- In Australia, they’re ripping up vineyards.
- Whereas in California, they’re going to breed 10,000 new grape varieties and make a new wine. Go figure.
- Interview with the director of the Ethiopian national genebank, Dr Gemedo Dalle.
- Deforestation et al. not responsible for Maya collapse after all. Jared Diamond unavailable for comment.
- Black tomato a hit in Italy. Looks crap on pizza though.
- The case for biofortification.
- University of Florida sets up endowment to protect its research groves in face of citrus greening.
- Googlesheepview. Nuff said.
Sequence everything — but not only
The contents of a potato genebank? Nope: “…a maximum of two alleles per locus contributed to this variation.” That’s because this tuberous cornucopia is what the authors of a recent essay in the American Journal of Botany 1 got when they selfed a diploid potato clone which was itself derived from a cross between a completely homozygous parent and one that was very nearly so.
What does this mean for genebanks? Basically, that they can’t rely on morphological variation, in even a whole set of traits, as a proxy for overall genetic diversity. So long, old-fashioned core collections. What you really need to do is sequence everything. Music to DivSeek ears, I’m sure. But that’s not all. You also have to make sure that the resulting better diversity information gets to farmers in a way that helps them support the processes that “create and maintain useful variation for functional traits and to develop strategies to identify and select valuable phenotypes.” Or on-farm conservation, to you and me.
Nibbles: Coffee crop to cup, Pig love/hate, School lunches, Arctic life pix, Rubber sole, Ethiopian genebank
- Making a cup of “coffee.” Well, it is for Dunkin’ Donuts.
- Pigs: yum or yuch?
- FAO wants to know about how to teach healthy living in schools.
- You’d have thought it difficult to have a healthy life in the Arctic, but people manage it.
- Our rubber supply is in jeopardy. The raw material, not the product.
- Ethiopian genebank in the development news.
Brainfood: Grassland diversity, Potato diversity, English CWR, Genetic rescue, Saffron diversity, Lac, Cereal domestication, Turkish pea, Pathogen genomes, Rose fragrance, African cheese
- Worldwide evidence of a unimodal relationship between productivity and plant species richness. Grassland richness maximal at intermediate productivity levels.
- Cytoplasmic genome types of European potatoes and their effects on complex agronomic traits. Interesting relationships between cytoplasmic type on one hand and tuber starch content and resistance to late blight on other.
- Enhancing the Conservation of Crop Wild Relatives in England. 148 priority species, half of them not in ex situ at all. But there’s no excuse for that now.
- Genetic rescue to the rescue. Meaning an increase in population fitness, especially of rare species, owing to new alleles. Genomics will help by choosing the new alleles better, and monitoring the results.
- Diversity and relationships of Crocus sativus and its relatives analysed by IRAPs. No variation in the allotriploid cultigen, lots in the closely related species. Let the resynthesis begin.
- Economic analysis of Kusmi lac production on Zizyphus mauritiana (Lamb.) under different fertilizer treatments. That would be the scarlet resin secreted by some insects. NPK needed. No word on genetic differences.
- Parallel Domestication of the Heading Date 1 Gene in Cereals. Same QTL in sorghum, foxtail millet and rice, but different alterations of it. Multiple domestication for sorghum, single for foxtail millet.
- DNA based iPBS-retrotransposon markers for investigating the population structure of pea (Pisum sativum) germplasm from Turkey. No geographic structure for the landraces.
- The two-speed genomes of filamentous pathogens: waltz with plants. Fungi and oomycetes quite different genetically, but both have regions of genome which change rapidly to make them good pathogens. Bastards.
- The flowering of a new scent pathway in rose. Can we have our nice-smelling roses back now, please?
- AFLP assessment of the genetic diversity of Calotropis procera (Apocynaceae) in the West Africa region (Benin). Not just a weed, used in cheese-making, of all things.
Nibbles: WEMA, AGRA, African universities, Taining breeders, Millets @ICRISAT
- CIMMYT pushes its newly-bred water-efficient maize in Africa.
- AGRA not mentioned in the above but surely they were involved? If only in the extension part.
- African universities also not mentioned, but probably less likely to have been involved. Alas.
- Register for the next class of the European Plant Breeding Academy, which starts in October 2015. Not at an African university. At a US university.
- ICRISAT pivots towards millets. Will probably involve breeding. And maybe universities.
- As for genebanks, I’ve given up expecting namechecks in any of the above.