- Diversification, Yield and a New Agricultural Revolution: Problems and Prospects. It’s not about the yield.
- Spatiotemporal Patterns of Field Crop Diversity in the United States, 1870–2012. It peaked in 1960. Like Elvis.
- Resistance and resilience to changing climate of Tuscany and Valpolicella wine grape growing regions in Italy. Should they ever decide to move those grapes, now they know where to.
- Conservation and Valorization of Heritage Ethnographic Textiles. Like Neolithic beer, only with textiles. Hemp for IPK and VIR genebanks used to conserve and restore old Romanian shirts etc. hed by the National Museum of the Romanian Peasant.
Brainfood: Mate diversity, Species recovery, CC & food, Microbial collections, Chickpea roots, African flora, Bitter gourd diversity, Wild yeast, Cryo double
- Genetic and phytochemical analysis to evaluate the diversity and relationships of mate (Ilex paraguariensis A. St.-Hil.) elite genetic resources in a germplasm collection. Some have low caffeine, which makes them especially useless.
- Genetic factors in threatened species recovery plans on three continents. Are ignored more often than you’d think.
- Climate Change and Food Systems Research: Current Trends and Future Directions. Current research on the effects of climate change on food systems doesn’t pay enough attention to the fact that food production is indeed a system, varies regionally and depends on political structures.
- World data centre for microorganisms: an information infrastructure to explore and utilize preserved microbial strains worldwide. All you need to know about 708 culture collections from 72 countries and >368,000 strains on one website.
- Characterising root trait variability in chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) germplasm. Core collection of 270 reveals 3 main groups based on root architecture in hydroponics.
- RAINBIO: a mega-database of tropical African vascular plants distributions. Who will fillet out the CWR species?
- Genetic Variability for Yield and Nutritional Quality in Yam Bean (Pachyrhizus sp.). Can’t access the high dry matter material? No problem.
- Diversity Among a Wide Asian Collection of Bitter Gourd Landraces and their Genetic Relationships with Commercial Hybrid Cultivars. 114 accessions fall into 5 geographic groups based on SSRs. Commercial cultivars are all very similar.
- Yeast biodiversity from Vitis vinifera L., subsp. sylvestris (Gmelin) Hegi to face up the oenological consequences of climate change. Yeasts from wild grapes will save our wine. Look, I’ll take anything.
- The Potato Cryobank at the International Potato Center (CIP): A Model for Long Term Conservation of Clonal Plant Genetic Resources Collections of the Future. 70% of over 1000 accessions are considered successfully cryoconserved.
- Probabilistic viability calculations for cryopreserving vegetatively propagated collections in genebanks. Were these used in the above?
Brainfood: Truffle diversity, Pig diversity, SDMs
- How the truffle got its mate: insights from genetic structure in spontaneous and planted Mediterranean populations of Tuber melanosporum. More outbreeding in plantations, but strong structure still.
- Comparing genetic diversity of pig populations on the US mainland, Pacific Islands and China: Y chromosome evaluation. 16 breeds, 5 haplotypes, 10 breeds with only 1.
- What we use is not what we know: environmental predictors in plant distribution models. Edaphic factors are being ignored. ‘Twas ever thus.
Nibbles: Yeast phylogeny, Jurassic beer, Welsh drink, Italian fruits, Vinegar museum, Lethal yellowing, Wilderness loss
- Beer yeast was domesticated in the 1600s. Or maybe not.
- I see that and raise you 65 million years.
- If you don’t like beer, try Lurvill’s Delight, but it’s only about 100 years old, I warn you.
- Preserving ancient fruits in an Italian orchard.
- And how many different types of vinegar do you think the vinegar museum has?
- The Caribbean coconut is under attack.
- We’ve been such bastards to the environment.
Nibbles: Turkish seeds, KBA, Wild ginger, ICARDA, AGRA, Weird agrobiodiversity, Coffee journey
- Ancient seeds put on life support. Not holding my breath.
- Key Biodiversity Areas to be mapped. Agrobiodiversity also? Not holding my breath.
- Botany on reality TV? Not holding my breath. No, wait…
- More on the ICARDA story. Holding my breath.
- Kofi Annan on that “uniquely African Green Revolution.” Not holding my breath, but here’s the latest report on how AGRA is doing. Oh, and there’s more on Africa, from IFPRI this time.
- A caterpillar on the Silk Road. Now, that I’d like to see.
- But not before coffee.