- Assessment of Genetic Diversity and Population Structure in a Global Reference Collection of 531 Accessions of Carthamus tinctorius L. (Safflower) Using AFLP Markers. Bayesian analysis of genetic diversity of global (43 countries) collection held in India reveals 19 geographic groups, with most diversity in the Near East and Iran–Afghanistan regions.
- Molecular evaluation of orphan Afghan common wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) landraces collected by Dr. Kihara using single nucleotide polymorphic markers. Analysis (Bayesian, natch) of genetic diversity of over 400 wheat landraces collected 1950-1970 and conserved at the Kihara Institute for Biological Research, Japan reveals agroecological patterning and hotspot in Badakhshan province.
- Sources of pest resistance in cassava. Analysis of 89 trials over 25 years involving the CIAT cassava collection identifies 129 landraces with high resistance to thrips, 33 to green mites and 19 to whiteflies.
- Screening sweetpotato genotypes for tolerance to drought stress. Days to permanent wilting point (DPWP) points to 8 promising clones in Kenya.
- Olive domestication and diversification in the Mediterranean Basin. About 400 wild and cultivated accessions divide up into W, central and E groups and show evidence of admixture among them and local domestication events.
- The Multiple Functions and Services of Community Seedbanks. More than just conservation.
- Diversification practices reduce organic to conventional yield gap. More data and fancier maths finds a lower organic yield gap (20%), which is halved by multi-cropping and crop rotations.
- Conserving landraces and improving livelihoods: how to assess the success of on farm conservation projects? All you need is two graphs.
- Finding Our Way through Phenotypes. “We urge all biologists, data managers, and clinicians to actively support the development, evaluation, refinement, and adoption of methodologies, tools, syntaxes, and standards for capturing and computing over phenotypic data and to collaborate in bringing about a coordinated approach.” Amen.
- Wild food in Europe: A synthesis of knowledge and data of terrestrial wild food as an ecosystem service. 65 million people collect, and at least 100 million consume, wild food. But only 81 plants? Thought it would be more. But even so, quite an ecosystem service.
The Global Crop Diversity Trust meets its stakeholders at Green Week
Lots going on today.
The Crop Trust’s First Stakeholder Discussion will be held on 16 January 2015 in Berlin, Germany, in conjunction with the Global Forum for Food and Agriculture (GFFA), during the annual Green Week International Agricultural Fair. Its thematic focus will be on the central role of international crop collections in preserving crop diversity…
It all starts at 4pm. Follow on Twitter, if you dare. And yes, that’s a new logo and website.
Nibbles: Sake worries, Idaho apples, Local cuisine, SP leaves, Baobab superfood, CWR training, Physic gardens, Forest questions
- As if Japan doesn’t have enough to worry about, its sake is in trouble.
- Update on that Idaho Heritage Tree Project.
- Why local cuisine is best. Who needs fusion, eh?
- Sweet potato leaves are good, and good for you. But you can’t eat them if they’re not part of your local cuisine.
- Same goes for baobab.
- New Samara has report on crop wild relatives training in Uganda.
- A medicinal plant garden in Philadelphia.
- How can we improve agriculture to reduce the pressure in forested areas? One of the top 20 questions for forestry and landscapes, apparently.
ICARDA genebank to get award
The Gregor Mendel Foundation, established in 2002, proposes to focus on the importance and innovative potential of plant breeding. The founders are personalities and families with dedication to plant breeding for generations. The “Gregor Mendel Innovation Prize” is awarded to individuals who rendered outstanding services to innovation in plant breeding.
Delighted to hear that this year’s prize will be awarded to Dr Mahmoud Solh, Director General of ICARDA, on behalf of the institute’s genebank team:
…who were able to maintain the gene bank in Syria despite the challenging conditions of civil war and to send duplicates of the genetic material to other gene banks, e.g. in Spitzbergen. This ICARDA collection is a unique resource for scientists around the world in their search for genes suitable for national and international breeding programmes in order to develop drought tolerant and disease and pest resistant varieties which can be cultivated even under changing climate conditions.
The ceremony will take place on 19 March in Berlin. Richly deserved, I’m sure we all agree. It was only a couple of months ago that I had this to say:
…it was unbelievable to me that, despite everything, ICARDA staff in Aleppo are still somehow managing to keep the genebank going. That, perhaps, is the most remarkable of the achievements of the amazing, yet largely unsung, group of people who run genebanks, international and otherwise — not just in Aleppo but also in Lima, Cali, Texcoco, Leuven, Cotonou, Ibadan, Nairobi, Addis Ababa, Hyderabad, Los Banos, Suva, Shanhua, Arusha, Entebbe, Muguga… — and some of whose representatives met in the shadow of Mt Meru earlier this month. We owe them all so much, and I don’t think they hear that enough.
So glad to be proved wrong.
One wheat database to rule them all
Interesting to see Brockwell Bake, of all people, come up with an online database which
…brings together publicily available data for around 398,000 wheat lines from many wheat germplasm collections including the European Wheat Database, the Vavilov Insitute (Russia), the Australian winter cereals collection, USDA/GRIN (USA), CIMMYT, ICARDA and the Nordic Gene Centre with additional collection site information from FIGS plus pedigree, synonym and genetic data from GRIS and gene symbol and class information from the Catalogue of Gene Symbols to create a central point to help you find wheat lines of interest to you.
In terms of coverage, that’s not far short of what Genesys has, which is 415,070 accessions. Online data does get around…