- A Wheat Germplasm Database To Rule Them All. No, not from CGIAR.
- New livestock maps of the world. Yes, from CGIAR.
- Kashmir ponders an apple genebank.
- More from Game of Strawberries.
- Wanna study the population genomics of cheese fungi? Course you do.
- Domesticating local fruit trees good for nutrition, but need secure tenure and good planting material.
- Building better broccoli, the genome way.
- Early domesticated dogs helped in mammoth hunts.
- Current extinction rate about 1000 times higher than background. Databases can help with that, believe it or not.
- Building a national PGRFA system in Bolivia. When will they ratify the ITPGRFA, though?
Wellesbourne set for the next 5 years
If there was ever any doubt about the future of the UK’s vegetables genebank at Wellesbourne, this should settle it:
Warwick Crop Centre at the University of Warwick has won a five year contract from Defra to continue to host the UK Vegetable Genebank at the University’s Wellesbourne Campus.
Good news, as far as it goes, but I have my doubts about the idea of such short-term contracts for genebanks. I mean, it’s certainly good practice to keep an institution on its toes with regular reviews of performance and the like, but what exactly is going to happen if Warwick Crop Centre does not win the contract again in 2019? Will the whole thing be moved to another locality, lock, stock and cold room? And on what basis will that future decision be made anyway? Are there some performance targets that the genebank will need to meet?
Nibbles: Linux lettuce, Climate intelligence, European ag & CC, Italian forests, Sweet potato chains, Aroid podcast, Beer trifecta, CWR everywhere
- Totally forgot if we already linked to this latest pean to open source seed.
- Climate-smart agriculture described in three paragraphs.
- Hope someone explains it to European farmers, and soon.
- Italy is increasingly wooded. But only because farms are being abandoned. Maybe not climate-smart enough?
- If only those farms had better links to markets, like in E. Africa…
- Dutch food writer on the Jewish (maybe) origins of the Surinamese national dish. Gotta love edible aroids. Jeremy does his podcast thing.
- Step 1: Breed your hops.
- Step 2: Find a funky yeast.
- Step 3: Crack the Kenyan beer market.
- Back to real life: USAID’s brand new multisectoral nutrition policy. Now, then, what’s the betting that the agricultural interventions supported by USAID avoided the risks that such things often hold for nutrition (incomes, prices, types of products, women social status and workload, sanitary environment and inequalities)?
- SeedMap.org breaks down crop wild relatives.
- Somebody mention crop wild relatives? Yes, Sandy Knapp.
- Somebody mention parientes silvestres de cultivos? Yes, Nora Castañeda.
- How many CWR will go the way of Arabidopsis? Because southern populations of that species in genebanks are already doing better than local populations in northern sites.
- How many crop wild relatives in Kew’s meadows?
An underestimated third line of defence for seeds in genebanks
A note on their recent work on seed storage from Steven P.C. Groot and Robbert van Treuren. Our thanks to both.
Dry and cool storage is recommended to extend the shelf life of seeds during ex situ conservation. But that’s not all! The shelf life of seeds stored in genebanks or the Svalbard Global Seed Vault is expected to be prolonged considerably by storing seeds under oxygen-free conditions soon after drying. To demonstrate the deteriorating effects of oxygen in the atmosphere of seeds, we published earlier in Annals of Botany, showing that high concentrations of oxygen accelerate the ageing of seeds. More recently, we have reproduced earlier findings that seed longevity can be improved considerably by storage under anoxia. This is illustrated by the picture, showing a strong difference in the viability of primed celery seeds, depending on storage within air or under anoxia. Explore our recent publication in Plant Genetic Resources, which outlines why this third row of defence against seed ageing should not be neglected by those involved in preserving biodiversity in the form of seeds.
Brainfood: Yam tissue culture, Barley core, Date genome, Ecosystem services & land use change, Remote sensing and conservation, Okra diversity, Carob diversity, Mexican genebank project, Chicken skin music, Mongolian camel, Coloured rice
- Effect of various growth regulators on growth of yam (Dioscorea trifida L.) in vitro shoot tips. One small step for yam cryopreservation.
- The USDA Barley Core Collection: Genetic Diversity, Population Structure, and Potential for Genome-Wide Association Studies. 5 sub-populations: roughly, Mediterranean, W Europe, E Europe, Asia and Ethiopia. GWAS effective in locating important phenotypes.
- A first genetic map of date palm (Phoenix dactylifera) reveals long-range genome structure conservation in the palms. Lots of synteny with oil palm and coconut despite differences in genome size. And we now (probably) know how sex determination works.
- Economic evaluation of ecosystem goods and services under different landscape management scenarios. Agriculture usually wins at the expense of more “ecological” land uses, unless income from C and biodiversity (and timber) go up, or discount rates go down.
- Oil in the Sahara: mapping anthropogenic threats to Saharan biodiversity from space. You can spot biodiversity threats from space. More examples along the same lines.
- Genetic and morphological diversity of okra (Abelmoschus esculentus [L.] Moench.) genotypes and their possible relationships, with particular reference to Greek landraces. Much phenotypic variation, less AFLP variation, but geographically structured. Germination characteristics vary with ecology.
- Genetic diversity revealed by EST-SSR markers in carob tree (Ceratonia siliqua L.). First time carbob has been genotyped using microsatellites. And that seems to be the only reason why this work was done.
- Investigation of the genetic diversity of domestic Capra hircus breeds reared within an early goat domestication area in Iran. Breeds are diverse but geographically distinct, the western ones especially. Unlike sheep, which are moved around a lot more. Some evidence of inbreeding, which can and should be counteracted.
- Diversity Assessment and Development of Sustainable Use of Mexican Genetic Resources: Prospects of a SATREPS Project. That would be Science and Technology Research Partnership for Sustainable Development, between the Japanese and Mexican genebanks. Looks like a lot of genotyping and in vitro conservation research on lesser-known crops.
- Establishing the validity of domestication genes using DNA from ancient chickens. You really need ancient DNA to study domestication.
- Genetic diversity and population structure of Mongolian domestic Bactrian camels (Camelus bactrianus). No breeds, no problem.
- Exploring Variability: New Brazilian Varieties SCS119 Rubi and SCS120 Onix for the Specialty Rices Market. Brazilian hipsters now have red and black rice.