Genebanks

September 18, 2013September 18, 2013

Genebank managers manage to have a good time

Luigi has been tweeting up a storm from the genebank managers meeting in Ames Iowa. If that’s the kind of thing that interests you, look for his hashtag, #ames13. Even if it isn’t, you might take a look for an object lesson in how to use social media.

This morning they’re off on a field trip. Will that slow him down? I doubt it.

September 16, 2013September 9, 2016

Brainfood: Identifying GMOs, European beans, Palm distribution, Croatian cattle, Beta biodiversity, Apple pollination, Chinese foxtail millet, New Brassica, Pennisetum & latitude, Egusi oil

Next-Generation Sequencing as a Tool for Detailed Molecular Characterisation of Genomic Insertions and Flanking Regions in Genetically Modified Plants: a Pilot Study Using a Rice Event Unauthorised in the EU. A rice event? They mean GMOs.
Genetic Diversity and Dissemination Pathways of Common Bean in Central Europe. Slovenia is mainly Andean, Austria a mixture of Andean and Mesoamerican.
Spatial distribution and environmental preferences of 10 economically important forest palms in western South America. It’s the water, stupid.
Genetic variability of microsatellites in autochthonous Podolian cattle breeds in Croatia. Istrian cattle and Slavonian Syrmian Podolians are similar, but not identical. I dunno, I just hope someone is keeping track of all this stuff.
Biodiversity Assessment of Sugar Beet Species and Its Wild Relatives: Linking Ecological Data with New Genetic Approaches. Where to find them, and how to use them. EcoTILLING is the way to go, apparently.
Biodiversity ensures plant–pollinator phenological synchrony against climate change. The more pollinators, the better.
Molecular diversity and population structure of Chinese green foxtail [Setaria viridis (L.) Beauv.] revealed by microsatellite analysis. Domesticated has geographical structure, wild does not. Origin in N China.
A new species of Brassica sect. Brassica (Brassicaceae) from Sicily. It never ends.
Latitudinal patterns of diversity in the world collection of pearl millet landraces at the ICRISAT genebank. Aim for 15°–20°.
Genetic Mapping of Seed Traits Correlated with Seed Oil Percentage in Watermelon. Egusi, to be precise. Aim for bigger seeds.

September 14, 2013September 14, 2013

Nibbles: Lathyrism, Ancient maize, Sustainable cacao, Bioversity on agrobiodiversity, Weird fruits, Carrot seed, Palm wine, Buckwheat, Halophytes issue, Weird(ish) crops, Urban malnutrition, Old oranges, Molasses, Indian tree institute

An ODAP detective story.
Ancient maize gets a map.
Diversity is the key to sustainable cacao.
New Bioversity DG answers the tough questions.
Be the first on your block with an unusual fruit tree.
How to grow awesome carrot seed.
The hard life of Nigerian wine tappers.
Bringing back buckwheat in Bhutan.
Annals of Botany to do halophytes.
Come down to earth with the realization that most people have never heard of cowpea and cassava. Would they have heard of black-eyed peas and tapioca, though?
Big report on urban malnutrition. Maybe cassava (see above) can help?
The last orange grove in the San Fernando Valley. No word on what the variety might be.
All about molasses.
Indian tree breeding institute, and accompanying genebank, get a write-up.
Yes, I know that I could have done a better job of pointing out the connections among some of these things, but it’s been a long week.

September 13, 2013September 13, 2013

Hari Upadhyaya of ICRISAT genebank recognized by CSSA

Congratulations to Dr Hari Upadhyaya, head of the ICRISAT genebank, on being awarded the Frank N. Meyer Medal for Plant Genetic Resources by the Crop Science Society of America. If you’re going to the award breakfast, you’ll be able to hear Hari talk in person about “Crop germplasm to overcome challenges to global food and nutritional security.” If you’re not going, here’s a taste of what you’ll be missing. Well done, Hari!

September 12, 2013September 12, 2013

Botanic gardens conserve crop diversity too

We forget sometimes, in our cosy little crop genebank world, that botanic gardens do ex situ conservation of agricultural biodiversity too. ((Botanic Gardens Conservation International (BCGI) even allows you to search botanic garden collections for crop wild relatives.)) Witness the Royal Botanic Gardens Endinburgh and the Really Wild Vegetable Project. I only know about it because they tweeted on it earlier today, and the tweet caught my eye because it mentioned wild cabbage, and had a nice picture too. It turns out, however, that the particular population of wild Brassica oleracea oleracea involved is not in the national UK inventory of crop genetic resources as known by Eurisco, and thus Genesys, which basically just sucks up Eurisco data. ((And no, before you ask, GBIF doesn’t do much better. And no, searching BCGI doesn’t actually tell you directly which gardens have the species, just how many, if any, gardens do.))

@RBGE_Science @BrianFLloyd Map of wild B oleracea oleracea accessions at @WarwickGRU based on Eurisco/Genesys pic.twitter.com/BuADxfcHjF

— AgroBioDiverse (@AgroBioDiverse) September 12, 2013

That only includes material from the Warwick Genetic Resources Unit, which happens to be mainly from the southern part of the UK. So the material mentioned in the Edinburgh tweet, which comes from Fife in Scotland, is likely to add significant diversity to the “national” collection at Warwick. Scope for some closer collaboration between these two institutes? Well, maybe it’s already there and I haven’t caught it. Do let me know if I’m being unfair.