Genetic diversity

November 3, 2014November 2, 2014

Fighting the Ebola of maize

Speaking of Denise Costich, she recently visited CIMMYT’s Global Maize Program in Africa and shared this photo — frightening, and yet also hopeful, as she explains below:

maize

Maize Lethal Necrosis (MLN) is being called the “Ebola of maize” — it is actually a “perfect storm” of two viruses hitting the plants at the same time, carried all over the place by insect vectors… It’s hitting East Africa really hard right now, and CIMMYT scientists are screening as much germplasm as they can, in the search for resistance genes. Here you see an example of a “moderately tolerant” line. To the left of that plot, you can see another line that was completely decimated…

I’m featuring Denise a lot lately to make up for the fact that I forgot to take a photo of her to include in the mosaic of CGIAR genebank managers :)

November 3, 2014November 3, 2014

Brainfood: Enset & cattle, Evolution Canyon, Indian spices, Bohemian fruit rhapsody, ILRI forage genebank, Wild sunflower, Agroecology, Holistic hazelnuts, Culture & conservation, Salty broomcorn, Fancy mapping, German cherries, Ethiopian barley nutrients

Sidama Agro-Pastoralism and Ethnobiological Classification of its Primary Plant, Enset (Ensete ventricosum). The Sidama feed the high-protein parts of enset to cattle and then get their protein from milk. Seems a roundabout way of going about things but I guess they know best.
Evolution of wild barley at “Evolution Canyon”: adaptation, speciation, pre-agricultural collection, and barley improvement. One-stop shop for researching evolution of a crop wild relative.
Spices and Condiments: Status of Genetic Resources and Setting Priorities for Introduction in India. National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources is on the job, collecting at home and acquiring from genebanks abroad.
Inventory and conservation of fruit tree landraces as cultural heritage of Bohemian Forest (Czech Republic), indicators for former settlements of ethnic minorities. That would mean Germans. No word on whether the database has been cross-checked with that of BLE-IBV. Interested in the topic of European landraces in general? Try this from Bioversity.
Forage Diversity: An Essential Resource to Support Forage Development. ILRI’s genebank deconstructed.
Wild Sunflower Species as a Genetic Resource for Resistance to Sunflower Broomrape (Orobanche cumana Wallr.). Pretty much all the perennial species have resistance, and many of the annuals. Thank goodness for the USDA collection, eh?
Agroecological Research: Conforming — or Transforming the Dominant Agro-Food Regime? Bit of both? Is that such a bad thing?
A multidisciplinary approach to enhance the conservation and use of hazelnut Corylus avellana L. genetic resources. Holistic, even.
The Cooked is the Kept: Factors Shaping the Maintenance of Agro-biodiversity in the Andes. Keep your culture, keep your crop diversity.
Response of broomcorn millet (Panicum miliaceum L.) genotypes from semi arid regions of China to salt stress. 39 out of a core collection of 195. Result!
Vital Signs: Integrating Data To Visualize the Human, Agriculture, and Nature Nexus. Sounds promising enough an effort to bring together livelihoods, production and environmental data, but when you go to the website (for Tanzania in this case), all you get is a bunch of admittedly very pretty pdf maps.
Phenotypic and genotypic characterization in the collection of sour and duke cherries (Prunus cerasus and ×P. ×gondouini) of the Fruit Genebank in Dresden-Pillnitz, Germany. …give different results. If I had a dollar…
Genome-wide association mapping of zinc and iron concentration in barley landraces from Ethiopia and Eritrea. There are QTLs. Now what?

October 30, 2014October 30, 2014

Nibbles: Cannabis, Brachiaria, Grasslands, Oryza, Taxonomy resources, Artocarpus, Quercus, Zea, MAS, GBIF

“Something researchers are looking at is which cultivars, or strains, of hemp are best for the various uses — fiber, oil, nutrition, etc.” Love that etc.
Speaking about grass: Brachiaria goes home, to wild acclaim.
Did someone say wild? Wild grass needs help!
Rice is a grass. Oh my yes.
How to keep up to date with taxonomic research online.
Pacific Regional Breadfruit Initiative gets an award.
You can also make flour from acorns.
And maize: what’s a grit?
Greenpeace touts MAS.
Next thing you know they’ll be singing the praises of Big Data. Yeah, maybe not.

October 27, 2014October 27, 2014

Brainfood: Filipino rice synonyms, Jatropha breeding, Polish oats, Amazonian peppers, Wild lentils, Indian pigeonpea, Russian peas, Pulse markers, Wild pollinators, Phenotyping platforms, Almonds & peaches, Cerrado roads, Arboreta conservation

Multiplex SSR-PCR analysis of genetic diversity and redundancy in the Philippine rice (Oryza sativa L.) germplasm collection. 427 rice accessions in the national collection with similar names resolve to about 30 unique profiles. I think. The abstract is a little hard to follow, and that’s all I have access to.
Quantitative genetic parameters of agronomic and quality traits in a global germplasm collection reveal excellent breeding perspectives for Jatropha curcas L. 375 genotypes, 7 locations and 3 years get you quite enough data to plan a decent breeding programme.
Studies on genetic variation within old Polish cultivars of common oat. Forward into the past.
Morphoagronomic peppers no gender pungent Capsicum spp. Amazonia. Actually nothing to do with gender. That’s a mis-translation of “genus,” if you can believe it. Paper basically says that Amazonian peppers are really variable, which is not as interesting as it might have been.
Global Wild Annual Lens Collection: A Potential Resource for Lentil Genetic Base Broadening and Yield Enhancement. The core collection of wild annuals (which is actually a somewhat novel concept) comes mainly from Turkey and Syria, and it’s got diversity that’s not in the cultigen.
Pigeon pea Genetic Resources and Its Utilization in India, Current Status and Future Prospects. Indian genebank evaluates the ICRISAT core and mini-core. Then does some mutation breeding :)
Molecular genetic diversity of the pea (Pisum sativum L.) from the Vavilov Research Institute collection detected by the AFLP analysis. Molecular data does not correspond with subspecies nor ecogeographic groupings. Back to the drawing board.
Characterization of microsatellite markers, their transferability to orphan legumes and use in determination of genetic diversity among chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) cultivars. Chickpea SSRs are ok for other, less studied, crops too.
From research to action: enhancing crop yield through wild pollinators. Go wild.
Integration of phenotyping and genetic platforms for a better understanding of wheat performance under drought. You really need managed environment facilities. Didn’t a paper in Brainfood last week say what you needed was a network of field sites? I guess you need both.
Wild almonds gone wild: revisiting Darwin’s statement on the origin of peaches. He was not entirely wrong.
The role of roadsides in conserving Cerrado plant diversity. 70% of species is not bad, I guess. No word on whether that includes wild peanuts, but I suspect yes.
Do living ex situ collections capture the genetic variation of wild populations? A molecular analysis of two relict tree species, Zelkova abelica and Zelkova carpinifolia. Yes and no. But this is in botanic gardens and arboreta, what about seedbanks? The cerrado people want to know…

October 26, 2014October 29, 2014

Nibbles: Wonder Bread, Cassava sex, Languages and biodiversity, Wild Musa, Bronze Age musings, New Indian rice varieties, Improved breeds in Kenya, GMOs in China, Organic vision, Foreign food, Publicity, Nutrition advice & indicators, Ethiopian seed banks, Zimbabwe millet, Agroforestry, MSB legume collection, Demon paywalls, CIMMYT seed, Tempting apple

The industrial sliced loaf as racist fantasy.
Bill Gates talks dirty. About cassava, settle down.
Where the wild things are is where the languages are, but why? And where are they endangered?
This new Indian wild banana is probably a bit endangered.
The past may be a foreign country, but they got Street View there too.
Blockbuster rice in India. (But how energy-efficient is it?)
And potentially blockbuster livestock breeds in Kenya.
China goes GMO. Which of these?
Maybe they should read this vision for organic farming? You know, just for completeness?
Have a food adventure! Just perhaps not in China.
FAO and National Geographic have a food security adventure together. For more stuff like this, no doubt…
Eat more plants, and ditch the junk food. Sounds easy, doesn’t it? Ok, for the more complicated, nerdy approach, there’s always fancy indicators.
Ethiopia’s community seed banks.
I bet there are some in Zimbabwe…
African Development Bank makes a bet on agroforestry. Maybe health is why? There’s more that one reason…
Gotta be strategic with your legume collecting.
Want conservation science to translate into impact? Don’t publish behind a paywall.
CIMMYT earns its keep.
Build a better apple, and you won’t be able to keep the journalists away.