- Genetic Resources of Cannabis sativa L. in the Collection of the Gene Bank at INF&MP in Poznan. I’d pay money to see this in the field at evaluation time.
- Specific median flour particle size distribution of Japanese common wheats; Comparison with Chinese common wheats. Japanese diversity is a small fraction of Chinese diversity. Also, can you really have semicolons in titles?
- Association and Validation of Yield-Favored Alleles in Chinese Cultivars of Common Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.). And among Chinese wheats, the modern cultivars are a small subset of the diversity in the mini core collection.
- Diversity among maize landraces in North West Himalayan region of India assessed by agro-morphological and quality traits. I like it when specific accessions are highlighted as being special in some way. But will breeders around the world have access to them?
- Genetic Diversity and Population Structure in Aromatic and Quality Rice (Oryza sativa L.) Landraces from North-Eastern India. More than just basmati. But will breeders around the world have access to them?
- African Indigenous Cattle: Unique Genetic Resources in a Rapidly Changing World. At least 150 breeds, many endangered, all important.
- Sustainable Sourcing of Global Agricultural Raw Materials: Assessing Gaps in Key Impact and Vulnerability Issues and Indicators. We don’t know the vulnerabilities well enough.
- Can the sustainable development goals reduce the burden of nutrition-related non-communicable diseases without truly addressing major food system reforms? No.
- Suitable Days for Plant Growth Disappear under Projected Climate Change: Potential Human and Biotic Vulnerability. Tropical areas are screwed.
- A versatile phenotyping system and analytics platform reveals diverse temporal responses to water availability in Setaria. Fancy equipment picks out differences among genotypes.
Nibbles: Pope, CGIAR, Agroecology, ABS, Food shortage, World flora, Nutella, Bees, GMOs, CC & wheat, CC & legumes, EU satellite, Seed saving, Wheat breeding, Strawberry breeding, Adopt-a-crop, Organic tea, Malagasy yams, Seed app, Ebola seeds, Sorghum spoons
And we’re back! While we were away…
- …the Pope pontificated on climate change and GMOs, among other things.
- And so did the CGIAR.
- Boffins in the UK suggested that agroecology might be important to sustainable intensification. No word on whether the CGIAR is listening.
- Bioversity asked for contributions on whether ABS can support farmers. No word on whether anyone is listening.
- And The Economist asked: who cares, anyway?
- Google said it would help botanists catalogue all plants.
- Nutella was bad, and then ok again.
- Bees were again found to be important to agriculture, but not all bees.
- The pros and cons of GMOs were trotted out again. And again.
- Climate change was blamed for smaller loaves of bread. Which as far as I can tell might not be a totally bad thing.
- And for the need to grow drought-resistant legumes.
- The EU launched a satellite to monitor crops.
- Meanwhile, people just got on with it, in their own, sometimes weird, way…
- …breeding wheat. Even organic wheat. Even perennial. Even in Scotland.
- …breeding strawberries. Even with wild relatives.
- …or just adopting the raw materials of breeding.
- Growing organic tea in China.
- Conserving yams in Madagascar.
- Trying to find the appropriate seeds to grow in Kenya.
- And giving probably inappropriate seeds to Ebola-hit farmers.
- Which they can now eat using sorghum spoons.
Brainfood: Eastern promise, Biodiversity databases, Pulse carotenoids, Castor oil breeding, Maya beans, NUS and water, Chinese Vitis
- An ethnobotanical perspective on traditional fermented plant foods and beverages in Eastern Europe. 116 taxa, with a preponderance of Rosaceae.
- Estimating species diversity and distribution in the era of Big Data: to what extent can we trust public databases? Trust, but verify.
- Genetic diversity of nutritionally important carotenoids in 94 pea and 121 chickpea accessions. There’s carotenoid diversity in the Canadian collections.
- Role of conventional and biotechnological approaches in genetic improvement of castor (Ricinus communis L.). We have the technology. What we don’t have is results.
- Phaseolus from Cerén—A Late Classic Maya Site. The wilds were also eaten.
- The Potential Role of Neglected and Underutilised Crop Species as Future Crops under Water Scarce Conditions in Sub-Saharan Africa. Some neglected species may be somewhat adapted to low water conditions, perhaps.
- The wild relatives of grape in China: Diversity, conservation gaps and impact of climate change. 15 of 39 species need help, especially as the range of many is expected to be reduced by climate change.
Brainfood: Indian germplasm, Fancy cores, African veggies, Aquaculture, Characterization, Nature and ag policies, European rewilding
- Indian plant germplasm on the global platter: an analysis. There’s a lot of it out there. But there could be more. And the total number of accessions in Genesys is mis-quoted by an order of magnitude. The message obviously resonates back home, though.
- Signal-processing tools for core-collection selection from genetic-resource collections. Fancy maths lets you combine data types to make better core collections.
- Impact of nutritional perceptions of traditional African vegetables on farm household production decisions: A case study of smallholders in Tanzania. People grow them because they think they’re nutritious.
- Can the Global Adoption of Genetically Improved Farmed Fish Increase Beyond 10%, and How? Through more public breeding, training and benefit-sharing. Well that sounds familiar.
- Phenotypic or Molecular Diversity Screening for Conservation of Genetic Resources? An Example from a Genebank Collection of the Temperate Forage Grass Timothy. Both.
- The alignment of agricultural and nature conservation policies in the European Union. It “remains a challenge.” Which means there isn’t any.
- Mapping opportunities and challenges for rewilding in Europe. Yeah, but see above.
Ground-truthing rice in Kazakhstan, from the air
We’re great fans here of featuring maps of the distribution of different crops around the world. You may have noticed that. And, perhaps inevitably, when we do, we more often than not succumb to the temptation of making some comment or other about the ecogeographic limits of said distribution. It’s rare, however, that we get to ground-truth our observations. So imagine my joy when the following tweet appeared a few days back:
Once were rice paddies on arid land close to Aral Sea boundaries: tremendous helicopter flight over region. @UNDPKAZ pic.twitter.com/AQtXQHlObc
— Helen Clark (@HelenClarkNZ) May 24, 2015
Because we had commented some years ago on rice cultivation in Kazakhstan, in particular how it seems to be hanging on just on the edge of the northern limit of the crop. Well, as the photo in the tweet suggests, maybe “hanging on” is too strong a phrase, though being at the northern limit of its range is perhaps not the main reason for that, at least around the Aral Sea. Although FAOStat records an overall decrease in area harvested since 1992, yields do seem to be holding up.
Incidentally, Genesys knows of almost 300 accessions from Kazakhstan, mainly, but not entirely, from VIR. I’m reliably informed material from Kazakhstan is among the most cold tolerant in the world, which you’d probably expect.