Category: History

• The development of the international center model for agricultural research: A prehistory of the CGIAR. The model didn’t start with those canonical US foundations, and owes more than a little to colonialism. Further integration is needed.
• Document or Lose It—On the Importance of Information Management for Genetic Resources Conservation in Genebanks. Standardization, openness and interoperability. Easier said than done, but if you’re looking for further integration…
• AI-powered banana diseases and pest detection. But can it tell bananas from plantains? Nice to link it up with the above.
• Crop Wild Relatives as Germplasm Resource for Cultivar Improvement in Mint (Mentha L.). 450 clones representing 34 taxa maintained by USDA. The next 2 are USDA things too.
• Germplasm Development of Underutilized Temperate U.S. Tree Crops. Sure, introduce species from abroad, but if they have local wild relatives you have another route to adaptation. Take the hazelnut, for example…
• Subspecies Variation of Daucus carota Coastal (“Gummifer”) Morphotypes (Apiaceae) Using Genotyping-by-Sequencing. One morphology and niche, 5 genetic groups.
• Comparisons of sampling methods for assessing intra- and inter-accession genetic diversity in three rice species using genotyping by sequencing. Some differences in results among sampling methods, but not huge.
• Combining ability analysis on rhizomatousness via incomplete diallel crosses between perennial wild relative of rice and Asian cultivated rice. If you want perennial cultivated(ish) rice, you have to pick your parents carefully.
• Something old, something new: Evolution of Colombian weedy rice (Oryza spp.) through de novo de‐domestication, exotic gene flow, and hybridization. Weedy rice is just local domesticated rice gone bad, at least in Colombia. Gosh I hope that perennial rice doesn’t get de-domesticated.
• It’s not just poverty: unregulated global market and bad governance explain unceasing deforestation in Western Madagascar. Stop blaming subsistence slash-and-burn.
• Climate change enforces to look beyond the plant – the example of pollinators. Create nice conditions for pollinators on farms, it’ll be worth it.
• Paternal Origins and Migratory Episodes of Domestic Sheep. 4 parental lineages, one with primitive features and another with fat tails.
• Women and Fish-for-Sex: Transactional Sex, HIV/AIDS and Gender in African Fisheries. Teach a man to fish, FFS.
• Use of Untargeted Liquid Chromatography–Mass Spectrometry Metabolome To Discriminate Italian Monovarietal Red Wines, Produced in Their Different Terroirs. A little wine with your fish? Ah no, wait, these are all reds. But at least you can tell them apart now.