Genetic diversity

September 18, 2020September 18, 2020

Brainfood: Special citizen science edition

Something for the weekend. I hope you enjoy this special edition of Brainfood focusing on citizen science, Indigenous knowledge and participatory research. Do you like themed Brainfood editions like this? There will be another one on Monday, as it happens. They’re more tricky to produce, but if there’s significant interest I may make the extra effort. Let me know, and suggest topics.

The value of climate-resilient seeds for smallholder adaptation in sub-Saharan Africa. Up to USD 2 billion in Malawi and Tanzania over the next 30 years.
Agricultural productivity and deforestation: Evidence from input subsidies and ethnic favoritism in Malawi. Cheaper fertilizers increased yields and decreased deforestation. Better seeds would help too, no doubt (see above).
Channels used to deliver agricultural information and knowledge to smallholder farmers. Farmer groups and demonstration plots work well to spread the news about fertilizers and seeds.
Integrating Conventional and Participatory Crop Improvement for Smallholder Agriculture Using the Seeds for Needs Approach: A Review. Combine high-tech centralized and participatory decentralized germplasm evaluation and breeding approaches to get those better seeds to farmer groups and their demonstration plots.
Citizen science breathes new life into participatory agricultural research. A review. Why do the participatory, decentralized bit? Here’s why. Fortunately, there’s an app for it…
A global resource for exploring and exploiting genetic variation in sorghum crop wild relatives. If those seeds include sorghum, you could start with this lot.
Gendered differences in crop diversity choices: A case study from Papua New Guinea. And don’t forget gender as you do all this participatory, decentralized stuff. For example, in PNG, the women are into marketing, the men into tradition.
Crowd breeding of Danish apple cultivars. No word on gender differences, alas.
Modelling illustrates that genomic selection provides new opportunities for intercrop breeding. Here’s the high-tech, centralized bit, or at least a model of it, ripe for mashing up with citizen science.
Dissection of the domestication‐shaped genetic architecture of lettuce primary metabolism. More high-tech, centralized stuff, the real thing this time. Which can now be used to breed a better lettuce, hopefully by lots of citizens growing the stuff in their gardens and providing salad tasting results through a nifty app.
Indigenous and Local Knowledge Practices and Innovations for Enhancing Food Security Under Climate Change: Examples from Mijikenda Communities in Coastal Kenya. Maybe farmers should run participatory programmes, with scientists as the citizens.
Micronutrient composition and microbial community analysis across diverse landraces of the Ethiopian orphan crop enset. Don’t know how you’d do citizen science on this, but I bet somebody does.
Discovering the indigenous microbial communities associated with the natural fermentation of sap from the cider gum Eucalyptus gunnii. Someone mention traditional fermentation practices?
The Milpa Game: a Field Experiment Investigating the Social and Ecological Dynamics of Q’eqchi’ Maya Swidden Agriculture. Citizen science is not a game. No, wait…
The Ancient Tree Inventory: a summary of the results of a 15 year citizen science project recording ancient, veteran and notable trees across the UK. Not a game indeed: very serious, but fun, definitely fun.

September 16, 2020

Nibbles: Vavilov podcast, Pomological book, Wine press, Banana data

Audio drama on Vavilov. You heard me.
Proceedings from the First Annual Wild & Seedling Pomological Exhibition. First of many, I hope.
A really old Phoenician wine press.
Update on banana genebank data.

September 15, 2020

Lay up your dates on earth

I see Jeremy had some fun in his latest newsletter. Want more of the same, every week: subscribe.

Previously, in the Methuselah date story: around 50 years ago archaeologists excavating Masada in Israel dug up a small pile of date seeds. In 2008, to most people’s surprise, one of those seeds — roughly 2000 years old — germinated and was named the Methuselah date. Like its namesake, it proved to be male. Date male and female flowers grow on separate plants, so wails and lamentations accompanied far-fetched plans to tinker with Methuselah.

And it came to pass that in recent years another 32 well-preserved date seeds were set to germinate. And lo, six of them did germinate, and their names were given as Boaz, Eve, Jeremiah, Jonah, Judah and Uriel, and they too were of ancient lineage. And when they came of maturity and revealed unto others their gender, Eve became Adam, and Jeremiah became Hannah and Judah in her turn became Judith.

And Hannah brought forth flowers in their beauty, and the researchers carried the male seed from Methuselah unto Hannah’s flowers and the flowers swelled and were ripened. Then the researchers plucked of the fruits and tasted, and said: “The honey-blonde, semi-dry flesh had a fibrous, chewy texture and a subtle sweetness.”

The New York Times has the story, and there is a bunch of really interesting science behind some of the conjectures.

September 15, 2020September 14, 2020

Nibbles: Cahokia book, Grape stats, Tides of History, Medieval Arabic cookbooks, Bangladesh hydroponics

Prof. Gayle J. Fritz gets 2020 Mary W. Klinger Book Award for “Feeding Cahokia.” Beyond maize and priests.
The ups and downs of grape varieties. Airén relinquishes the top spot! So much data: who will calculate diversity stats?
Nice, long podcast on the beginning of farming in the Fertile Crescent. More coming up.
“Treasure Trove of Benefits and Variety at the Table” is the sort of cookbook we all need.
What is it about floating gardens? Quite a lot, really. But they are not easily transplanted, as it were.

September 14, 2020September 14, 2020

Brainfood: CGIAR, Genebank data, AI & diseases, Mentha CWR, Tree crops, Carrot diversity, Rice sampling, Perennial rice, Rice de-domestication, Malagasy deforestation, Saving pollinators, Sheep domestication, FFS, Wine signatures

The development of the international center model for agricultural research: A prehistory of the CGIAR. The model didn’t start with those canonical US foundations, and owes more than a little to colonialism. Further integration is needed.
Document or Lose It—On the Importance of Information Management for Genetic Resources Conservation in Genebanks. Standardization, openness and interoperability. Easier said than done, but if you’re looking for further integration…
AI-powered banana diseases and pest detection. But can it tell bananas from plantains? Nice to link it up with the above.
Crop Wild Relatives as Germplasm Resource for Cultivar Improvement in Mint (Mentha L.). 450 clones representing 34 taxa maintained by USDA. The next 2 are USDA things too.
Germplasm Development of Underutilized Temperate U.S. Tree Crops. Sure, introduce species from abroad, but if they have local wild relatives you have another route to adaptation. Take the hazelnut, for example…
Subspecies Variation of Daucus carota Coastal (“Gummifer”) Morphotypes (Apiaceae) Using Genotyping-by-Sequencing. One morphology and niche, 5 genetic groups.
Comparisons of sampling methods for assessing intra- and inter-accession genetic diversity in three rice species using genotyping by sequencing. Some differences in results among sampling methods, but not huge.
Combining ability analysis on rhizomatousness via incomplete diallel crosses between perennial wild relative of rice and Asian cultivated rice. If you want perennial cultivated(ish) rice, you have to pick your parents carefully.
Something old, something new: Evolution of Colombian weedy rice (Oryza spp.) through de novo de‐domestication, exotic gene flow, and hybridization. Weedy rice is just local domesticated rice gone bad, at least in Colombia. Gosh I hope that perennial rice doesn’t get de-domesticated.
It’s not just poverty: unregulated global market and bad governance explain unceasing deforestation in Western Madagascar. Stop blaming subsistence slash-and-burn.
Climate change enforces to look beyond the plant – the example of pollinators. Create nice conditions for pollinators on farms, it’ll be worth it.
Paternal Origins and Migratory Episodes of Domestic Sheep. 4 parental lineages, one with primitive features and another with fat tails.
Women and Fish-for-Sex: Transactional Sex, HIV/AIDS and Gender in African Fisheries. Teach a man to fish, FFS.
Use of Untargeted Liquid Chromatography–Mass Spectrometry Metabolome To Discriminate Italian Monovarietal Red Wines, Produced in Their Different Terroirs. A little wine with your fish? Ah no, wait, these are all reds. But at least you can tell them apart now.