- Bambara Groundnut (Vigna subterranea [L.] Verdc.) Production, Utilisation and Genetic Improvement in Sub-Saharan Africa. Needs breeding for better yield and nutritional value, and there’s plenty of diversity to work with.
- A prion-like protein regulator of seed germination undergoes hydration-dependent phase separation. And variation may be linked to ecological adaptation, and so could be used in breeding for drought tolerance. Possibly even in Bambara groundnut?
- Future foods for risk-resilient diets. Yeah, microalgae, mycoprotein and mealworm, what could possibly go wrong? I almost prefer the prion.
- Hotspots of land-use change in global biodiversity hotspots. Agricultural expansion is the main threat in the Global South, urbanization in the North. Bring on the microalgae.
- Massive soybean expansion in South America since 2000 and implications for conservation. A lot of it happens on pastures, but not all, and those cows have to go somewhere.
- Remote sensing of biodiversity: what to measure and monitor from space to species? How the above was done. Still waiting for my landrace erosion early warning system.
- Priority micronutrient density in foods. Organs, small fish, dark green leafy vegetables, shellfish, beef, goat, eggs, milk, cheese, and canned fish with bones. What, no microalgae?
- Food insecurity related to agricultural practices and household characteristics in rural communities of northeast Madagascar. Diversification is needed. Have they thought of microalgae?
- Creation of aromatic maize by CRISPR/Cas. Because it’s there? Since you’re at it, why not aromatic microalgae?
- Genotyping and lipid profiling of 601 cultivated sunflower lines reveals novel genetic determinants of oil fatty acid content. Analysis of lots of Russian material identifies interesting genomic regions. Hold the microalgae.
- Study of Knowledge, Attitude, and Practice in Participants with Regular Intake of Lathyrus, But No Spastic Paraparesis. Neurolathyrism is not a problem even where grasspea is a major crop.
- Genetic diversity and GWAS of agronomic traits using an ICARDA lentil (Lens culinaris Medik.) Reference Plus collection. Who needs grasspea, though, eh, when you have lentils?
- Starch structure-property relations in Australian wild rices compared to domesticated rices. Good, and good for you. Keep your microalgae.
Brainfood: Genetic diversity, Germplasm exchange, Genomic selection, New varieties, Maya agriculture, AnGR, Diverse planted forests, Vermont seeds, Wine appellation, Roots & tubers, Late blight, Nordic barley landraces
- The long-standing significance of genetic diversity in conservation. I suppose it does need to be repeated.
- Germplasm exchange is critical to conservation of biodiversity and global food security. Yes, indeed it does look like it needs to be repeated.
- From gene banks to farmer’s fields: using genomic selection to identify donors for a breeding program in rice to close the yield gap on smallholder farms. A prime example of why it should not need to be repeated.
- Large potential for crop production adaptation depends on available future varieties. 39% of global cropland could require new crop varieties to avoid yield loss from climate change by the end of the century? You don’t say. Bears repeating.
- More than Maize, Bananas, and Coffee: The Inter– and Intraspecific Diversity of Edible Plants of the Huastec Mayan Landscape Mosaics in Mexico. Looks like we don’t need to repeat it to the Maya.
- Monitoring and Progress in the Implementation of the Global Plan of Action on Animal Genetic Resources. Significant progress, but correlated with per capita GDP. So some people are listening to the endless repetition; but not enough.
- For the sake of resilience and multifunctionality, let’s diversify planted forests! Yes, it needs to be repeated for forests too.
- Motivations for maintaining crop diversity: Evidence from Vermont’s seed systems. Yes, repeat by all means, but with variation.
- How big is the “lemons” problem? Historical evidence from French wines. Quality certification schemes can support the market value of products. And of course they can be good for genetic diversity too.
- Crop resistance and household resilience – The case of cassava and sweetpotato during super-typhoon Ompong in the Philippines. Root and tuber crops are good for household resilience in typhoon-affected areas. Not exactly genetic diversity, but still bears repeating.
- Global historic pandemics caused by the FAM-1 genotype of Phytophthora infestans on six continents. Why genetic diversity is necessary for root and tuber crops too. As if it needed repeating.
- Genetic Diversity in 19th Century Barley (Hordeum vulgare) Reflects Differing Agricultural Practices and Seed Trade in Jämtland, Sweden. What causes all that genetic diversity we’ve been repeating endlessly about.
Brainfood: Food groups, Fruit & nutrition, Cereal micronutrients, Sorghum mini core, Aquaculture, Perennial sunflower, Hybrid potato, Phenotyping, Spanish Neolithic
- GAIN Discussion Paper 9: Food group diversity and nutrient adequacy. Eat a diverse diet…
- Can Underutilized Tropical Fruits Meet the Nutritional Requirements of Rural Indonesia? …which includes fruits, of course.
- The nutritional quality of cereals varies geospatially in Ethiopia and Malawi. And cereals, though it depends where they’re growing.
- Variation for Photoperiod and Temperature Sensitivity in the Global Mini Core Collection of Sorghum. Less than 10% are sensitive to neither. And yes, there’s another paper on the nutrient quality of the same subset. Though not on how that varies geographically.
- Habitat value of bivalve shellfish and seaweed aquaculture for fish and invertebrates: Pathways, synthesis and next steps. Eat more bivalves and seaweed too, it can be good for the environment too.
- Measurements of lethal and nonlethal inbreeding depression inform the de novo domestication of Silphium integrifolium. Always good to have a new oil crop, especially a perennial one, but careful what you cross to get it, and how.
- Genome design of hybrid potato. Re-inventing the potato as a seed-propagated crop could be good for nutrition, sure, why not.
- High Throughput can produce better decisions than high accuracy when phenotyping plant populations. As you make better and more nutritious crops, keep in mind it may be better to phenotype more plants in more environments than obsess about accuracy and precision. What does that mean for mini-cores?
- Insight into the introduction of domestic cattle and the process of Neolithization to the Spanish region Galicia by genetic evidence. But is any of this worth the hassle? After all, the early domesticated cattle of Galicia are similar to modern breeds…
Brainfood: Food systems & biodiversity, Tree diversity, Cereal micronutrients, African crops in America, Coffee vulnerability, Coffee fungus, Wildrice, Wild coriander, Wild apple genebank, Laperrine’s olive, Maize landraces, Goat domestication, Honey bee cryo
- Biodiversity Towards Sustainable Food Systems: Four Arguments. For the record: food/nutrition security, climate change resilience, sustainable diets, resilience to zoonoses. I would have added something about culture.
- Biodiversity–productivity relationships are key to nature-based climate solutions. Greenhouse gas mitigation helps tree diversity helps productivity helps greenhouse gas mitigation.
- Genetic determinants of micronutrient traits in graminaceous crops to combat hidden hunger. Big crops can help little crops.
- Contributions of African Crops to American Culture and Beyond: The Slave Trade and Other Journeys of Resilient Peoples and Crops. Decolonizing American agriculture.
- Vulnerability of coffee (Coffea spp.) genetic resources in the United States. Americans have a cunning plan for an African crop.
- Historical genomics reveals the evolutionary mechanisms behind multiple outbreaks of the host-specific coffee wilt pathogen Fusarium xylarioides. Coffee Wilt Disease fungus got a boost from banana Panama Disease fungus. Got a plan for this?
- Improved Remote Sensing Methods to Detect Northern Wild Rice (Zizania palustris L.). They’re this close to putting in place an early warning system. Coffee next? But what about those micronutrients, eh?
- Wild coriander: an untapped genetic resource for future coriander breeding. Not only untapped, its very existence was in doubt. Detect this from space, Colin!
- Advanced genebank management of genetic resources of European wild apple, Malus sylvestris, using genome-wide SNP array data. The Dutch field collection can be managed as a single unit. Kind of a relief, probably. Coffee next?
- Contrasting Genetic Footprints among Saharan Olive Populations: Potential Causes and Conservation Implications. Looks like the wild Saharan olive cannot be managed as a single unit. Bet they can be monitored from space though.
- Growing maize landraces in industrialized countries: from the search for seeds to the emergence of new practices and values. Two contrasting approaches by farmers’ associations in France and Italy.
- Herded and hunted goat genomes from the dawn of domestication in the Zagros Mountains. Before goats were morphologically domesticated, they were managed and genetically domesticated. I wonder if coffee was the same.
- Europe’s First Gene Bank for Honey Bees. Really cold drone semen finds a home in Germany.
Brainfood: Agroecology, Bioinformatics, Brazilian cassava, Cypriot wine, Swiss poppies, Pollinators, Groundnut breeding, Sorghum pangenome, Crop origins, Sparing vs sharing, Language diversity, Watermelon origins
- Crop origins explain variation in global agricultural relevance. What explains which crops are most important globally? For seeds, an origin in seasonally dry regions. For root, leaf and herbaceous fruit crops, an origin in the aseasonal tropics. But if you account for all that, basically age.
- Linguistic diversity and conservation opportunities at UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Africa. There’s a correlation between linguistic and biological diversity. Has anyone done crop diversity and languages?
- Sparing or sharing land? Views from agricultural scientists. If you look at synergies between nature and nurture (as it were), and beyond crop yield, you realize it’s the wrong question.
- Can agroecology improve food security and nutrition? A review. Yes, in 78% of 55 cases. But will it scale? And does it need to? Anyway, at least it’s looking beyond yield.
- Global effects of land-use intensity on local pollinator biodiversity. Intensification is bad for pollinator biodiversity for most land uses, but cropland intensification is only bad in the tropics. Can’t help thinking this needs to be mashed up with the above.
- Crop breeding for a changing climate: integrating phenomics and genomics with bioinformatics. In particular, integrating the phenomics and genomics of landraces and wild relatives at the extremes of habitable ranges. Well, there’s a lot more to it than that, but this is what stuck with me.
- Comprehensive genotyping of a Brazilian cassava (Manihot esculenta Crantz) germplasm bank: insights into diversification and domestication. 54% duplicates out of 3354 clones, the remaining 1536 arranged in 5 ecoregional ancestral groups.
- A chromosome-level genome of a Kordofan melon illuminates the origin of domesticated watermelons. Not from southern Africa after all. Nice bit of work.
- Preliminary investigation of potent thiols in Cypriot wines made from indigenous grape varieties Xynisteri, Maratheftiko and Giannoudhi. Cypriot grapes are more drought tolerant than varieties grown in Australia, but produce the tastes Aussie wine drinkers really like.
- A morphometric approach to track opium poppy domestication. Fancy math says Swiss Neolithic farmers were involved in the domestication of the opium poppy. Enough to drive one to drink.
- Registration of GA-BatSten1 and GA-MagSten1, two induced allotetraploids derived from peanut wild relatives with superior resistance to leaf spots, rust, and root-knot nematode. Sequencing paying off.
- Extensive variation within the pan-genome of cultivated and wild sorghum. Sorghum next?