural practices and technologies to enhance food security, resilience and productivity in a sustainable manner: Messages to the SBSTA 44 agriculture workshops.”
Crop-specific innovations complement other practices that aim to improve crop production under climate change, e.g. soil management, agroforestry, and water management. Crop-specific innovations include breeding of more resilient crop varieties, diversification and intensification.
Examples include the Drought Tolerant Maize for Africa initiative, disease- and heat-resistant chickpea varieties in India, improved Brachiaria in Brazil, hardy crossbreeds of native sheep and goats in Kenya, as well as changes in the crops being grown, such as moves from potato into organic quinoa, milk and cheese, trout, and vegetables in the Peruvian highlands.
The other paper, “Adaptation measures in agricultural systems: Messages to the SBSTA 44 Agriculture Workshops,” focuses on structures, processes and institutions. I particularly liked the emphasis on the importance on indigenous knowledge and extension systems. But why no mention of genebanks? Especially as Bioversity’s Seeds of Needs Project was nicely featured as a case study in the first paper. Here, after all is a concrete example of institutions — national and international genebanks — linking up to farmers to deliver crop diversity in the service of adaptation.