- Phenotypic evolution of agricultural crops. Plants have evolved to become bigger, less able to run away, and more delicious to herbivores, and breeders can use insights into that domestication process to develop an ideotype for multipurpose crops adapted to sustainable agriculture.
- The taming of the weed: Developmental plasticity facilitated plant domestication. The authors made plants less lazy, more attractive, and easier to cook — all by simply hanging out with them for a season or two. And so did early farmers.
- Revisiting the concept of the ‘Neolithic Founder Crops’ in southwest Asia. The earliest farmers in the Fertile Crescent did not do the above for just a single, standard basket of 8 crops.
- The Fits and Starts of Indian Rice Domestication: How the Movement of Rice Across Northwest India Impacted Domestication Pathways and Agricultural Stories. Rice began to be cultivated in India in the Ganges valley, moved in a semi-cultivated state to the Indus, got fully domesticated there, then met Chinese rice. No word on what else was in the basket.
- Analysis of Domestication Loci in Wild Rice Populations. Australian populations of wild rice have never been anywhere near cultivated rice, but could easily be domesticated.
- Selection and adaptive introgression guided the complex evolutionary history of the European common bean. The first introductions were from the Andean genepool, but then there was introgression from that into the Mesoamerican, and both spread around Europe. A bit like Indian meeting Chinese rice?
- Ancient DNA from a lost Negev Highlands desert grape reveals a Late Antiquity wine lineage. One thousand year old grape pits from the southern Levant can be linked to a number of modern cultivars, which could therefore be adapted to drier, hotter conditions.
- Direct evidence of the use of multiple drugs in Bronze Age Menorca (Western Mediterranean) from human hair analysis. There was probably not a single package of drug plants either.
Nibbles: Calabrian citron, Cherokee seeds, Indigenous food systems & community seed bank in India, NZ apple diversity, Climate funding for food
- Calabrians are growing citrons under solar panels to protect them from the heat.
- The Church of the Good Shepherd in Decatur, Alabama is growing seeds from the Cherokee Nation Seed Bank in its gardens, and that’s a sort of homecoming.
- The Indigenous agrobiodiversity and food systems of Meghalaya in India’s NE are helping local people cope with extreme climatic conditions.
- Elsewhere in India, there are community seed banks to help with resilience.
- And in New Zealand, the Volco Park Cultivar Preservation Orchard is helping academics teach about crop diversity.
- Meanwhile, only 3% of climate funding is going into food systems.
Nibbles: Transformation, MAHARISHI, Pastoralists and climate change, Utopian okra, Landrace breeding, Ghana genebank, Indian community seedbank, Rice pan-genome, Perennial rice
- Towards resilient and sustainable agri-food systems. Summary report from the FORSEE Series of Töpfer Müller Gaßner GmbH (TMG). Take home message: We need an internationally agreed framework for agri-food systems transformation that reduces the externalities of the current systems. But how?
- Chair Summary and Meeting Outcome of the G20 Meeting of Agricultural Chief Scientists 2023. “We highlight the importance of locally adapted crops for the transition towards resilient agriculture and food systems, enhancing agricultural diversity, and improving food security and nutrition.” And that includes the wonderfully named Millets And OtHer Ancient GRains International ReSearcH Initiative (MAHARISHI). Ah, so that’s how.
- Are pastoralists and their livestock to blame for climate change? Spoiler alert: It’s complicated, but no. And here’s a digest of resources from the Land Portal explaining they can be part of sustainable and resilient agri-food systems.
- The Utopian Seed Project is developing more climate-resilient okra in the southern USA.
- Joseph Lofthouse, Julia Dakin, Shane Simonsen and Simon Gooder — interviewed here about landrace-based breeding — would approve of utopian okra.
- Plenty of landraces in the Ghana national genebank, according to this mainstream media article.
- Also plenty of landraces in India’s community seedbanks.
- Professor Zhang Jianwei at the National Key Laboratory of Crop Genetic Improvement, Huazhong Agricultural University has built an rice pan-genome database based on 16 (landraces presumably) accessions representing all the major sub-populations. The technical details are here. Rice sustainability and resilience no doubt beckons. Okra next?
- No, perennial rice next, apparently.
Brainfood: 100 plant science questions, Biodiversity data, Cropland expansion double, CC & yields, Crop diversity & stability, Nutritious crops double, Feminist markets
- One hundred important questions facing plant science: an international perspective. How do we leverage existing genetic diversity to create climate-resilient crops? is only number 3 you say? I’ll take it. And in fact that broad question gets deconstructed in questions 36-71. Now, let’s see how today’s haul of papers relates to that, shall we?
- A strategy for the next decade to address data deficiency in neglected biodiversity. Well, yeah, easy one, clearly you need data to conserve the crop wild relatives that could help you breed those climate-resilient crops.
- Post-2020 biodiversity framework challenged by cropland expansion in protected areas. Apart from anything else, that data would tell you which CWR in protected areas are threatened with cropland expansion, and said CWR could help you with breeding crops that could limit cropland expansion by increasing production on existing cropland. Could, could, could…
- Global Maps of Agricultural Expansion Potential at a 300 m Resolution. That cropland expansion might do less damage in some places than others. Still with me?
- Increased probability of hot and dry weather extremes during the growing season threatens global crop yields. Right, that’s why those CWR might come in useful. Assuming you can still find them with all that cropland expansion.
- Divergent impacts of crop diversity on caloric and economic yield stability. At the state level within the USA, crop species diversity is positively associated with yield stability when yield is measured in $ but negatively when measured in calories. Now do it for genetic diversity.
- Role of staple cereals in human nutrition: Separating the wheat from the chaff in the infodemics age. The benefits of those climate-resilient, more nutritious crops need to be better communicated.
- Simple solutions for complex problems? What is missing in agriculture for nutrition interventions. What does nutritious mean anyway?
- “Whose demand?” The co-construction of markets, demand and gender in development-oriented crop breeding. Who is it that wants those climate-resilient, nutritious crops anyway?
- Take-home message: leveraging existing genetic diversity to create climate-resilient crops might be the easy part.
Nibbles: Robert Chambers, Zero Hunger, China genebank, Spanish bacteria, Harnessing diversity
- There’s a celebration of the thinking of Robert Chambers over at IDS Bulletin. He’s been advocating for participation in development and the importance of Indigenous knowledge, among other things, for 50 years.
- The Center on Global Food and Agriculture has a report out called “Defining the Path to Zero Hunger in an Equitable World” which basically tries to add humanitarian assistance to the old food-climate-biodiversity nexus. Crop diversity is nowhere to be found among the “catalyzing ideas,” but one of those is investing in “force multipliers,” and that includes agricultural research and development. Participatory agricultural research and development, presumably?
- Meanwhile, China has collected 124,000 crop diversity samples.
- And a Spanish microbiologist has collected 3,600 bacteria.
- The PNAS Special feature: Harnessing crop diversity, organized by Susan McCouch, Loren Rieseberg and Pamela Ronald, got a nice write-up in the latest Plant Science Research Weekly. But what would Robert Chambers say? Anyway, should I do a special Brainfood on it? Let me know in the comments, as the cool kids say.