In situ

January 28, 2017January 27, 2017

Filipino rice landraces documented

Congratulations to all concerned for the launch of the catalogue of Philippine Traditional Rice Varieties. I’m reliably informed it will be available online soon. In the meantime, I’ve had the privilege of consulting a PDF, and I can confirm that it is really as cool as it sounds.

January 24, 2017January 25, 2017

Nibbles: Trees on farms, Biodiversity hotspots, Coconuts, Banana genebank, Fiddleheads, Hybrid wheat, Buckler prize, ITPGRFA hatchet job

Trees are good for African farmers.
A basic universal income for people in biodiversity hotspots. Agrobiodiversity hotspots too?
Coconut History 101.
30 years of bananas in Belgium.
Eat up all your fiddleheads.
Hybrid wheat is coming at last.
Ed Buckler wins big. Unclear if he’ll be allowed to tweet about it.
Nonsense piece on the ITPGRFA.

January 23, 2017January 18, 2017

Brainfood: Wild peanuts, Salt-tolerance, Melon diversity, Consumption & biodiversity, German veggie fanciers, Oh oh oomycetes, Miscanthus diversity, Urban pollinators, Milpa bees

Genomic characterisation of Arachis porphyrocalyx (Valls & C.E. Simpson, 2005) (Leguminosae): multiple origin of Arachis species with x=9. At least two distinct origins for the x=9 species.
Salt Tolerant Varieties: A Biological Intervention to Manage Saline and Sodic Environment and Sustain Livelihoods. Salt-tolerant rice and wheat varieties are being adopted where needed in this bit of Haryana, but not as much as they could be.
Genotyping-by-sequencing of a melon (Cucumis melo L.) germplasm collection from a secondary center of diversity highlights patterns of genetic variation and genomic features of different gene pools. Three subgroups, and that’s just in Puglia, the heel bit of Italy.
Quantifying biodiversity losses due to human consumption: a global-scale footprint analysis. Food consumption is the single greatest driver of biodiversity loss, somewhere else.
Old vegetable varieties: attitude, consumption behaviour and knowledge of German consumers. There’s a consumer segment in Germany that could be labelled “fanciers of old vegetable varieties,” apparently.
Emerging oomycete threats to plants and animals. Be afraid.
Ecological characteristics and in situ genetic associations for yield-component traits of wild Miscanthus from eastern Russia. Arctic sugarcane? It could happen.
The city as a refuge for insect pollinators. It could happen.
Sweat bees on hot chillies: provision of pollination services by native bees in traditional slash-and-burn agriculture in the Yucatán Peninsula of tropical Mexico. The milpa is pretty good refuge for bees already.

January 16, 2017January 10, 2017

Brainfood: CO2 & domestication, Amaranth double, Nordic apple double, Chinese alfalfa, Sheep double, Moroccan lentils, SE Asian veggies, Cattle relative

Yield responses of wild C3 and C4 crop progenitors to subambient CO2: a test for the role of CO2 limitation in the origin of agriculture. It was tough for CWR in the last glacial period, better afterwards.
Analysis of phylogenetic relationships and genome size evolution of the Amaranthus genus using GBS indicates the ancestors of an ancient crop. Three cultivated species derived from one wild relative in different geographic regions.
Genomic and phenotypic evidence for an incomplete domestication of South American grain amaranth (Amaranthus caudatus). Maybe because of continued geneflow with the CWR.
Unravelling genetic diversity and cultivar parentage in the Danish apple gene bank collection. Only 10% duplicates among 448 accessions, many unique.
Redundancies and Genetic Structure among ex situ Apple Collections in Norway Examined with Microsatellite Markers. 14 synonyms among 181 accessions. No word on the overlap between Danish and Norwegian collections.
The Current Status, Problems, and Prospects of Alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.) Breeding in China. 77 registered cultivars for the whole of China seems very few.
Assessment of genetic diversity and structure of major sheep breeds from Pakistan. They cluster based on use rather than geographic origin.
Mapping molecular diversity of indigenous goat genetic resources of Asia. Chinese goats are different.
On-farm Conservation of Zaer Lentil Landrace in Context of Climate Change and Improved Varieties Competition. People like everything about the landrace except its yield.
Conservation of Indigenous Vegetables from a Hotspot in Tropical Asia: What Did We Learn from Vavilov? Not much, it seems.
Assessment of genetic diversity of Mithun (Bos frontalis) population in Bhutan using microsatellite DNA markers. Also known as gayal.

January 10, 2017January 9, 2017

Brainfood: New communities, New journal, New sustainability indicators, New rice yields, New chickpeas, New tree map, Old barley, New wheat dataset, New oat “core”, New ABS guide, New threats

Mapping climatic mechanisms likely to favour the emergence of novel communities. New climate combinations are rare (3.4% of evaluated cells), but mean displacement moderately rapid (3.7 km per decade) and divergence high (>60° for 67% of cells). What will all this mean for CWR? As many are ruderals, maybe nothing?
Why biodiversity matters. Inaugural issue of Nature Ecology & Evolution. Not much on agricultural biodiversity, alas.
Bridging the practitioner-researcher divide: Indicators to track environmental, economic, and sociocultural sustainability of agricultural commodity production. Again, no surprise that biodiversity is hardly considered by either researchers or practitioners in monitoring sustainability, though that’s not the point of the paper.
Plausible rice yield losses under future climate warming. More even than IFPRI thought: −8.3 ± 1.4% per degree.
Recent breeding programs enhanced genetic diversity in both desi and kabuli varieties of chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.). But from a low baseline?
EU-Forest, a high-resolution tree occurrence dataset for Europe. Want European tree diversity, go to the Pyrenees.
Farmer fidelity in the Canary Islands revealed by ancient DNA from prehistoric seeds. New barley same as old barley.
Evaluation of 19,460 Wheat Accessions Conserved in the Indian National Genebank to Identify New Sources of Resistance to Rust and Spot Blotch Diseases. 45 accessions had known resistance genes against all three rusts as well as a QTL for spot blotch resistance.
Promoting the Use of Common Oat Genetic Resources through Diversity Analysis and Core Collection Construction. Interesting, but 21 out of 91 is hardly a core collection.
Utilization of genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge in academic research. A good practice guide for access and benefit-sharing. Well there’s no excuse now.
Identifying species threat hotspots from global supply chains. Global maps of which countries, and which commodities they consume, most endanger threatened species around the world.