- According to WWF, Solving the Great Food Puzzle involves, inter alia, nutritious indigenous crops, agrobiodiverse cropping systems, and traditional food cultures. Those are just 3 of 20 levers for food system transformation. Is it me or are levers and accelerators the current flavours of the month?
- Even the Gates Foundation agrees on that indigenous crop thing, kinda sorta, if you squint. In this piece, for example, Enock Chikava, Interim Director, Agricultural Development, waxes lyrical about teff.
- Meanwhile, in the middle of its tomato shortage, and not much interested in teff, the UK is betting on re-establishing prehistoric landscapes full of wild pigs and bison. Bold move.
- But who needs bison protein when you have the genome of the faba bean? Which after all is a nutritious indigenous crop, part of agrobiodiverse cropping systems, and a component of traditional food cultures.
- Ah, but you need to manage all that data on indigenous crops, and Clemson University is there to help. WWF take note.
Brainfood: Seed imaging, Disease imaging, Seed traits, Irvingia shape, Mexican tomatoes, Fine cacao, Wine tourism, Wild peas
- Implication of high variance in germplasm characteristics. Last week’s Brainfood focused on genomic variation. This week, in contrast, we look at phenotyping. But not old school phenotyping, oh no. This paper, for example, uses fancy-ish, but not especially expensive, imaging.
- High-throughput imaging of powdery mildew resistance of the winter wheat collection hosted at the German Federal ex situ Genebank for Agricultural and Horticultural Crops. This paper uses somewhat fancier, and possibly more costly, imaging. Vorsprung durch Technik.
- Low availability of functional seed trait data from the tropics could negatively affect global macroecological studies, predictive models and plant conservation. Even embryos in seeds can be phenotyped.
- Agroforestry Trees’ Architecture as Evidence of Domestication: Case of African Mango Tree in the Dahomey Gap, West Africa. I wonder if one could describe the shape of tree crowns from space? I hope not, this work sounded like fun…
- Diversidad biocultural de tomate nativo en Oaxaca, México. Phenotype is socially constructed in tomato too.
- Who Defines Fine Chocolate? The Construction of Global Cocoa Quality Standards from Latin America. Can you standardise a social construct such as the flavour of chocolate, and would it help farmers? Maybe.
- Douro wine-tourism engaging consumers in nature conservation stewardship: An immersive biodiversity experience. How to make money out of a socially constructed phenotype.
- Natural range, habitats and populations of wild peas (Pisum L.). We should get out of our labs and look for wild peas in the oases of the Sahara Desert, the subalpine communities of Georgia, and the Asir Mts of Yemen. But will we know them when we see them?
Brainfood: Genomics for conservation and use edition
- How genomics can help biodiversity conservation. Let’s find out, but let’s broaden it to use as well, shall we? On the assumption that what’s good for conservation is good for use, and vice versa.
- Genetic and genomic interventions in crop biofortification: Examples in millets. Genomics can help you get more nutritious millets, and also use millets to improve the nutritive content of other cereals too.
- Genomics and biochemical analyses reveal a metabolon key to β-L-ODAP biosynthesis in Lathyrus sativus. Genomics can help you figure out ways to decrease the toxicity of grasspea.
- Extensive crop–wild hybridization during Brassica evolution and selection during the domestication and diversification of Brassica crops. Genomics can help you figure out the evolutionary history of crops…
- Molecular characterization of Brassica genebank germplasm confirms taxonomic identity and reveals low levels and source of taxonomic errors. …assuming you have you accessions labelled correctly that is.
- Dual domestications and origin of traits in grapevine evolution. Genomics can help you figure out the evolutionary history of crops. No, wait, we already had that one…
- Balancing grain yield trade-offs in ‘Miracle-Wheat’. Genomics can help you figure out the best phenotype in wheat.
- Focusing the GWAS Lens on days to flower using latent variable phenotypes derived from global multienvironment trials. Genomics can help you figure out the best phenotype in lentils too.
- Awned versus awnless wheat spikes: does it matter? Although actually you don’t necessarily need genomics to help you figure out the best phenotype in wheat. But let’s get back on track.
- SNP Diversity and Genetic Structure of “Rogosija”, an Old Western Balkan Durum Wheat Collection. That’s better. Genomics can help you figure out that a wheat collection can consist of distinct ecogeographic groupings.
- Repeatability of adaptation in sunflowers: genomic regions harbouring inversions also drive adaptation in species lacking an inversion. Genomics can help you figure out what’s behind local adaptation in crop wild relatives.
- Re-evaluating Homoploid Reticulate Evolution in Helianthus Sunflowers. Genomics can help you figure out the evolutionary history of crop wild relatives. Where have I heard that before?
- A thousand-genome panel retraces the global spread and adaptation of a major fungal crop pathogen. Genomics can help you figure out the evolutionary history of plant pathogens too. Here’s a Twitter thread from one of the authors with lots of maps to prove it.
- Honey bee populations of the USA display restrictions in their mtDNA haplotype diversity. Yeah, you guessed it, pollinators too.
- Mezcal worm in a bottle: DNA evidence suggests a single moth species. I rest my case.
Brainfood: Food biodiversity, Diversification, New crops, GMO maize, African livestock, Greek innovation clusters, Amazonian native cacao
- Food Biodiversity as an Opportunity to Address the Challenge of Improving Human Diets and Food Security. Biodiversity and food security can be mutually supportive, but you need education, research and inclusion, say educators and researchers.
- Achieving win-win outcomes for biodiversity and yield through diversified farming. Biodiversity and yield both win in only about a quarter of cases. But humanity does not live by yield alone, right?
- Accelerated Domestication of New Crops: Yield is Key. Ooops, looks like humanity does live by yield alone after all.
- Genetically Modified Maize: Less Drudgery for Her, More Maize for Him? Evidence from Smallholder Maize Farmers in South Africa. No, wait, man lives by yield alone, but not woman.
- Climate Change’s Impact on Agriculture and Food Security: An Opportunity to Showcase African Animal Genetic Resources. Forget GMO maize, Africa needs to develop its own agrobiodiversity…
- Friend or Foe? The Role of Animal-Source Foods in Healthy and Environmentally Sustainable Diets. …and it need not be bad for either health or the environment.
- AgriDiverCluster: An Innovative Cluster for the Utilization of Greek Biodiversity and Plant Genetic Resources. Maybe the Greeks have a way to make it not bad for either health or the environment. By vertical integration, it looks like.
- Socio-ecological benefits of fine-flavor cacao in its center of origin. Amazonian cacao farmers also seem to have a way to vertically integrate.
Nibbles: Spanish wine, Wild bananas, African tree seeds, Ancient Foodways, Coffee genotyping, Barbados genebank, Modern plant breeding myths, Yam seeds, Climate funding for food systems
- There’s a piece in The Guardian on how Spanish wine makers are fighting climate change by going back to old grape varieties like estaladiña.
- Maybe the same will happen with bananas, and its wild relatives could help? If so, it’s good we have this nifty catalogue.
- A pan-African tree seed platform is in the making, thanks to CIFOR-ICRAF and IKI funding. Where’s the catalogue?
- Here’s a video from the University of Wisconsin-Madison on A New Way of Teaching Ancient Foodways.
- And a video from USDA on their work on genotyping coffee collections.
- Meanwhile, Barbados is still thinking about building a genebank.
- The Genetic Literacy Project does some myth-busting (or tries to): have modern varieties decreased the diversity within crops, are contemporary plant varieties really not suitable for low-input farming, and is improving agricultural practices enough without plant breeding? Take a wild guess.
- Yam researchers in Benin have their own take on improving agricultural practices.
- More climate funding should go to food system transformation, says the Global Alliance for the Future of Food in a report. Those Spanish winemakers — and everyone else above — would probably agree.