- Assessing Sus scrofa diversity among continental United States, and Pacific islands populations using molecular markers from a gene banks collection. The feral pigs of the Pacific may be a nuisance, but they represent an interesting genetic melange.
- Identification of a mutant from Arachis veigae with enhanced seed oleic and very long-chain fatty acid content. Gotta love crop wild relatives.
- Coffee Farmers’ Motivations to Comply with Sustainability Standards. Show them the money.
- The Globalisation of Plant Variety Protection: Are Developing Countries Still Policy Takers? Depends on how you look at it.
- Grass to grain: Probabilistic modeling of agricultural conversion in the North American Great Plains. It’s still happening.
- Spatial priorities for agricultural development in the Brazilian Cerrado: may economy and conservation coexist? See above.
- Phytosanitary management of Citrus germplasm in France. Better safe than sorry.
- Genomics-based diversity analysis of Vanilla species using a Vanilla planifolia draft genome and Genotyping-By-Sequencing. And just like that, there’s a new germplasm collection on the block. And it’s all genotyped.
- Sources of Resistance for Two-spotted Spider Mite (Tetranychus urticae) in Scarlet (Solanum aethiopicum L.) and Gboma (S. macrocarpon L.) Eggplant Germplasms. They have glandular trichomes.
- First detection of Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. cubense tropical race 4 (TR4) on Cavendish banana in India. Be afraid.
- Wheat tandem kinases provide insights on disease‐resistance gene flow and host–parasite co‐evolution. The allele for resistance was left behind during domestication.
- Systematic review of use and interpretation of dietary diversity indicators in nutrition-sensitive agriculture literature. Needs more standardization.
- Whole-genome resequencing reveals Brassica napus origin and genetic loci involved in its improvement. Hybrid of the ancestor of European turnip and the common ancestor of kohlrabi, cauliflower, broccoli, and Chinese kale.
- Molecular characterization of Ecuadorian quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa Willd.) diversity: implications for conservation and breeding. 3 groups, but no geographic structure.
- Resilience, Stability, and Productivity of Alfalfa Cultivars in Rainfed Regions of North America. Difficult for a cultivar to be all three.
- Dioscorea dumetorum (Kunth) Pax, a neglected and underutilized yam species in Benin: folk classification and post-harvest conservation. Needs work before it’s too late.
Nibbles: Neolithic, Agroforestry, California dreaming, Not that pawpaw, Droning about salinity, Rocket science
- Beer before bread? Sure, why not.
- Melia is a big hit in Kenya. Must tell the mother-in-law.
- California goes back to the acorn.
- When it’s finished with that, it could try the stuff in this old orchard.
- Unfortunately no pawpaw there. Yet.
- No need to stress out about salinity, California.
- Rucola doesn’t need California.
Nibbles: Grapefruit breeding, Parent navel orange, Meyer lemon, USDA fruit collection, USDA art, Crop diversification, Kiwi genebank, Apple genealogy, Saffron
- Grapefruit has hit bottom, grapefruit breeder says.
- Here’s a solution: a fence.
- What would Frank Meyer say about any of the above?
- Or Todd Kennedy for that matter.
- Botanical art at USDA. Beautiful. And probably a grapefruit in there.
- Gear up for the European Conference on Crop Diversification, 18-21 September 2019 in Budapest, Hungary. Will grapefruit be on the menu?
- Never mind about grapefruit, get a load of this kiwi fruit genebank.
- Nice diagram of apple genealogy. Grapefruit next?
- I bet saffron goes well with grapefruit. Yeah, forced, I know. Sue me.
Brainfood: African rice domestication, Ancient aliens, Durum landraces, Horticultural landraces, Breeding double, Pollinator research, Sacred forests, Traditional Hawaiian ag, Conserving tomatoes, Mapping impacts, Rewilding, Economic growth, Aquaculture impacts, Phenotyping colours
- The complex geography of domestication of the African rice Oryza glaberrima. Domesticated in multiple places, and the formerly putative ancestor population unlikely to be so.
- Prehistoric cereal foods of southeastern Europe: An archaeobotanical exploration. Including Panicum millet as far back as the Bronze Age, interestingly.
- Genetic diversity in Ethiopian Durum Wheat (Triticum turgidum var durum) inferred from phenotypic variations. Some landraces are better than some improved varieties, sometimes, somewhere.
- Editorial: Rediscovering Local Landraces: Shaping Horticulture for the Future. See above.
- Enhancing the rate of genetic gain in public-sector plant breeding programs: lessons from the breeder’s equation. What do they have to say about the genetic diversity term, I hear you ask? “For many species, the primary value of exotic genetic variation is the identification and deployment of rare alleles with large effects that can be introduced into elite breeding programs via a thoughtful implementation of marker-assisted selection…”
- The many‐faced Janus of plant breeding. It’s more than just genetics.
- The need for coordinated transdisciplinary research infrastructures for pollinator conservation and crop pollination resilience. Mine historical data and mobilize the citizenry.
- Human disturbance impacts the integrity of sacred church forests, Ethiopia. Even the small forests are important.
- The potential of indigenous agricultural food production under climate change in Hawaiʻi. They could have fed today’s population, and could still do so.
- Managing plant genetic resources using low and ultra-low temperature storage: a case study of tomato. Nothing is perfect.
- A spatial framework for ex-ante impact assessment of agricultural technologies. I do love a map, but I have to wonder if you can have too much of a good thing.
- Why we should let rewilding be wild and biodiverse. Well, why not?
- Increasing impacts of land use on biodiversity and carbon sequestration driven by population and economic growth. The 2008 financial crisis was good for biodiversity.
- Rapid growth in greenhouse gas emissions from the adoption of industrial-scale aquaculture. Crab ponds are worse than paddy fields for greenhouse gas emissions.
- ColourQuant: a high-throughput technique to extract and quantify colour phenotypes from plant images. Remind me to tell you my story about characterizing the colours of a taro collection in Vanuatu.
- Phenotypic analysis of leaf colours from the USDA, ARS sweetpotato (Ipomoea batatas) germplasm collection. Never mind, this story is better.
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?