- Evaluation of Genetic Diversity of Sichuan Common Wheat Landraces in China by SSR Markers. “Our results suggested that Sichuan common wheat landraces is a useful genetic resource for genetic research and wheat improvement.” When is anything not?
- Identification and evaluation of sorghum (Sorghum bicolor (l.) moench) germplasm from Eastern Kenya. “These untapped resources could be useful in crop improvement programmes and in food security.” See what I mean?
- Genetic assessment of maize landraces from former Yugoslavia. No, wait, don’t tell me… “The results revealed a significant genetic heterogeneity indicating that the analyzed landraces could be valuable sources of genetic variability.” There you go.
- The Role of Home Gardens in Household Food Security in Eastern Cape: A Case Study of Three Villages in Nkonkobe Municipality. People who keep home gardens eat and sell the stuff they grow in their home gardens. And yet they need to be empowered. Oh, and naturally “[f]indings of this study will be useful to governmental and non-governmental bodies involved in promoting food security in the rural households.”
- A modelling study of the role of marine protected areas in metapopulation genetic connectivity in Delaware Bay oysters. Gotta site your seed populations for restoration with care.
- Conservation Genetic Resources for Effective Species Survival (ConGRESS): Bridging the divide between conservation research and practice. An online tool for making decisions about conservation, including based on genetic data, such as the kind above. May even be applicable to agricultural biodiversity.
- A prioritized crop wild relative inventory to help underpin global food security. Well here’s one decision making tool that certainly is applicable to agrobiodiversity.
- The impact of agricultural practices on soil biota: A regional study. It’s not good.
- Sustainable agriculture: possible trajectories from mutualistic symbiosis and plant neodomestication. Gotta make use of those arbuscular mycorrhiza. Wonder if these guys have read the paper above though.
- Rethinking Land Grab Ontology. “Responsible investments in land acquisition” or “responsibly destroying the world’s peasantry”? Not sure why nobody looks at the agricultural biodiversity implications of all this.
- Extension of energy crops on surplus agricultural lands: A potentially viable option in developing countries while fossil fuel reserves are diminishing. Something to do on all that surplus land being sold off?
Nibbles: Straw, Straw man, Synthetic straw man, Burning straw man, Banana diversity, Perennial grains, Right to Food, Fibrous meatballs, Fermentation, Colombian music
- There’s a straw shortage? Well, of course there is.
- And this week’s prize for most straw-clutching headline goes to “Mathematical study of photosynthesis clears the path to developing new super-crops”.
- On the other hand, why bother mimicking C4 when you could just reinvent photosynthesis?
- Speaking of C4, maybe less US maize will be turned into fuel next year.
- The “portal” to the diversity of bananas gets an update. But don’t go looking for plantains.
- Perennial grains still under discussion.
- The Right To Food and Nutrition Watch – a name to sow confusion – has made its 2013 articles available.
- Nutrition, these days, means adequate fibre, so of course the natural way to do that is to add citrus fibre to meatballs. Smacks forehead.
- Science Friday does fermentation, with nutritional benefits.
- And a little something for the weekend: Colombian artists sing in solidarity with farmers. Waiting for a review from Our Man in Cali.
Brainfood: Buckwheat crossing, Cedar restoration, Sustainable tapping, Indian goats, Indian horses, Kenyan yams, Lithuanian cranberry, Appalachian ethnobotany, AVRDC peppers, Chicken breeds
- Progress and prospects for interspecific hybridization in buckwheat and the genus Fagopyrum. Not easy.
- Mechanisms for the successful biological restoration of the threatened African pencilcedar (Juniperus procera Hochst. ex. Endl., Cupressaceae) in a degraded landscape. Needs help from local Acacia. Isn’t diversity wonderful?
- Tapping latex and alleles? The impacts of latex and bark harvesting on the genetic diversity of Himatanthus drasticus (Apocynaceae). Tapping latex leads to loss of genetic diversity, but they have a plan for sustainable harvesting.
- Analysis of genetic diversity in berari goat population of Maharashtra state. “Berari is not a recognized breed but a well established local population of goat which is yet to be fully explored for its phenotypic and genetic aspects.” So what would it take to recognize it? This paper?
- Molecular phylogeny of Indian horse breeds with special reference to Manipuri pony based on mitochondrial D-loop. It’s the most different of the 5 breeds of the sub-continent (yes, apparently only 5), and the most similar to the Thoroughbred.
- Estimation of genetic diversity of the Kenyan yam (Dioscorea spp.) using microsatellite markers. Most variation within provinces. And?
- Morphological and genetic diversity of European cranberry (Vaccinium oxycoccos L., Ericaceae) clones in Lithuanian reserves. Enough morphological variation to think about domestication; enough molecular marker variation to think about writing another paper.
- Down deep in the holler: chasing seeds and stories in southern Appalachia. It’s all about the friendships.
- Pepper (Capsicum spp.) Germplasm Dissemination by AVRDC – The World Vegetable Center: an Overview and Introspection. Here come the numbers: 8,165 accessions of Capsicum conserved, 11% of global total; 6,008 genebank accessions (20%) and 23,972 improved advanced lines (80%) distributed in 25 years; 51 open pollinated and hybrid cultivars of hot and sweet peppers commercialized by public and private sectors in South Asia, West Africa, Central Asia and the Caucasus since 2005.
- Genetic characterization of local Italian breeds of chickens undergoing in situ conservation. Breeds are breeds.
Brainfood: Wild maize diversity, Bacterial test, Rice diversity, Marginal biofuels, Rice roots, Farm diversification and returns, Sorghum shattering, Thinking conservation, Ethiopian peas
- Complex Patterns of Local Adaptation in Teosinte. It’s down to the inversions and the intergenic polymorphisms.
- A Stringent and Broad Screen of Solanum spp. tolerance Against Erwinia Bacteria Using a Petiole Test. The best genotypes are all in one, easily-crossed series.
- Genetic diversity, population structure and differentiation of rice species from Niger and their potential for rice genetic resources conservation and enhancement. Both cultivated species, plus hybrids. More diversity within ecogeographic areas than among them.
- Use of DArT markers as a means of better management of the diversity of olive cultivars. Some potential duplicates found. But will anything be done about it?
- “Marginal land” for energy crops: Exploring definitions and embedded assumptions. Whether it’s a good idea to relegate biofuels to marginal land to protect food crops depends on what you mean by marginal.
- Coconuts in the Americas. They came from the Philippines. Well, the ones on the Pacific coast did anyway.
- Control of root system architecture by DEEPER ROOTING 1 increases rice yield under drought conditions. And it came from a genebank accession, no less.
- Landscape diversity and the resilience of agricultural returns: a portfolio analysis of land-use patterns and economic returns from lowland agriculture. You want resilient returns? You need large(ish), diversified farms.
- Seed shattering in a wild sorghum is conferred by a locus unrelated to domestication. But close to it.
- When the future of biodiversity depends on researchers’ and stakeholders’ thought-styles. You have to agree on more than just how you do it when you’re collaborating on a multidisciplinary conservation project. You also have to agree on why you’re doing it.
- Characterization of dekoko (Pisum sativum var. abyssinicum) accessions by qualitative traits in the highlands of Southern Tigray, Ethiopia. Endemic pea diversity arranged by altitude.
Nibbles: Traditional knowledge, Digital herbarium, Digital Vavilov Centres, Rice genebank, Lentil breeding, Breeding for drought, Native American trout, Musa revision, Millet and sorghum promoted, Phenomics revolution
- Paying attention to traditional knowledge to help with climate change … in New England!
- Two million New York Botanical Gardens herbarium sheets digitized, possibly including some crop wild relatives.
- Map your recipe, an entertaining way to talk about domestication and interdependence in the matter of agricultural biodiversity.
- IRRI follows up genebank video with genebank podcast. No idea why.
- Speaking of videos, here’s one on lentil breeding in Canada.
- Which I don’t think involved drought resistance there, but it probably did elsewhere.
- Tribes (not in New England — see above) diversify from trout. Alas freshwater not included in new global fish diversity hotspot map.
- Musa taxonomists do their thing.
- Millet takes on quinoa. Taxonomists would insist on calling it Panicum miliaceum. I think. Next in the queue is sorghum?
- Phenomics in words and images.