- Chefs innovating with biodiversity.
- Citizen seed science comes of age.
- Which is just as well, because seed companies could be doing a better job.
- Though women are trying.
- Hang on there, the private sector set to rescue the cowpea.
- A tale of two paradigms.
- But is one of the paradigms in trouble?
- 50 years of plant health research in Africa.
- Greening the genebanks.
- But how green is “China’s Noah’s Ark“?
- And does it have any tea?
- Fortunately, the paper mulberry’s genome is consistent with Chinese philosophy.
- Italy’s vineyards get mapped.
- It may be too late for Italy’s olives though.
Brainfood: Australian pigs, EAHB breeding, Megafauna lunch, Women & agrotourism, Biodiversity & productivity, US beans, Potato ploidy, Phenotyping forests, Sudan cattle genomics, Botanic gardens, Pepper resources, Vanillin, CWR maintenance
- What does the ‘closed herd’ really mean for Australian breeding companies and their customers? Australia has enough pig diversity to be going on with.
- Crossbreeding East African Highland Bananas: Lessons Learnt Relevant to the Botany of the Crop After 21 Years of Genetic Enhancement. Not completely sterile, but hardly very fertile either. Hard row to hoe.
- Are we eating the world’s megafauna to extinction? Yes.
- A systematic map of evidence on the contribution of forests to poverty alleviation. Always like a map.
- Turismo Rural y Conservación Ambiental: La Participación de la Mujer Campesina en la Reserva de la Biosfera los Tuxtlas, Veracruz, Mexico. It would be a good idea.
- Not even wrong: The spurious measurement of biodiversity’s effects on ecosystem functioning. Biodiversity likely not as important for ecosystem productivity as previously thought, because maths.
- Evolution of SSR diversity from wild types to U.S. advanced cultivars in the Andean and Mesoamerican domestications of common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris). Some base-broadening may be called for.
- Comparison of Methods to Distinguish Diploid and Tetraploid Potato in Applied Diploid Breeding. Count chloroplasts.
- Phenotyping Whole Forests Will Help to Track Genetic Performance. You heard.
- Signatures of positive selection in African Butana and Kenana dairy zebu cattle. Adapted to marginal environments, but with potential for higher milk production.
- How cultivating wild plants in botanic gardens can change their genetic and phenotypic status and what it means for their conservation value. In the end, it’s a numbers game.
- Genetic Resources of Capsicum. Could use more wild relatives, more.
- Vanilla bahiana, a contribution from the Atlantic Forest biodiversity for the production of vanilla: A proteomic approach through high-definition nanoLC/MS. But does it taste the same?
- Spontaneous hybridisation within Aegilops collection and biobanking of crop wild relatives (CWR). I guess that’s bad. But could it be useful?
Nibbles: Homeric food, Two atlases, Cacao breeding, Smart foods, Lancet/EAT, Wild grapes, Landrace maize, Training breeders, Apios, Sustainable use, Cost of nutrition
- Did Homeric heroes eat a lot of meat? The answer will surprise you. A thread.
- Social food atlas to be launched.
- Atlas of West African food systems already launched. Very different thing.
- Saving chocolate through biotech.
- What makes foods smart?
- Pros and cons of the Lancet/EAT thing. And more.
- Waking up the wine industry to the beauty grapevine wild relatives.
- The magos of maize, from Mexico to the US, and back again.
- Plant breeding training in Africa.
- Pre-colonial North America: not wilderness, not dense forest, and not just the Three Sisters, lots of Apios too. Lots.
- Food AND biodiversity.
- Nutritious OR affordable.
Nibbles: Fox burials, Myammar genebank, Wild rice, Community genebanks, Breeding cowpeas & EAH bananas, Doherty pics, Pulque ecotourism, Tree diversity maps, Horizontal genes, Polish hop breeding
- Did ancient Iberians domesticate foxes?
- Myanmar genebank staff receive training in Australia.
- Why genebanks are important. Though not so much for wild rice. No, not that wild rice, we’re talking Zizania here.
- Genebanks can be community-friendly.
- Improving cowpea and banana. Need genebanks for that.
- Picturing genebanks.
- Drinking for conservation.
- Mapping tree diversity.
- Some grasses steal genes from neighbours.
- Polish hops for Polish beer.
Crowdsourcing variety evaluation data
Jacob van Etten has a new paper out which uses information on variety performance crowdsourced from farmers to support climate change adaptation. He’s been tweeting about it. A lot. Here’s a taste:
Yesterday I promised to write some tweets about our recent article in @PNASNews. A nerdy thread on technical details first! We used a cool model to analyze farmers' crop variety evaluation and test if seasonal climate could explain differences. https://t.co/4DD7eSVq1l pic.twitter.com/xF9MSCiJ4I
— @jacobvanetten@mastodon.online (Jacob van Etten) (@Jacobvanetten) February 20, 2019
The threads are unrolled here, here and here if you prefer to stay away from Twitter.
We’re hoping Jacob will answer any questions you might have on the paper right here on the blog in the near future. If you do have any questions, tweet them at him, or leave them here.
And let me take this opportunity of linking to this “field guide” to methods for making new crop diversity available to farmers which sort of sets Jacob’s paper in context.