GIS – Page 77 – Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

November 5, 2013November 7, 2013

Nibbles: Soil testing kit, Sustainable farming, Coffee and climate change, BGI genebank, Bamboo genebank, Genebank management, India’s malnutrition, Phenotyping conference, CIP genebank video, CG impact, Feed the World

Luigi went on a three-week trip, and all he came back with was this:

A new soil testing kit? Really?
Ok, how about a SciDev Spotlight featurette on sustainable farming? No? Well, can I tempt you with the British Ecological Society on agroecology then?
Oh, I bet this thing on coffee and climate change will hit home.
I’m pretty sure news of yet another Chinese genebank (of sorts) won’t.
Pssst. Got room for a new bamboo genebank too?
They’ll need a genebank management system, won’t they? GRIN and bear it.
News too of hunger and malnutrition in India, by Indians, for … er …
Phenotyping conference, anyone? Anyone at all? Some EU breeders will no doubt be there. And some of them at least will find a new map of water risk useful in their work.
And to end with, Al Jazeera on the CIP potato genebank. You heard me.
As you were, there’s the CGIAR Knowledge Day too, all about delivery and impact. I wonder if the genebanks will feature…
Not so fast, there’s also a live webcast of the conference Feeding the World without Consuming the Planet that awaits you.

October 2, 2013October 2, 2013

Nibbles: Gardeners meet, Aussie wheat breeding, Sunflower Man, Crop phenology, AEGIS on rye, AVRDC birthday, Long tail, CWR talks

5th Global Botanic Gardens Congress coming up in Dunedin, New Zealand. Isn’t that somewhere near the Shire? And one garden’s engagement with agricultural biodiversity.
“It’s 2050, and Australia’s bounteous wheat harvest has been saved.” You see, as a total amateur at this lark, I’d have started with that.
Loren Rieseberg, interviewed.
HarvestChoice using fancy remote sensing imagery to improve crop calendars, give themselves excuse to quote Byrds classic.
European rye collection a little closer to reality.
WorldVeg turns 40.
Bellon and Ntandou-Bouzitou explore the tail. Talk about local innovation…
Old friends talk about crop wild relatives.

September 23, 2013September 5, 2013

Brainfood: Adaptation priorities, Sorghum genomics, Rice seed storage, Barley DNA, Nutrition breeding, Variety adoption, Croatian wine, Chinese eggplants, Finger millet breeding, Fruit & veg

Global Climate Change Adaptation Priorities for Biodiversity and Food Security. Changes in crop suitability + changes in suitability for restricted-range birds = 10 priority areas.
Whole-genome sequencing reveals untapped genetic potential in Africa’s indigenous cereal crop sorghum. Two domestication events. At least.
Association analysis of seed longevity in rice under conventional and high-temperature germination conditions. 10 markers on 5 chromosomes explain 10% of the variation in seed longevity. Fascinating, but one wonders if the game is worth the candle.
Analysis of DNA polymorphism in ancient barley herbarium material: Validation of the KASP SNP genotyping platform. It’s a brave new world we live in.
DNA evidence for multiple introductions of barley into Europe following dispersed domestications in Western Asia. European Neolithic barley falls into 3 distinct groups which originated in different places in the Near East and entered Europe via different routes at different times. And they didn’t even look at herbarium material.
Plant breeding for nutrition-sensitive agriculture: an appraisal of developments in plant breeding. Pick your target, bring in complementary expertise, and don’t rely on the commercial sector.
Impact of Improved Seeds on Small Farmers Productivity, Income and Livelihood in Umruwaba Locality of North Kordofan, Sudan. Dismal scientists tell farmers to adopt improved peanuts based on bunch of clever maths. What could possibly go wrong?
Classification of Croatian wine varieties using multivariate analysis of data obtained by high resolution ICP-MS analysis. 75 of them!
Analysis of genetic diversity and structure of eggplant populations (Solanum melongena L.) in China using simple sequence repeat markers. 92 accessions, 7 geographic ares, 4 clades. As ever, “(t)he results will be useful for eggplant germplasm management and will lead to more efficient use of germplasm in eggplant breeding.” Riiiiiight.
Heritability, variance components and genetic advance of some yield and yield related traits in Ethiopian collections of finger millet (Eleusine coracana (L.) Gaertn.) genotypes. Some simple selection could improve yields.
Feasibility of Using a Community-Supported Agriculture Program to Improve Fruit and Vegetable Inventories and Consumption in an Underresourced Urban Community. In smallish randomized controlled trial, 5 educational sessions and a box of fresh produce for 16 weeks results in more diverse foods in the house, and maybe even more fruit and veg consumption, compared to households which got nothing. Which is good, but the comparison doesn’t seem fair, somehow.

September 16, 2013September 9, 2016

Brainfood: Identifying GMOs, European beans, Palm distribution, Croatian cattle, Beta biodiversity, Apple pollination, Chinese foxtail millet, New Brassica, Pennisetum & latitude, Egusi oil

Next-Generation Sequencing as a Tool for Detailed Molecular Characterisation of Genomic Insertions and Flanking Regions in Genetically Modified Plants: a Pilot Study Using a Rice Event Unauthorised in the EU. A rice event? They mean GMOs.
Genetic Diversity and Dissemination Pathways of Common Bean in Central Europe. Slovenia is mainly Andean, Austria a mixture of Andean and Mesoamerican.
Spatial distribution and environmental preferences of 10 economically important forest palms in western South America. It’s the water, stupid.
Genetic variability of microsatellites in autochthonous Podolian cattle breeds in Croatia. Istrian cattle and Slavonian Syrmian Podolians are similar, but not identical. I dunno, I just hope someone is keeping track of all this stuff.
Biodiversity Assessment of Sugar Beet Species and Its Wild Relatives: Linking Ecological Data with New Genetic Approaches. Where to find them, and how to use them. EcoTILLING is the way to go, apparently.
Biodiversity ensures plant–pollinator phenological synchrony against climate change. The more pollinators, the better.
Molecular diversity and population structure of Chinese green foxtail [Setaria viridis (L.) Beauv.] revealed by microsatellite analysis. Domesticated has geographical structure, wild does not. Origin in N China.
A new species of Brassica sect. Brassica (Brassicaceae) from Sicily. It never ends.
Latitudinal patterns of diversity in the world collection of pearl millet landraces at the ICRISAT genebank. Aim for 15°–20°.
Genetic Mapping of Seed Traits Correlated with Seed Oil Percentage in Watermelon. Egusi, to be precise. Aim for bigger seeds.

September 12, 2013September 12, 2013

Botanic gardens conserve crop diversity too

We forget sometimes, in our cosy little crop genebank world, that botanic gardens do ex situ conservation of agricultural biodiversity too. ¹ Witness the Royal Botanic Gardens Endinburgh and the Really Wild Vegetable Project. I only know about it because they tweeted on it earlier today, and the tweet caught my eye because it mentioned wild cabbage, and had a nice picture too. It turns out, however, that the particular population of wild Brassica oleracea oleracea involved is not in the national UK inventory of crop genetic resources as known by Eurisco, and thus Genesys, which basically just sucks up Eurisco data. ²

@RBGE_Science @BrianFLloyd Map of wild B oleracea oleracea accessions at @WarwickGRU based on Eurisco/Genesys pic.twitter.com/BuADxfcHjF

— AgroBioDiverse (@AgroBioDiverse) September 12, 2013

That only includes material from the Warwick Genetic Resources Unit, which happens to be mainly from the southern part of the UK. So the material mentioned in the Edinburgh tweet, which comes from Fife in Scotland, is likely to add significant diversity to the “national” collection at Warwick. Scope for some closer collaboration between these two institutes? Well, maybe it’s already there and I haven’t caught it. Do let me know if I’m being unfair.