- On-Farm Crop Diversity for Advancing Food Security and Nutrition. Lots of solid context, plus fun and unusual boxes on fe’i bananas, African greens and Vietnam seed clubs.
- Mainstreaming Barahnaja cultivation for food and nutritional security in the Himalayan region. Could be another box in the above.
- Vegetable Landraces: The “Gene Banks” for Traditional Farmers and Future Breeding Programs. Unusual way to put it, but you can see what they mean.
- The World Vegetable Center Okra (Abelmoschus esculentus) Core Collection as a Source for Flooding Stress Tolerance Traits for Breeding. It’s the longer vegetative phase that possibly helps with flooding tolerance.
- Strategies to Identify and Introgress Production and Quality Traits from Genetic Resources to Elite Carrot Cultivars. But maybe it’s not core collections that you need.
- Genomic dissection of widely planted soybean cultivars leads to a new breeding strategy of crops in the post-genomic era. Here’s another core collection, this time of popular cultivars rather than landraces, as a basis for a strategy called Potalaization which seems to amount to starting your breeding programme with a wide genetic base.
- Genetic Diversity and Population Structure Analysis of Triticum aestivum L. Landrace Panel from Afghanistan. You could select a core collections based on ecogeography. Mainly.
- Spatial and evolutionary predictability of phytochemical diversity. Interestingly, the same goes for phytochemical diversity in Swiss grasslands.
- DNA fingerprinting reveals varietal composition of Vietnamese cassava germplasm (Manihot esculenta Crantz) from farmers’ field and genebank collections. From 1570 clones to 31 unique genotypes. No need for a core collection then.
- Dietary diversity of rural Indonesian households declines over time with agricultural production diversity even as incomes rise. Indonesians need to go back to growing more vegetables. See some of the previous papers for examples. You’re welcome.
- The interplay between food market access and farm household dietary diversity in low and middle income countries: A systematic review of literature. Or their market access could be improved, though it’s unclear whether that would improve their diets.
- Virtual pollination trade uncovers global dependence on biodiversity of developing countries.
Many diets depend on other people’s pollinators, though.
Genebanks on the air
Field, Lab, Earth, the podcast of the American Society of Agronomy, Crop Science Society of America and Soil Science Society of America has a couple of episodes out on the history of crop diversity conservation. The first is an interview with Dr Helen Anne Curry on genebanks.
And the second is a talk entitled “Varietal Timelines and Leadership Challenges Affecting the Legacy of Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov” with Dr Joel Cohen. It’s freely available until 5 April.
Brainfood: Green Revolution, Hybrid wheat, Pacific PGRFA, Temperate maize, Maize seed, Yemeni coffee, Nutrition agriculture, Vanilla breeding, Cultivar mixture, Meta-analysis, Algerian forages
- Health Impacts of the Green Revolution: Evidence from 600,000 births across the Developing World. Modern varieties reduced infant mortality from 18% to 12-15% across 21,604 locations in 37 developing countries between 1961–2000.
- Wide adaptation of Green Revolution wheat: International roots and the Indian context of a new plant breeding ideal, 1960–1970. Thank goodness for photoperiod insensitivity, eh?
- The genetic basis of cytoplasmic male sterility and fertility restoration in wheat. Does this mean hybrid wheat is the next revolution?
- Unlocking the inherent potential of plant genetic resources: food security and climate adaptation strategy in Fiji and the Pacific. The Pacific is still waiting for its revolution.
- A worldwide maize panel revealed new genetic variation for cold tolerance. Inbreds from Minnesota and Spain could spearhead a temperate maize revolution.
- Seed longevity of maize conserved under germplasm bank conditions for up to 60 years. Keep those Minnesotan and Spanish inbreds cold, whatever you do.
- Unveiling a unique genetic diversity of cultivated Coffea arabica L. in its main domestication center: Yemen. Unique Yemeni material could spearhead a coffee revolution. How to store those seeds, though?
- Household behaviour and nutrition-sensitive agricultural practices: Experiences of smallholder farmers in Northern West Bengal, India. Maybe what’s needed is a revolution in women’s empowerment.
- The beautiful hills: half a century of vanilla (Vanilla planifolia Jacks. ex Andrews) breeding in Madagascar. There was a vanilla revolution in Madagascar in the 50s and nobody knows about it.
- The potential of cultivar mixtures to reduce fungicide input and mitigate fungicide resistance development. The cultivar mixture revolution is still to come.
- Dynamic meta-analysis: a method of using global evidence for local decision making. The tender green shoots of a data-driven revolution?
- Molecular characterization of Algerian populations of cocksfoot and tall fescue: Ploidy level determination and genetic diversity analysis. I just like the word cocksfoot.
Nibbles: Vavilov, Indian rice, Mexican maize, British hops, ICARDA, Turkey feathers
- Podcast on Vavilov.
- Indian government mainstreams Vavilov.
- Debate on maize in Mexico ends up mainstreaming Vavilov.
- Vavilov would approve of Fuggle and Golding.
- Pretty sure Mariana Yazbek and Vavilov would have got on.
- Not sure if Vavilov thought much about livestock domestication, but I expect so, and he would probably have enjoyed this story about Pueblo turkeys too.
Nibbles: Rubber, Cacao, Emissions, Dioscorea, Humanities
- Rubber is running out.
- Hand pollination is better than fertilisers etc. for cacao yields.
- When all is said and done, agriculture is a third of emissions.
- A wild Mexican yam is behind the Pill.
- The cultural history of plants.