- Future flooding tolerant rice germplasm: Resilience afforded beyond Sub1A gene. You want to make rapid breeding progress? You need the “Transition from Trait to Environment” approach. As far as I can tell, this means that you fix your trait of interest in a pool of elite parents before using it in proper yield breeding.
- Prioritizing parents from global genebanks to breed climate-resilient crops. Yeah but how do you find your trait of interest in the first place. You start with passport and genotyping data from genebank collections of course.
- Cowpea (Vigna unguiculata L. Walp.) landraces in Mozambique and neighbouring Southern African countries harbour genetic loci with potential for climate adaptation. You see what I mean?
- Genetic diversity and population structure of Colombian sweet potato genotypes reveal possible adaptations to specific environmental conditions. Ok, now do you see what I mean?
- Genetic diversity analysis and duplicates identification of new sweetpotato accessions collected in China. Manage your duplicates though, right?
- The lesser yam Dioscorea esculenta (Lour.) Burkill: a neglected crop with high functional food potential. This doesn’t have decent collections, let alone duplicates.
- Molecular screening of wild and cultivated tomato germplasm reveals potential materials for multi-locus disease resistance breeding. Again, thank goodness for genebanks — plural.
- First report on trait segregation in F1 hybrids between the cultivated peanut (Arachis hypogaea L.) and the wild incompatible species A. glabrata Benth. I wonder if this could be used in tomato.
- A blueprint for tapping the wild relatives for crop improvement: A success story of CWR-derived rice varieties, Nông Dân 1 and Nông Dân 2. No need for embryo rescue here. No word on the need for submergence tolerance.
- Genetic diversity in in situ and ex situ collections of sorghum [Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench] landraces. Diversity is still out there, at least in India. Which is great. But how would you know without genebanks? And you need genebanks for breeders to use it.
- And to cap things off, a new occasional feature: A ChatGPT-generated one-sentence summary of the week’s Brainfood. “To breed crops for climate resilience and future food security, you need to systematically mine, manage, and mobilize the diversity stored in genebanks—especially landraces and wild relatives—and integrate it into elite breeding pipelines using smart, trait-targeted strategies.”
Brainfood: Balanced diets, Diverse diets, Diverse flavonoids, Micronutrients and GHGE, African traditional diets, Tef diversity, Intercropping, Sleeping crops, Cluster bean, Taste
- A framework for adequate nourishment: balancing nutrient density and food processing levels within the context of culturally and regionally appropriate diets. Some processing, but not too much. Some animal-source food, but not too much.
- Diversity of Plant-Based Food Consumption: A Systematic Scoping Review on Measurement Tools and Associated Health Outcomes. And make the non-animal-source food diverse.
- High diversity of dietary flavonoid intake is associated with a lower risk of all-cause mortality and major chronic diseases. Make the flavonoids diverse too, while you’re at it.
- Greenhouse gas emissions in relation to micronutrient intake and implications of energy intake: a comparative analysis of different modeling approaches. It’s unclear whether diets that deliver more (and more diverse?) micronutrient are worse for greenhouse gas emissions.
- Africa’s contribution to global sustainable and healthy diets: a scoping review. African traditional diets are pretty healthy. I’m betting their greenhouse gas emissions are low and all.
- Population genomics uncovers loci for trait improvement in the indigenous African cereal tef (Eragrostis tef). Which is not to say that traditional African crops could not be improved, healthwise.
- Hidden potential of cluster bean: an unexploited legume crop for food and nutritional security. Or other underused traditional crops, for that matter.
- Impacts of biodiversity-positive intercropping systems on food quality, safety and the consumer acceptance: A case study of intercropped wheat. What, the food needs to be intercropped too? Another tick for African diets.
- The sleeping crops of eastern North America: a new synthesis. Traditional eastern North American crops, production systems and diets probably tick a bunch of boxes too. Awake, Cinderellas!
- But does it taste good? A plea to consider the importance of flavor in managing plant genetic resources. None of the above matters, I suspect, if the stuff doesn’t taste good. I’m looking at you, teff and cluster bean.
Nibbles: Indian vault, Sundarban rice, Community seed banks, Fiji cassava, Georgia documentary, Kenya seed network, Nigeria mobilizes, Coffee prizes, Slow Food guardians, Peasant seed sovereignty, World Economic Forum seed pean, Seed sector shindig, Genesys acceleration
- Times of India says “India needs a new doomsday seed vault.” Why not just use the one already there in Svalbard?
- Meanwhile, women in the Sundarban are doing it for themselves.
- Maybe it’s community doomsday seed vaults that India needs?
- Fiji’s cassava is facing a doomsday of its own.
- Georgia — the country — is working on a documentary on crop diversity which will no doubt include their seed deposit in Svalbard.
- Kenya has a pretty good community genebanks video of its own.
- Nigeria is all over crop diversity. Not just once, but twice.
- Coffee prices going up? Can you imagine what will happen if we don’t conserve enough of its diversity?
- Want more examples of the coolness of crop diversity and its guardians? Slow Food has your back.
- La Via Campesina needs to encouragement either, where “peasant seeds” and their guardians are concerned.
- Even the World Economic Forum wants in on the act.
- And yet the seed sector seems…reluctant?
- Good job Genesys is getting faster, eh?
Brainfood: Complementarity, Temporality, Communality, Fonio trifecta, Atriplex domestication, Egyptian clover in India, Genebank information systems
- A significantly enhanced role for plant genetic resource centres in linking in situ and ex situ conservation to aid user germplasm access. On-farm conservation must result in use of the conserved diversity, and genebanks can help with that. Just another way of saying the two approaches are complementary?
- Looking back to look ahead: the temporal dimension of conservation seed bank collections. Those genebanks may need to do repeated sampling of the same population though.
- Landrace diversity and heritage of the indigenous millet crop fonio (Digitaria exilis): Socio-cultural and climatic drivers of change in the Fouta Djallon region of Guinea. Repeated sampling would defintely have helped.
- Community seedbanks in Europe: their role between ex situ and on-farm conservation. Repeated sampling is kind of what community seedbanks do, no?
- Impacts of climate change on fonio millet: seed germination and suitability modelling of an important indigenous West African crop. Community seedbanks may not be enough though.
- Phylogenetics, evolution and biogeography of four Digitaria food crop lineages across West Africa, India, and Europe. Maybe the wild relatives will help.
- Black Ash – a Forgotten Domestication Trait in Garden Orach (Atriplex hortensis L.). It’s amazing what people domesticated plants for in the past. And might in the future.
- Quality seed production scenario of Egyptian clover (Trifolium alexandrinum) in India: A 24-year retrospective analysis. But in the end, you have to get high quality certified seeds out, and that’s not always easy.
- The potential of seedbank digital information in plant conservation. Will definitely need a pretty good documentation system to keep all the above straight.
Brainfood: CC & crop diversity, Dietary Species Richness, CC & banana, European genebank representativeness, Effective Population Size, VarScout, Borlotti bean diversity, Oaxacan? Green Dent, Sorghum mucilage, Gut bacterial diversity
- Climate change threatens crop diversity at low latitudes. At low latitudes maybe about a third of the production of 30 major crops shifts outside their climatic niche under 2-3°C global warming, and potential food crop diversity declines on half of global cropland, but potential diversity increases elsewhere. So that’s all good then?
- Dietary species richness provides a comparable marker for better nutrition and health across contexts. Dietary species richness (DSR) can be used as a marker for the nutrition and health. If DSR is related to production diversity, I guess that could mean trouble at lower latitudes?
- Socio-economic factors constrain climate change adaptation in a tropical export crop. Actually the reduction in suitable area is 60% for banana. And there’s a decline in yield too. Unclear what that will do to DSR.
- Plant evolutionary history is largely underrepresented in European seed banks. Would be interesting to apply this specifically to crops. Or even just crop wild relatives.
- The Idiot’s Guide to Effective Population Size. Can this be usefully applied to crops? I’d like to see how banana comes out.
- Digital Revolution in Farmer Fields: VarScout Unveils Kenya’s Varietal Landscape – The Case of Potato. I’d like to see how banana comes out.
- Genetic Diversity and Distinctiveness of Common Beans (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) Between Landraces and Formal Cultivars Supporting Ex Situ Conservation Policy: The Borlotti Case Study in Northern Italy. It’s difficult, but not impossible, to distinguish — and maintain — landraces of Borlotti beans apart from obsolete and modern cultivars. I wonder if VarScout would help.
- Oaxacan Green Dent maize is not from Oaxaca. Watch out for landrace names.
- Mucilage produced by aerial roots hosts diazotrophs that provide nitrogen in Sorghum bicolor. Not just maize. And another aspect of diversity to have to worry about.
- Cryptic diversity of cellulose-degrading gut bacteria in industrialized humans. And another… What’s the interaction with DSR though?