- A domestication assessment of the big five plant families. Half of cultivated plants are legumes, a third grasses.
- The vulnerability of US apple (Malus) genetic resources. Moderate.
- Microorganisms associated with amylolytic starters and traditional fermented alcoholic beverages of north western Himalayas in India. Veritable microbial communities.
- Spatial incongruence among hotspots and complementary areas of tree diversity in southern Africa. It’s not just about the hotspots.
- Integrating Agricultural and Ecological Goals into the Management of Species-Rich Grasslands: Learning from the Flowering Meadows Competition in France. Gotta document the synergies.
- Genetic–geographic correlation revealed across a broad European ecotypic sample of perennial ryegrass (Lolium perenne) using array-based SNP genotyping. Strong structure both with latitude and longitude. Wonder if the Flowering Meadows competition took that into account.
- Interactions of knowledge systems in shiitake mushroom production: a case study on the Noto Peninsula, Japan. Tradition is not always a totally good thing.
- Development of Core Sets of Dolichos Bean (Lablab purpureus L. Sweet) Germplasm. Heuristic is better. But is it PowerCore?
- Genetic Diversity of Local and Introduced Sweet Potato [Ipomoea batatas (L.) Lam.] Collections for Agro-morphology and Physicochemical Attributes in Ethiopia. The improved varieties are not all that great. But there were only two of them. And the local landraces were not necessarily the best.
- Study of genetic variability in Vitis vinifera L. germplasm by high-throughput Vitis18kSNP array: the case of Georgian genetic resources. Some differentiation between wild and cultivated, but significant overlap.
Brainfood: Weed collection, Japan vs China wheat, China wheat, Indian maize, Aromatic rice, African cattle, Food system vulnerabilities, SDGs & nutrition, Suitable days, Setaria phenotyping
- Genetic Resources of Cannabis sativa L. in the Collection of the Gene Bank at INF&MP in Poznan. I’d pay money to see this in the field at evaluation time.
- Specific median flour particle size distribution of Japanese common wheats; Comparison with Chinese common wheats. Japanese diversity is a small fraction of Chinese diversity. Also, can you really have semicolons in titles?
- Association and Validation of Yield-Favored Alleles in Chinese Cultivars of Common Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.). And among Chinese wheats, the modern cultivars are a small subset of the diversity in the mini core collection.
- Diversity among maize landraces in North West Himalayan region of India assessed by agro-morphological and quality traits. I like it when specific accessions are highlighted as being special in some way. But will breeders around the world have access to them?
- Genetic Diversity and Population Structure in Aromatic and Quality Rice (Oryza sativa L.) Landraces from North-Eastern India. More than just basmati. But will breeders around the world have access to them?
- African Indigenous Cattle: Unique Genetic Resources in a Rapidly Changing World. At least 150 breeds, many endangered, all important.
- Sustainable Sourcing of Global Agricultural Raw Materials: Assessing Gaps in Key Impact and Vulnerability Issues and Indicators. We don’t know the vulnerabilities well enough.
- Can the sustainable development goals reduce the burden of nutrition-related non-communicable diseases without truly addressing major food system reforms? No.
- Suitable Days for Plant Growth Disappear under Projected Climate Change: Potential Human and Biotic Vulnerability. Tropical areas are screwed.
- A versatile phenotyping system and analytics platform reveals diverse temporal responses to water availability in Setaria. Fancy equipment picks out differences among genotypes.
The phylogeny of Czech hops
Long breeding work aimed at fine aroma hops results in high quality aroma aspects, which are used to produce the best beer. Czech hops are the security of the highest brewing quality in many breweries all over the world. Saaz hops are considered as the standard of high brewing quality not only in Czech Republic but in other countries as well. Saaz hops are a very important raw material for the best quality beer. All Czech hop varieties, which have been developed recently, have in their origin Saaz and therefore they show excellent brewing characteristics.
You had me at beer.
Nibbles: Monocultures redux, Seedless watermelons, Red kiwifruit, Herbaria problems, Forest foods, Sorghum beer, SIRGEALC, Chinese veggies, Organic tomatoes, Andean women, Rise origins, Fermentation
- Deploy your cover crop diversity in time rather than space. But deploy it.
- Triploid goodness.
- Searching for a red kiwi.
- Herbaria on the rack.
- Let them eat non-timber forest products.
- Sorghum spurts in Kenya. Because beer.
- Sign up for SIRGEALC 10.
- Knowing your 菠菜 from your 西洋菜.
- 400 tomato varieties. No pesticides. No water. No problem.
- Women are conserving Andean crops. Sure, though with some occasional help from genebanks.
- The Rice Origins Wars continue.
- Sauerkraut changed the world.
Of plants and their pests
For whatever reason, there was a spate of papers on the coevolution of plants and their pests last week. Or at least I got to hear about them last week.
The one that got the most attention by the popular press — well, actually, the only one that got any attention by the popular press — was a study comparing changes in glucosinolates in the brassica family with speciation in the Pieridae butterflies, whose caterpillars feed on these plants. Glucosinolates give wasabi and mustard their zing (hence the press interest), but are deadly to insects, which is why they evolved in the first place. Each major innovation in the chemistry of glucosinolates since they first arose in the brassicas at the K-T boundary is correlated, the authors found, with a burst of diversification in detoxification mechanisms among the insects at which they were aimed.
The other two studies don’t delve quite so deeply back into evolutionary time, focusing on the role of domestication. The first looked at populations of the green peach aphid (Myzus persicae) growing on a diversity of both crops and their wild relatives. The authors found that aphid populations on domesticated species were more genetically diverse, but evolved more slowly, because selection was less strong and populations larger, weakening the effect of genetic drift. Applying this result to the brassica-butterfly model would suggest that the strength of the association between glucosinolate and butterfly diversity should decrease for the domesticated brassicas compared to the wild ones, but I’m not sure this was looked at in that study.
The third paper investigated the apple’s fungal pathogen Venturia inaequalis. The dispersal characteristics of dozens of strains collected on both domesticated and wild apples in Kazakhstan were compared. The authors found that apple domestication has led to enhanced colonization capacity by the pathogen: strains from orchards have more, bigger spores. Seems to me that’s somewhat contradictory to the aphid example.
The relationship between plants and their pests is, well, complicated.