- Floating gardens are a solution.
- Cassava is a solution.
- Eco-fusion is a solution.
- Art is a solution.
- Crop wild relatives are a solution.
- Genebanks are a solution.
- Understanding the effect of agricultural commodities on forests is a solution.
- My agroecology is a solution, but not your agroecology.
- 2021 will be a solution.
- Long-term thinking is the solution.
Brainfood: Bird shit, Ancient Greece, Maize adaptation, Resistant peanut, Adaptive variation, Crop models, AA bananas, Wild wheat, Wild tomatoes, Switchgrass diversity, Phytosanitation, Rice breeding, Seeds 4 Needs double, Wild palm, Threatened biodiversity
- ‘White gold’ guano fertilizer drove agricultural intensification in the Atacama Desert from ad 1000. And maize was at the heart of it.
- What’s new during the first millennium BCE in Greece? Archaeobotanical results from Olynthos and Sikyon. Not maize, alas, but what you’d expect, plus pine and sesame.
- Local adaptation contributes to gene expression divergence in maize. Stress-response genes are the ones which have been selected. No word on whether any of them were important in the Atacama.
- Genotyping tools and resources to assess peanut germplasm: smut-resistant landraces as a case study. Ok, so it sounds like the resistant line that was previously used is virtually identical to an accession in the USDA collection.
- Do We Need to Identify Adaptive Genetic Variation When Prioritizing Populations for Conservation? No, but we’ll need it to prioritize use, surely?
- Incorporating Realistic Trait Physiology into Crop Growth Models to Support Genetic Improvement. We’ll need better growth models too.
- Wild to domesticates: genomes of edible diploid bananas hold traces of several undefined genepools. 3 of them, in fact, in both SE Asia and New Guinea.
- Evolution of the bread wheat D-subgenome and enriching it with diversity from Aegilops tauschii. Three lineages were involved in the hybridizations that led to bread wheat. Coincidence?
- De novo genome assembly of two tomato ancestors, Solanum pimpinellifolium and Solanum lycopersicum var. cerasiforme, by long-read sequencing. Thousands of genes not found in the cultivated crop, apparently.
- Genomic mechanisms of climate adaptation in polyploid bioenergy switchgrass. Introgression from the northern genepool (one of three) was really important in adaptation after the glaciers retreated. Gene duplication also involved in adaptation.
- Economic Studies Reinforce Efforts to Safeguard Specialty Crops in the United States. Where “safeguard” means “provide clean planting material.”
- Comparative analysis of genetic diversity of rice (Oryza sativa L.) varieties cultivated in different periods in China. Diversity went up, then down, between the 1980s and the 2010s.
- Wheat Varietal Diversification Increases Ethiopian Smallholders’ Food Security: Evidence from a Participatory Development Initiative. Why the diversity in breeding programmes is important, and how farmer participation can help maintain it.
- The tricot citizen science approach applied to on-farm variety evaluation: methodological progress and perspectives. How to do the above.
- Biodiversity and conservation of Phoenix canariensis: a review. A wild relative in trouble, and what to do about it.
- Tropical and Mediterranean biodiversity is disproportionately sensitive to land-use and climate change. As can be seen from the above.
Nibbles: Pacific coconuts, Fruit double, NUS, New maize
- Coconuts in test tubes in the Pacific.
- Fruit trees in a nutrition garden in India. And in a medieval town in Russia.
- Orphan crops in the diet in Africa.
- Armyworm resistant maize in the farmers’ fields in Africa.
Nibbles: Roman cuisine, Jewish cooking, Seed sources, Prof. Moreno, English gardens, Cassava
- Very expensive new book on Roman and old reasonable one on Jewish cooking for that special person in your life.
- Places you can buy heirloom seeds for that special person in your life.
- The special person that is the new head of the UPM Plant Germplasm Bank in Spain.
- I learned from this article on a newly excavated Tudor garden about a pretty special grapevine.
- Cassava is pretty special, despite its reputation.
Brainfood: Livestock edition
- Recent land use and management changes decouple the adaptation of livestock diversity to the environment. The diversity of traditional livestock breeds used to be closely related to climate in Spain, but this is breaking down.
- Rationalizing ex situ collection of reproductive materials for endangered livestock breed conservation. Also in Spain, so I hope these guys are talking to the above.
- Applying the zoo model to conservation of threatened exceptional plant species. Not to mention livestock in Spain? Basically talking about a pedigree-based approach.
- Selection and drift reduce genetic variation for milk yield in Manech Tête Rousse dairy sheep. A bit like this (see above)?
- Influence of land tenure interventions on human well-being and environmental outcomes. Fairly good evidence from meta-review that formal titling has good social and environmental outcomes. But what did it do for traditional breeds, right?
- Lipid residues in pottery from the Indus Civilisation in northwest India. Not as much dairy as thought, and mainly non-ruminant fats. Definitely traditional breeds though.
- Ancient proteins provide evidence of dairy consumption in eastern Africa. Starting when lactase persistence was still rare or absent.
- Genome-scale sequencing and analysis of human, wolf and bison DNA from 25,000 year-old sediment. Sediment? Yep, sediment.
- Effect of dry heat on seed germination of Desmodium and Stylosanthes species. Could be used rather than mechanical scarification, thus saving time and effort. Livestock gotta eat.