Genetic erosion

May 26, 2013May 25, 2013

Getting past that 75%

China has lost 90% of the wheat varieties it had 60 years ago. The US has lost over 90% of the fruit tree and vegetable varieties it had at the start of the 20th century. Mexico has lost 80% of its corn varieties, India 90% of its rice varieties. In Spain, the number of melon varieties has gone down from nearly 400 in the early 1970s to a dozen.

What, not 75%? Anyway, too bad there are no references, but the Indian figure may come from the sources we discussed a while back. And of course “lost” is too dramatic. Some varieties may no longer be grown by farmers, but could still be in genebanks. But it is good to see a trope that’s well past its sell-by date being avoided for once.

May 13, 2013April 23, 2013

Brainfood: Forest restoration, Vegetable diversity, Intensification costs, Community forests, Baja oases, Nigerian foods, European wetlands, Landscape diversity & resilience, European conservation prioritization

Can Ficus Sp. Forests Be Restored Through Vegetative Propagation? Yes. But with the reduced genetic diversity and all, for how long?
A qualitative assessment of diversity and factors leading to genetic erosion of vegetables: a case study of Varamin (Iran). Species richness only, settle down. But, pace the title, quantitative.
Agricultural intensification escalates future conservation costs. Because of higher land rents. Just can’t win.
Common property protected areas: Community control in forest conservation. They can work.
Baja California peninsula oases: An agro-biodiversity of isolation and integration. Both too much and too little isolation are bad.
Cultivated, caught, and collected: defining culturally appropriate foods in Tallé, Niger. …and integrating them into development.
Wetlands in Europe: Perspectives for restoration of a lost paradise. Down to 20% and counting. Someone should count the crop wild relatives in them.
Economic Resilience and Land use: The Cocoa Crisis in the Rio Cachoeira Catchment, Brazil. Diverse land use means more resilience.
Priorities for biodiversity monitoring in Europe: A review of supranational policies and a novel scheme for integrative prioritization. Yeah, but doesn’t integrate crop wild relatives, does it?

April 8, 2013April 8, 2013

Brainfood: Moroccan almonds, MAS in potato, Mexican maize market, History of agronomy, Malian querns, Hani terraces, Conservation modelling, Wild Cucumis, Pathogens and CC

Moroccan almond is a distinct gene pool as revealed by SSR. Ok, now what?
Molecular markers for late blight resistance breeding of potato: an update. Ok, now what?
Reconstructing the Maize Market in Rural Mexico. Not so free after all.
Why agronomy in the developing world has become contentious. Neoliberalism, participation and environmentalism. The answer? Political agronomy.
Millet and sauce: The uses and functions of querns among the Minyanka (Mali). Form depends on more than just function.
Landscape pattern and sustainability of a 1300-year-old agricultural landscape in subtropical mountain areas, Southwestern China. If it ain’t broke, why fix it?
Mathematical optimization ideas for biodiversity conservation. Fancy math works sometimes but not always. Wonder if it would work on the Hani terraces above. Or on Mexican maize for that matter.
Mitochondrial genome is paternally inherited in Cucumis allotetraploid (C. × hytivus) derived by interspecific hybridization. Not the chlororoplast genome though. Weird. But now what?
Migrate or evolve: options for plant pathogens under climate change. Or, indeed, both. But we need better models, and a better handle on what human interventions can do. Interestingly, pathogen diversity may well increase in some places.

March 12, 2013March 12, 2013

Nibbles: GRISP video, Savory management, Herbarium digitization, Fancy NASA map, Range photos, Fancy phenotyping, Ghana research, African food, Neotropical tree book, Epigenetics of nutrition, Liberian veg seed, Wheat belly, Germany & India

The future of rice science. It says here.
Is Holistic Management the SRI of livestock?
Another online botanical database to contend with. Eventually.
NASA maps poleward vegetation shift. I suspect the Progressive Cattleman will be onto that in a flash. See what I did there?
More fancy aerial science, this time at the service of phenotyping. And more of the same.
Ghana’s agricultural research system deconstructed. Would have been nice to mention the genebank.
African food, in Africa and America. And in audio.
Propagating tropical trees for fun and profit.
The epigenetics of maternal nutrition, courtesy of USDA.
Liberians showered in seeds.
Kim, are you listening? This one’s for you.
IPK reaches out to India.

March 11, 2013March 11, 2013

Brainfood: Flower microbiome, Salt screening, Sustainble fisheries, Pollinator interactions, Wild pollinators, Forest loss, Landraces, Fisheries collapse, Quinoa diversity, Potted plants, Wheat diversity, Goat diversity, Genomics of domestication

Unexpected Diversity during Community Succession in the Apple Flower Microbiome. Could be important in disease management.
Plant Tissue Culture: A Useful Measure for the Screening of Salt Tolerance in Plants. But lots of different ways to do it.
Fisheries: Does catch reflect abundance? Some. But probably not enough. Here’s the industry spin. And the NY Times does a number on it.
Plant-Pollinator Interactions over 120 Years: Loss of Species, Co-Occurrence and Function. Extinctions and phenological shifts have occurred, but the system has shown resilience. It is unlikely, however, to continue to do so.
Wild Pollinators Enhance Fruit Set of Crops Regardless of Honey Bee Abundance. Don’t you sometimes wish titles left something to the imagination? NPR breaks it down for ya, but doesn’t add much to the title.
Continental estimates of forest cover and forest cover changes in the dry ecosystems of Africa between 1990 and 2000. About 20 Mha of forest loss, not 34 Mha. Still too much, though. But how did FAO get it so wrong?
Robustness and Strategies of Adaptation among Farmer Varieties of African Rice (Oryza glaberrima) and Asian Rice (Oryza sativa) across West Africa. Local varieties can scale out. And should be used in breeding.
Genetic and life-history changes associated with fisheries-induced population collapse. Phenotypic changes during Eurasian perch Baltic Sea fisheries collapse could be evolution, but when you look at the genetics it looks more like immigration of unadapted interlopers. Which might be bad for recovery.
Variable activation of immune response by quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa Willd.) prolamins in celiac disease. Quinoa may be gluten-free, but it can still give you grief, and some varieties are far worse than others.
Social exchange and vegetative propagation: An untold story of British potted plants. It’s artificial selection, Jim, but not as we know it.
Wheat Cultivar Performance and Stability between No-Till and Conventional Tillage Systems in the Pacific Northwest of the United States. Tested 21 cultivars for performance under late-planted no-till system and — guess what? — performance varied.
Genetic diversity and structure in Asian native goat analyzed by newly developed SNP markers. They originated in W Asia, and then admixtured (admixed?) in the E to different extents. Yeah, I thought we knew that already too, but scientists gotta make a living.
A Bountiful Harvest: Genomic Insights into Crop Domestication Phenotypes. The mutations that underpinned domestication came in all kinds of shapes and sizes. Like this one in maize, for example.