- Perennial Staple Crops: Yields, Distribution, and Nutrition in the Global Food System. Most perennial staple crops are not as well known or widely grown as annual staple crops, but maybe should be.
- Determining appropriate interventions to mainstream nutritious orphan crops into African food systems. Look to the supply of seeds.
- Diversity and conservation of traditional African vegetables: Priorities for action. Focus on conserving diversity West Tropical Africa and southern Cameroon. And then look to the supply of seeds everywhere, presumably.
- The origins of agriculture: Intentions and consequences. Domestication happened pretty much all by itself, through co-evolution.
- The role of the microbiota in human genetic adaptation. Co-evolution happened with the gut microbiota as well as with plants.
- Genome analyses reveal the hybrid origin of the staple crop white Guinea yam (Dioscorea rotundata). Unclear if people were involved.
- Crop adaptation to climate change as a consequence of long‑term breeding. Better to focus on the slow but steady accumulation of small effects. By people, presumably.
- Trends of genetic changes uncovered by Env- and Eigen-GWAS in wheat and barley. Maybe you don’t even need to measure the results of those small effects.
- Genetic Diversity of Coffea arabica. We need to catalogue all germplasm collections, together with their marker profiles, and make material and data easily available. Easier said than done.
- Farmers’ social networks and the diffusion of modern crop varieties in India. Caste affects adoption of new varieties.
- From garden to store: local perspectives of changing food and nutrition security in a Pacific Island country. Those that have access to stores, and therefore enough food, don’t have a well balanced diet, and those that don’t have store have a better balanced diet but occasionally not enough food. No word on modern varieties.
- The role of the milpa in food and nutritional security in households of Ocotal Texizapan, Veracruz, Mexico. Who needs stores?
- Dilemmas of protection: decolonising the regulation of genetic resources as cultural heritage. But are the above natural or cultural resources?
- A meta-analysis contrasting active versus passive restoration practices in dryland agricultural ecosystems. Just add water.
- Soil biodiversity enhances the persistence of legumes under climate change. If you want to keep legumes, and thus diversity, in your vegetation under climate change, better maintain soil biodiversity. Or add water, presumably.
- Soil microbial legacy drives crop diversity advantage: linking ecological plant‐soil feedback with agricultural intercropping. Same as above, but for intercropping.
- Effect of high temperature drying on seed longevity of Bambara groundnut (Vigna subterranea) accessions. Initial drying at 45°C/35% RH for 8 days before moving to a more conventional 17°C/15% RH can be good for some accessions, but which?
Nibbles: Svalbard, Amazon fires, China genebank, Gardening, CPVO
- Nice genebanks mashup from the always-excellent Mongabay.
- Analyzing social media to understand how forest governance is perceived. I want to do it for genebanks now…
- …Genebanks such as China’s wild plants genebank, for example.
- Thomas Fairchild was a genebanker of sorts 300 years ago.
- Once genebanks have been used by breeders, and varieties released (at least in Europe), you’ll be able to find them in the CPVO Variety Finder. I’m sure Fairchild would be impressed.
Nibbles: Soil day, Gold Rush orchards, Bogota heirlooms, Geographical indications, Coffee industry, Plant Treaty
- Soil diversity is important too, FAO says.
- There’s (agricultural) gold in them thar hills.
- Even the hills of Bogotá.
- Using collective IP rights to protect agricultural and other biodiversity.
- Coffee is 40 years behind other crops, but will business step up?
- More $$$ for the Benefit Sharing Fund.
Brainfood: WCR, Parasites, Wild tomato, Wild olive, MAGIC, ART cooking, Payments for conservation, ICARDA barley, Canary barley, Enset, Mexican relicts, Data management, Bumblebee map
- Resistance and Tolerance to Root Herbivory in Maize Were Mediated by Domestication, Spread, and Breeding. Domestication and spread decreased maize resistance to Western corn rootworm, but breeding increased it.
- Does genetic diversity protect host populations from parasites? A meta‐analysis across natural and agricultural systems. Yes, but it depends. Western corn rootworm unavailable for comment.
- Genome of Solanum pimpinellifolium provides insights into structural variants during tomato breeding. Lots of variants in regulatory genes for agronomic traits, compared to domesticated lines.
- Genomic evidence for recurrent genetic admixture during the domestication of Mediterranean olive trees (Olea europaea L.). There was a domestication bottleneck back in the day, but that was almost wiped out by later repeated introgression from the wild relative as the crop spread. So quite different from the above maize and tomato cases?
- Multi-parent populations in crops: a toolbox integrating genomics and genetic mapping with breeding. Not just good for QTL mapping any more, but you need a whole package of stuff for them to be useful to breeding programmes.
- Current uses of Andean Roots and Tuber Crops in South American gourmet restaurants. None of the chefs interviewed knew of mauka, but it’s not their fault.
- Payments for agrobiodiversity conservation services: An overview of Latin American experiences, lessons learned and upscaling challenges. Conserving in situ 100 varieties on 5 hectares each would cost US$70,000 p.a. Maybe useful for mauka? But will chefs pay?
- Genetic and agro-morphological diversity in global barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) collection at ICARDA. Under heat stress, though, which is the important bit left out of the title. Unclear if any of the material was from the Canaries (see below), but I can find out if anyone’s interested. Come to think of it, I’m kinda interested myself…
- An Evolutionary Approach to the History of Barley (Hordeum vulgare) Cultivation in the Canary Islands. You can apparently infer historical extents of cultivation on different islands in the archipelago, as well as the timing of separation of populations, which is pretty amazing. No word on representation in rock art though (see below).
- Enset (Ensete ventricosum) and the Archaeology of Southwestern Ethiopia. Information comes mainly from megalithic and rock art sites, which is pretty amazing. No word on genetic relationships, at least in this paper. Do you need me to link to previous Brainfoods on enset? No, of course you don’t, you know how to search the archive. You just put your lips together, and
whistleblow (kudos to whoever quotes the reference in the comments first). - Relict Plant Communities at Prehispanic Sites in Oaxaca, Mexico: Historical Implications. Ancient native Mexicans really liked succulents around their settlements. Well, who wouldn’t, when all is said and done?
- To clean or not to clean: Cleaning open‐source data improves extinction risk assessments for threatened plant species. Clean. Always clean. And then clean again.
- Global Patterns and Drivers of Bee Distribution. Hope they cleaned the data or this unusual double-humped diversity pattern could be in trouble, and that would be a pity.
Nibbles: Tea podcast double, African soil map, Chinese seeds
- Tea, anyone? Jeremy delves into how Brits made tea, and vice versa.
- More tea? Lawrie Taylor looks at the dark side.
- Want to know what the soil is like on African tea farms? Try iSDAsoil. Let the mashing up with crop accession locality data begin…
- Want to know what happened to those other seeds that came out of China?