- Tritodendrum hits the market.
- DS Athwal would have approved. RIP.
- Medieval bakers too, I bet.
- Want some cherry tomatoes on your bread? No? Try these then.
- Lots of crop wild relatives among newly discovered plants. See (some of) them on the new State of the World’s Plants report from Kew. And no, Kew, none of them are “miserable.”
- Early farmers unintentionally produced vegetables with larger seeds simply by cultivating them. And cereals too.
- Head of IUCN Red Data List Unit in impassioned plea for IUCN Red Data List process.
- What is taro good for? I’m glad you asked.
- I missed International Hummus Day? How could this happen?
- Textilia Linnaeana! What do you mean I’ve just had my birthday?
- Lowering the glycemic index of rice for the Chinese market.
- Fighting for avocados. Literally.
Brainfood: Canola model, Saline dates, High rice, Perennial wheat, European cowpea, Mesoamerican oil palm, Seed viability, Citrus identity, Poor cassava, Horse domestication, Wild tomatoes, Tea genome, Veggie breeding, Classical brassicas
- Development of a Statistical Crop Model to Explain the Relationship between Seed Yield and Phenotypic Diversity within the Brassica napus Genepool. Look for primary raceme area.
- Screening of Date Palm (Phoenix dactylifera L.) Cultivars for Salinity Tolerance. In Oman, Manoma and Umsila are particularly tolerant.
- Genetic structure and isolation by altitude in rice landraces of Yunnan, China revealed by nucleotide and microsatellite marker polymorphisms. Geneflow is horizontal, adaptation vertical.
- Breeding Perennial Grain Crops Based on Wheat. By adding a wild genome.
- European cowpea landraces for a more sustainable agriculture system and novel foods. 24 of them, no less. But you have to start somewhere, I suppose.
- Genetic diversity of Elaeis oleifera (HBK) Cortes populations using cross species SSRs: implication’s for germplasm utilization and conservation. From 532 palms in 19 populations to 34 individuals.
- Large-Scale Screening of Intact Tomato Seeds for Viability Using Near Infrared Reflectance Spectroscopy (NIRS). Good-bye germination tests?
- Genetic identification of ‘Limau Kacang’ (Citrus sp.), a local mandarin cultivated in West Sumatra by sequence-related amplified polymorphism (SRAP). It’s a ponkan.
- Cassava haplotype map highlights fixation of deleterious mutations during clonal propagation. Cassava is decaying genetically, but breeders are helping.
- Ancient genomic changes associated with domestication of the horse. The ancient DNA of immediate post-domestication horses suggests that the stallion bottleneck happened later.
- Genetic Diversity and Population Structure of Two Tomato Species from the Galapagos Islands. They mirror island formation.
- The Tea Tree Genome Provides Insights into Tea Flavor and Independent Evolution of Caffeine Biosynthesis. It evolved caffeine independently of coffee but not cacao. And flavour is down to a whole genome duplication.
- The contribution of international vegetable breeding to private seed companies in India. It can still make one, but for traits rather than varieties.
- Domestication, diversity and use of Brassica oleracea L., based on ancient Greek and Latin texts. Their use as a hangover cure has a long and august pedigree. No word on their raceme area.
Nibbles: Rice in Trinidad, Sweet potatoes in Ethiopia, EU crop diversity double, Sir Peter on the ginkgo, Forages, Brazilian peanuts, Seed moisture, Phenotyping double, Svalbard deposit, CATIE data, Herbarium double, Seed #resistance, Father of the apple, Agave congress
- African rice out of Africa, and out of the genebank.
- The other way around for sweet potato.
- Markers for micronutrients. And diversity for taste…
- The deep history of the ginkgo.
- Study plants to decrease the effects of burping.
- Brazil rationalizes peanut collections.
- Measuring moisture in seeds.
- Big data for better seeds. And not only in Iowa.
- NZ seeds in Svalbard.
- CATIE on Genesys.
- Oz biosecurity fail. Better stick to online.
- I want to be a seed rebel too.
- Maybe in Kazakhstan?
- Agave under the volcano under the cosh.
Brainfood: Cannabis roundup, Citrus genomes, Mapping Africa, Maize diversity, Qat diversity, Language diversity, Apple taste, Coconut diversity, Napier grass review, Rangeland management, Chinese goats, Arabica evaluation, Bangladeshi chickens, Seed endophytes
- Cannabis Domestication, Breeding History, Present-day Genetic Diversity, and Future Prospects. The weed is in trouble, man. Just one of the papers in a very special issue of Critical Reviews in Plant Sciences. And for a historical perspective…
- Genomic analyses of primitive, wild and cultivated citrus provide insights into asexual reproduction. Apomixis is down to a “miniature inverted-repeat transposable element insertion in the promoter region of CitRWP.”
- Automated cropland mapping of continental Africa using Google Earth Engine cloud computing. Croplands increased by 1 Mha/yr between 2003 and 2014.
- Genetic diversity and population structure of native maize populations in Latin America and the Caribbean. Three groups: Mexico + southern S. America, lowland Mesoamerica + Caribbean, Andes.
- Phylogeography of the wild and cultivated stimulant plant qat (Catha edulis, Celastraceae) in areas of historical cultivation. Centres of origin in Kenya and Ethiopia, with limited movement between the two, but some hybrids in N. Kenya; the Yemeni stuff came from Ethiopia.
- Process-based modelling shows how climate and demography shape language diversity. If you assume human groups split after reaching a certain population size, and rainfall limits population density, you can predict language diversity in Australia.
- Volatile Compound Profiles of Malus baccata and Malus prunifolia Wild Apple Fruit. Look at the esters.
- Genetic diversity, population structure and association analysis in coconut (Cocos nucifera L.) germplasm using SSR markers. I can’t see much new here. Please, coconut experts, tell me what I’m missing.
- Opportunities for Napier Grass (Pennisetum purpureum) Improvement Using Molecular Genetics. Could do better.
- Heterogeneity as the Basis for Rangeland Management. Gotta mix it up.
- Analysis of genetic diversity of Chinese dairy goats via microsatellite markers. The locally developed breeds are all derived from a single European breed.
- Variation in bean morphology and biochemical composition measured in different genetic groups of arabica coffee (Coffea arabica L.). You can’t use morphology to predict taste.
- Breeding for the improvement of indigenous chickens of Bangladesh: evaluation of performance of first generation of indigenous chicken. I don’t understand this much, but I liked the names of the genotypes: Naked Neck, Hilly and Non-descript Desi.
- Persistence of endophytic fungi in cultivars of Lolium perenne grown from seeds stored for 22 years. It’s a record!
Assyria in Gatersleben
I’m not sure if I said here that I visited IPK, the German national genebank, a few weeks ago. I did on Instagram.
Great facilities, great people, great work: but, though bigger and better resourced than average, in most ways like many other genebanks around the world. Except, that is, for the Assyrian relief in the entrance hall.
Well, the plaster cast of the Assyrian relief anyway. Nobody seemed to know where the original was, but there was general agreement that the copy was there because it depicted plant breeding. Of course, I took that as a challenge, and after a few minutes playing around with Google’s image search feature, I ran it to earth at the Met.
Each register of imagery shows a pair of supernatural figures flanking a stylized “sacred tree.” Further sacred trees can be seen to the left, and similar imagery continued around the room from which this slab came. The tree is thought to represent the prosperity and agricultural abundance of Assyria, and perhaps on one level the state itself. The supernatural figures are protective, and similar to those shown at larger scale throughout the palace. The gesture performed by the bird-headed figures with bucket and cone has been much discussed. One suggestion is that it symbolizes the fertilization of the land through the imagery of artificial date-palm fertilization, in which male date-spathes are used to fertilize female plants. The Assyrian term for the cone, however, seems to be “purifier,” and it is therefore likely that the symbolism has as much or more to do with magical protection.
So, maybe plant breeding, maybe not, but well worth having in the entrance lobby to a plant breeding institute containing a genebank.
But in locating the stela I ran across an article on Mesopotamian agriculture from the Oriental Institute that mentioned something called the Philadelphia Onion Archive.
No way to let that go either, naturally. It turns out that the Philadelphia Onion Archive really does consist of an archive of material on onions, kept in Philadelphia in the unwieldy shape of numerous clay tablets inscribed in cuneiform in the Akkadian language. Fortunately, there’s a translation online. Which means we know how many types of onions were grown during the reign of King Shar-Kali-Sharri, over 4,000 years ago.
And for how many places around the world can we say that even now?