- Remote sensing of cytotype and its consequences for canopy damage in quaking aspen. You can tell diploid from triploid trees from space.
- Future global conflict risk hotspots between biodiversity conservation and food security: 10 countries and 7 Biodiversity Hotspots. Fancy maths tells us biodiversity and agriculture are most in conflict in DRC, Sierra Leone, Malawi, Togo, Zambia, Angola, Guinea, Nigeria, Laos, and Cambodia.
- Allele mining in diverse accessions of tropical grasses to improve forage quality and reduce environmental impact. A draft reference genome from a single species tells us about 7 potentially useful alleles among 104 clearly very well chosen accessions of Urochloa spp and Megathyrsus maximus.
- Research Status of Forage Seed Industry in China. I wonder how many of the above alleles can be found in the Chinese forage collection. Might be easier to eventually find out if the website supposedly serving up the national forage germplasm resource management system actually worked.
- Safe conservation and utilization of peanut germplasm resources in the Oil Crops Middle-term Genebank of China. We are even told about some individual interesting accessions, though not how to get hold of them.
- The impact of crop diversification, tillage and fertilization type on soil total microbial, fungal and bacterial abundance: A worldwide meta-analysis of agricultural sites. Meta-analysis tells us that use of organic fertilisers and reduced tillage are associated with more microbes, fungi and bacteria in the soil.
- Detecting the linkage between arable land use and poverty using machine learning methods at global perspective. Machines tells us that higher crop yields and more fertilisers are associated with lower poverty levels. Non-machines are shocked. No word on soil microbial abundance.
- The 10 Elements of Agroecology: enabling transitions towards sustainable agriculture and food systems through visual narratives. Well, these 10 are not only the elements of agroecology, so they could tell us about other messaging too.
- Regional Patterns of Late Medieval and Early Modern European Building Activity Revealed by Felling Dates. Tree rings in old buildings tells us more felling where and when grain prices were low and mining activity high. No machines involed.
- Genetic diversity analysis and characterization of Ugandan sorghum. A tropical genebank collection can tell us about temperate-adapted germplasm, if we know how to ask.
- Discovery and characterization of sweetpotato’s closest tetraploid relative. Meet Ipomoea aequatoriensis T. Wells & P. Muñoz sp. nov. from, well, Ecuador.
- Metabolomic selection for enhanced fruit flavor. Another machine tells us how to pick tasty tomatoes and blueberries from chemical profiles. No word on when it will be able to describe new species.
Nibbles: Agroforestry app, Virtual grazing areas, Tunisian herbalists, India agrobiodiversity
- An app to help farmers choose agroforestry species in India.
- An app to keep cows on the straight and narrow in Epping Forest.
- The herbalists of Tunis could maybe do with an app.
- There’s no app to stop agrobiodiversity loss. Even in India.
Nibbles: Food flows, Olive collection, Sweet potato breeding, Global Bean Project, Open Source Plant Breeding, Saladino book
- You can explore food flows among US counties. If you have lots of time.
- Studying a huge olive collection. To fight climate change.
- Improving sweet potatoes in Cambodia. Somehow.
- There’s a meeting of the Global Bean Project. Tomorrow.
- Speaking of sweet potatoes and crowd-sourced breeding (well, sort of). The Open Source Plant Breeding Forum.
- Apparently there’s nobody talking about the food extinction crisis. Nobody.
Brainfood: Japan support, American food choice, Wild potato x4, Phenotype change, Minor Vigna, Tilapia diversity, Ethiopian chicken diversity, Goat diversity, Tree seeds, Blockchain
- Three Decades of Safeguarding and Promoting Use of Agricultural Biodiversity: Changing Global Perspectives, Paradigm Shifts and Implications. The priorities of Bioversity and the Japanese government have changed over time, but miraculously stayed reasonably well aligned.
- A focused ethnographic study on the role of health and sustainability in food choice decisions. Americans pick food items mainly on the basis of price, health, taste, and convenience. Environmental impact, not so much, alas.
- Wild relatives of potato may bolster its adaptation to new niches under future climate scenarios. Some wild potato species have unique climate adaptations that we’re going to need.
- Cold Hardiness Variation in Solanum jamesii and Solanum kurtzianum Tubers. Case in point.
- Assessment of Wild Solanum Species for Resistance to Phytophthora infestans (Mont.) de Bary in the Toluca Valley, Mexico. And not just climate adaptation.
- Screening South American potato landraces and potato wild relatives for novel sources of late blight resistance. Case in point.
- The pace of modern life, revisited. A big database on how the phenotypes of wild species like the above are changing, and why.
- Insights into the genetic diversity of an underutilized Indian legume, Vigna stipulacea (Lam.) Kuntz., using morphological traits and microsatellite markers. 94 accessions, 12 with promise for different traits, in 7 genetic groups. Let the really efficient breeding commence.
- Whole genome resequencing data enables a targeted SNP panel for conservation and aquaculture of Oreochromis cichlid fishes. The breeding has already commenced between different tilapias, but don’t worry, we can now tell species apart.
- A framework for defining livestock ecotypes based on ecological modelling and exploring genomic environmental adaptation: the example of Ethiopian village chicken. 25 populations, but only 12 ecotypes, based on 6 climate variables. Basically the same methodology as the wild potato paper above but applied to genetic groupings. Who will apply it to tilapias now, or indeed that “minor” Vigna?
- VarGoats project: a dataset of 1159 whole-genome sequences to dissect Capra hircus global diversity. Distinct African, Asian and European genetic groups. Well I never.
- Are Tree Seed Systems for Forest Landscape Restoration Fit for Purpose? An Analysis of Four Asian Countries. Take a wild guess. The key is apparently focusing less on planting lots of trees and more on making sure the resulting forests are resilient.
- Smart, Commodified and Encoded: Blockchain Technology for Environmental Sustainability and Nature Conservation. Not quite ready to help grow those resilient forests.
Brainfood: Genebanks, Covid, Sustainable intensification, Anthropocene, Biodiversity value, Cropland expansion, Better diet, Biodiversity indicators, Climate change impact, Soil fertility, Agroecology & GMOs
- Global assessment of the impacts of COVID-19 on food security. Resilience, but at a cost.
- Avenues for improving farming sustainability assessment with upgraded tools, sustainability framing and indicators. A review. How to measure an important aspect of the above-mentioned resilience.
- Envisaging an Effective Global Long-Term Agrobiodiversity Conservation System That Promotes and Facilitates Use. To effectively guarantee the resilience of farmers and the food system, genebank accessions for likely future use need to be distinguished dynamically from those for immediate use on the basis of the best available data, and then managed differently.
- Widespread homogenization of plant communities in the Anthropocene. Naturalization of phylogenetically diverse exotic plants from Australia, the Pacific and Europe is leading to a more homogeneous world flora. Much the same could be said of diets, come to think of it, except maybe for the geographic source of the plants, which is interesting in itself.
- Identifying science-policy consensus regions of high biodiversity value and institutional recognition. And less than a third of the bits of the Earth that everyone thinks are important in terms of biodiversity are protected, including from the above exotics.
- Global maps of cropland extent and change show accelerated cropland expansion in the twenty-first century. There was a 9% increase in cropland area in 2003-2019, mainly in Africa and South America, half of it replacing natural vegetation.
- Include biodiversity representation indicators in area-based conservation targets. Needed because of the above exotic invasives and cropland expansion, among other things.
- Climate impacts on global agriculture emerge earlier in new generation of climate and crop models. Those new cropland areas will soon be in trouble. Unless genebanks and plant breeding, I guess.
- Can agroecology and CRISPR mix? The politics of complementarity and moving toward technology sovereignty. Could that cropland grow gene-edited crops in an agroecological setting? Yes, but that will require recognizing that agroecology is not a setting.
- Plant biodiversity and the regeneration of soil fertility. Restoring biodiversity restores soil fertility too.
- Small targeted dietary changes can yield substantial gains for human health and the environment. Replace just 10% of meat calories with fruit and veggies for the win-win. Is this the answer to all of the above? Well, maybe, maybe not.