- “Every heirloom plant seed grown for food has a story…”
- The history of alcohol.
- The history of a particular alcohol-producing plant.
- U. of Minnesota students travel to crop cradle.
- They could just have gone to Washington State University.
- Brazil is back in the cacao game.
- Deconstructing durian’s smell is easier than you thought.
- The CIAT genebank in Scientific (Latin)American.
Nibbles: Agroforestry info, Coffee genome, Citrus family tree, Physalis fossil, Conservation economics, Wild Vicia, African rice history, USDA PGR strategy, Fisheries, Evidence base
- Agroforestry Species Switchboard gets upgrade.
- Arabica sequenzzzzzzz…
- “But what is the point of collecting and preserving this genetic diversity as seed, if it should remain in perpetuity in a seed bank?”
- Citrus untangled.
- 52 million year old tomatillo fossil already had Inflated Calyx Syndrome.
- Faba bean wild relative found, kinda sorta.
- It’s the economics, stupid.
- African rice in the New World. Mash up with peanuts?
- National Program 301: Plant Genetic Resources, Genomics, and Genetic Improvement. Action Plan 2018-2022.
- Communities that catch more diverse fish species are more resilient shock.
- Database of what works in conservation. Not of crop and livestock diversity, though, alas.
Brainfood: CO2 & domestication, Amaranth double, Nordic apple double, Chinese alfalfa, Sheep double, Moroccan lentils, SE Asian veggies, Cattle relative
- Yield responses of wild C3 and C4 crop progenitors to subambient CO2: a test for the role of CO2 limitation in the origin of agriculture. It was tough for CWR in the last glacial period, better afterwards.
- Analysis of phylogenetic relationships and genome size evolution of the Amaranthus genus using GBS indicates the ancestors of an ancient crop. Three cultivated species derived from one wild relative in different geographic regions.
- Genomic and phenotypic evidence for an incomplete domestication of South American grain amaranth (Amaranthus caudatus). Maybe because of continued geneflow with the CWR.
- Unravelling genetic diversity and cultivar parentage in the Danish apple gene bank collection. Only 10% duplicates among 448 accessions, many unique.
- Redundancies and Genetic Structure among ex situ Apple Collections in Norway Examined with Microsatellite Markers. 14 synonyms among 181 accessions. No word on the overlap between Danish and Norwegian collections.
- The Current Status, Problems, and Prospects of Alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.) Breeding in China. 77 registered cultivars for the whole of China seems very few.
- Assessment of genetic diversity and structure of major sheep breeds from Pakistan. They cluster based on use rather than geographic origin.
- Mapping molecular diversity of indigenous goat genetic resources of Asia. Chinese goats are different.
- On-farm Conservation of Zaer Lentil Landrace in Context of Climate Change and Improved Varieties Competition. People like everything about the landrace except its yield.
- Conservation of Indigenous Vegetables from a Hotspot in Tropical Asia: What Did We Learn from Vavilov? Not much, it seems.
- Assessment of genetic diversity of Mithun (Bos frontalis) population in Bhutan using microsatellite DNA markers. Also known as gayal.
Nibbles: Bread, Barley, Superfoods, Algae
- Another three-way effort by bakers, farmers and gene banks to raise superior breads, this time in Australia.
- Meanwhile, on the Canary Islands, grains have barely changed in almost a thousand years.
- Here we go again: “Hipsters’ insatiable appetite for superfoods is starving India’s ancient indigenous people“. I guess they didn’t get the memo.
- “Species diversity reduces chances of crop failure” — even when the species are algae.
Brainfood: New communities, New journal, New sustainability indicators, New rice yields, New chickpeas, New tree map, Old barley, New wheat dataset, New oat “core”, New ABS guide, New threats
- Mapping climatic mechanisms likely to favour the emergence of novel communities. New climate combinations are rare (3.4% of evaluated cells), but mean displacement moderately rapid (3.7 km per decade) and divergence high (>60° for 67% of cells). What will all this mean for CWR? As many are ruderals, maybe nothing?
- Why biodiversity matters. Inaugural issue of Nature Ecology & Evolution. Not much on agricultural biodiversity, alas.
- Bridging the practitioner-researcher divide: Indicators to track environmental, economic, and sociocultural sustainability of agricultural commodity production. Again, no surprise that biodiversity is hardly considered by either researchers or practitioners in monitoring sustainability, though that’s not the point of the paper.
- Plausible rice yield losses under future climate warming. More even than IFPRI thought: −8.3 ± 1.4% per degree.
- Recent breeding programs enhanced genetic diversity in both desi and kabuli varieties of chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.). But from a low baseline?
- EU-Forest, a high-resolution tree occurrence dataset for Europe. Want European tree diversity, go to the Pyrenees.
- Farmer fidelity in the Canary Islands revealed by ancient DNA from prehistoric seeds. New barley same as old barley.
- Evaluation of 19,460 Wheat Accessions Conserved in the Indian National Genebank to Identify New Sources of Resistance to Rust and Spot Blotch Diseases. 45 accessions had known resistance genes against all three rusts as well as a QTL for spot blotch resistance.
- Promoting the Use of Common Oat Genetic Resources through Diversity Analysis and Core Collection Construction. Interesting, but 21 out of 91 is hardly a core collection.
- Utilization of genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge in academic research. A good practice guide for access and benefit-sharing. Well there’s no excuse now.
- Identifying species threat hotspots from global supply chains. Global maps of which countries, and which commodities they consume, most endanger threatened species around the world.