GIS – Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

June 11, 2025June 11, 2025

Modified ecosystems and the conservation of crop diversity

A new global assessment of the state of terrestrial ecosystems has just been published, focusing on the extent of human modification due to “industrial pressures based on agriculture, forestry, transportation, mining, energy production, electrical infrastructure, dams, pollution and human accessibility.” ¹

As is my wont, I tried to find a form of the data that I could shoehorn into Google Earth, but I failed. Fortunately GIS guru Kai Sonder of CIMMYT was able to snip out a kml file of overall human transformation as of 2020 covering Kenya — don’t ask me how. But thanks, Kai. I put on top of it genebank accessions from Kenya classified as wild or weedy in Genesys.

I don’t know quite what to make of this. The wild populations seem to have been mainly collected in areas that in 2020 were very highly affected by human activity. But is that good or bad?

It could be good — in a sense — if the high degree of human transformation means that the original populations are not there any more. ² Phew, good thing they were collected! On the other hand, it could be bad if the concentration on easily accessible and modified areas means that the genetic diversity currently being conserved is not representative of what’s out there.

What do you think?

But of course what I really want is a version of this which focuses on agricultural areas and is updated in real time. Yes, a perennial favourite here: a real early warning system for erosion of crop diversity.

May 19, 2025May 15, 2025

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.

March 5, 2025March 6, 2025

What makes a good coffee… map?

Thanks to Christian Bunn for throwing some shade on the work underlying the map of putative changes in coffee suitability that I so blithely shared yesterday. Maps can be both pretty and also the result of suspect methodology, I guess.

February 3, 2025February 4, 2025

Brainfood: Maroon rice, Dutch aroids, Sicilian saffron, Inca agriculture, Native American agriculture, Mexican peppers, Afro-Mexican agriculture, Sahelian landraces, Small-scale fisheries, Coconut remote sensing

The Mystery of Black Rice: Food, Medicinal, and Spiritual Uses of Oryza glaberrima by Maroon Communities in Suriname and French Guiana. There’s a rich oral history of African rice in Maroon communities, but that doesn’t mean either the traditional knowledge or diversity of the crop is safe.
The Invisible Tropical Tuber Crop: Edible Aroids (Araceae) Sold as “Tajer” in the Netherlands. Another example of traditional knowledge on crops surviving far from their home.
Rethinking Pliny’s “Sicilian Crocus”: Ecophysiology, Environment, and Classical Texts. There might have been two distinct saffron species in ancient Sicily. Another way of recovering traditional knowledge is by reading ancient texts.
Trees, terraces and llamas: Resilient watershed management and sustainable agriculture the Inca way. The sedimentary record can be used to recover traditional knowledge too. No word on what ancient text have to say, but I’m sure it’s something.
Yield, growth, and labor demands of growing maize, beans, and squash in monoculture versus the Three Sisters. Sometimes traditional knowledge can use a helping hand from scientists. And vice versa.
Interdisciplinary insights into the cultural and chronological context of chili pepper (Capsicum annuum var. annuum L.) domestication in Mexico. About the only thing that’s missing here is traditional knowledge.
Afro-Indigenous harvests: Cultivating participatory agroecologies in Guerrero, Mexico.
Makes one wish these authors had been involved in the pepper study above.
Tradeoffs between the use of improved varieties and agrobiodiversity conservation in the Sahel. The effect of improved varieties on local landraces (and presumably associated traditional knowledge) is different for pearl millet and groundnut, and for Mali and Niger.
Illuminating the multidimensional contributions of small-scale fisheries. I’m sure lots of traditional knowledge is involved.
Satellite imagery reveals widespread coconut plantations on Pacific atolls. They could have just asked the small-scale fisherfolk, but ok.

September 25, 2024September 26, 2024

Nibbles: CWR double, Banana threats, Banana collecting, Rice breeding, Cassava breeding, SADC livestock genebank, Community seedbank, Sunflower mapping, Restoration

Why we need crop wild relatives.
No, really, we need crop wild relatives.
The banana is in trouble.
Which is why we need to conserve banana wild relatives and landraces.
Lots of wild relatives are conserved in the IRRI genebank mentioned in this Guardian article on breeding low glycemic index and high protein rice. Some of them may even have been used in this work. May look that up one day.
I doubt that IITA used wild relatives in breeding these high quality cassava varieties, but there’s always a first time, and there may even be some in its genebank. I should probably look but I don’t have time for this rabbit hole today.
And livestock get conserved in genebanks too, though not as much as crops. I’m really not sure how many livestock wild relatives are in the world’s genebanks, but my guess is not many.
Farmers conserve crop (and livestock) diversity too, of course. And sometimes even their wild relatives.
It’s amazing what can be done from space to figure out what farmers are growing. This is an example of sunflower in Ukraine, but one day we’ll even be able to locate crop wild relatives, I’m sure.
To finish off, a reminder that we need conserved seed of wild species for more than just breeding: restoration too.