- Development of microbial consortia as a biocontrol agent for effective management of fungal diseases in Glycine max L. Bacteria gang up to fight soya fungal pathogens. Ain’t diversity grand.
- Species richness of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi: associations with grassland plant richness and biomass. More symbiotic fungi, more plant species and more biomass. Ain’t diversity grand.
- Trees in a deforested tropical landscape: species and trait diversity and potential ecosystem services. Even isolated exotics provide services, for all their lack of biodiversity conservation value.
- Green Light for Green Agricultural Policies? An Analysis at Regional and Global Scales. Model suggests that biodiversity targets for EU farmland lead to externalities paid for by others.
- Exploring restoration options for habitats, species and ecosystem services in the European Union. Target degraded habitats in cheap countries to meet most targets at lowest costs.
- How common is homoploid hybrid speciation? Not very. Thank heavens for the other kind.
- Explaining the ‘hungry farmer paradox’: Smallholders and fair trade cooperatives navigate seasonality and change in Nicaragua’s corn and coffee markets. Fair trade farmers still endure 3 hungry months, but having fruit trees helps.
- Drivers of plant biodiversity and ecosystem service production in home gardens across the Beijing Municipality of China. More edibles and fewer ornamentals with increasing distance from central Beijing. But probably still not enough to meet demand.
- Genetic polymorphism of fifteen microsatellite loci in Brazilian (blue-egg Caipira) chickens. Blue eggs?
- Indigenous chicken genetic resources in Kenya: their unique attributes and conservation options for improved use. And not a single blue egg in sight. Conservation through use.
- Lathyrus diversity: available resources with relevance to crop improvement – L. sativus and L. cicera as case studies. Genotyping and core collections needed.
- Genetic diversity and population structure of black Dahe pig based on DNA sequences analyses of mitochondrial and nuclear genes. Not much diversity in this Chinese pig. No word on their presence in Beijing homegardens.
- Associations between polymorphisms of the GFI1B gene and growth traits of indigenous Chinese goats. Polymorphic sites associated with growth traits. Let the molecular breeding begin. No word on whether same possible for pigs.
- Worldwide Patterns of Ancestry, Divergence, and Admixture in Domesticated Cattle. Cattle came into Europe in at least 2 waves, one from the Middle East, one from W Africa via Spain. The Asian breeds are something else again, and were involved in only the former of those waves.
- Effect of coconut water and growth regulator supplements on in vitro propagation of Corylus avellana L. One fruit helps conservation of another.
Brainfood: Prunus africana diversity, Collecting Prunus, African extension, Nepal genebank, Greek plant eBay, Pepper diversity, Pest spread, Grassland diversity, Cowpea fermentation, Pea diversity, Banana cryo, Biodiversity trends
- Genetic structuring of remnant forest patches in an endangered medicinal tree in North-western Ethiopia. You need to conserve a range of patches of Prunus africana, and probably not just in situ. Would have been perfect for last week’s Brainfood on the complementarity of ex situ and in situ.
- Using simulations to optimize genetic diversity in Prunus avium seed harvests. And if you were to collect seeds for ex situ conservation, this is how you could do it, or at least figure out how best to do it.
- Exploring the Role of Agricultural Extension in Promoting Biodiversity Conservation in Kwazulu-Natal Province, South Africa. Don’t look to extension for help though.
- Ex situ plant conservation initiative in developing country: Nepal as a case study. Wonder if the material in the Himalayan Seed Bank was collected in that way. Or with the help of extensionists for that matter.
- The Electronic Trade in Greek Endemic Plants: Biodiversity, Commercial and Legal Aspects. Or indeed the 10% of the endemic Greek flora that’s traded online. Yeah I know this was in the special Easter Brainfood, but I couldn’t resist the narrative.
- New sources of resistance to Phytophthora capsici in Capsicum spp. For Korea, that is. But they came from all over. As ever.
- Hosting major international events leads to pest redistributions. Watch out Brazil!
- Pyrenean meadows in Natura 2000 network: grass production and plant biodiversity conservation. Forbs are unjustly maligned. Probably starts with that silly name.
- Chemical Changes during Open and Controlled Fermentation of Cowpea (Vigna unguiculata) Flour. Fermentation detoxifies and doesn’t affect nutritional content much. No word on whether it helps with all the farting. Evaluate that!
- Geographical Gradient of the eIF4E Alleles Conferring Resistance to Potyviruses in Pea (Pisum) Germplasm. Gargantuan study of 2,800 global accessions finds 4 resistance alleles, each with its own geographic structure. Much variation, but no resistance in the wild relatives. Bummer.
- Phenotypic and molecular studies for genetic stability assessment of cryopreserved banana meristems derived from field and in vitro explant sources. You can cryopreserve straight from field-grown sucker meristems, rather than having to go through tissue culture. Handy.
- Assemblage Time Series Reveal Biodiversity Change but Not Systematic Loss. Ecosystems are changing, but not yet becoming noticeably less diverse.
Nibbles: Mainstream MAS, ICRISAT breeding, History of hunger, Specialty crops, Biofortification, Collectivizing smallholders, Fake seeds, Good seeds, Maize diversity, Making palm oil, Space ag, Cacao and CC, Cassava and CC, Cherry phenology, CC adaptation, Flavour gene, Indian apples, GBIF data, EU force feeding petition, BRITE, Sir Hans Sloane, Silk Road, Banana realism
- Round-up of stuff that’s been accumulating over past few days because we were busy putting food on the table.
- Marker assisted selection of tomatoes makes it to Washington Post. When will African crops do the same?
- “The history of humanity is a history of hunger.” Maybe MAS of African crops will help.
- USDA money for minor crops. Including African crops?
- Nigerian minister of agriculture on biofortification. Of African crops.
- African smallholders need to get together. They have nothing to lose but their chains. And their fake seeds. Which is not a problem for their Central American brethren.
- Someone mention Central America? Listen to a talk on maize diversity therein. And at the other end of the region’s diversity spectrum: oil palm.
- NASA wants to grown stuff in space. Organically, of course. African smallholders nonplussed.
- In space, nobody can hear you riot over food prices.
- Saving cacao from climate change: The colloquium. We’ve had cassava. Cherries next?
- Hold everything: there’s a framework for this business of crop diversity and climate change.
- Deconstructing strawberry flavour. Apples next? Not sure Indian farmers will care much.
- GBIF wants you to tell them how your data should be licensed. And some background.
- You can lobby the EU on fois gras. If that’s your thing.
- If you’re in Vancouver on May 6, you can celebrate five years of the Biodiversity Research: Integrative Training and Education (BRITE) Internship Program.
- You can also intern at Globefish, which links global fish-trade information networks comprising 85 countries.
- Great Great Lives podcast on Sir Hans Sloane, whose connections with agricultural biodiversity are multiple.
- Something else whose connections with agrobiodiversity are many, though this could have been highlighted more in the article in question: the Silk Road.
- What’s the late Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s connection to crop diversity?
Brainfood: Wheat resistance, Wild barley regeneration, Barley improvement, Maize regeneration, Seed pathogens, Colombian rice management, Malawi diversity & nutrition, Modelling pollinators, Women & seeds, Vietnam development, European agrobiodiversity, CIP sweet potato goes to China, American NUS
- Gene bank of sources of spring wheat resistance to leaf-stem diseases. Crop wild relatives to the rescue.
- Evolutionary History of Wild Barley (Hordeum vulgare subsp. spontaneum) Analyzed Using Multilocus Sequence Data and Paleodistribution Modeling. Recently collected material gives different results to genebank accessions, suggesting geneflow during ex situ maintenance?
- Barley genetic variation: implications for crop improvement. “Contemporary plant breeders now benefit from publicly available user-friendly databases providing genotypic and phenotypic information on large numbers of barley accessions.” Barley Genebank Database Heaven? Should talk to the guys above?
- Detection of genetic integrity of conserved maize (Zea mays L.) germplasm in genebanks using SNP markers. Oh crap, that problem with ex situ barley maintenance is an issue with maize as well.
- Incidence of Seed-Borne Mycoflora in Wheat and Rice Germplasm. Oh, I give up, genebanks are doomed.
- Ethnophytopathology: Rice Fields Free of Diseases, from the Culture of Producers in a Nuquí, Chocó-Colombia´s Community. Careful placement of fields in the landscape ensures they don’t get diseases. Who needs genebanks and breeders?
- Farm production diversity is associated with greater household dietary diversity in Malawi: Findings from nationally representative data. Yeah, but settle down, it’s kinda complicated.
- Landscape fragmentation and pollinator movement within agricultural environments: a modelling framework for exploring foraging and movement ecology. Don’t know how your set-asides and whatnots are going to affect pollinators? Well, now there’s a spatially explicit model for that. Which could perhaps be applied to…
- Complex effects of fragmentation on remnant woodland plant communities of a rapidly urbanizing biodiversity hotspot. Would be so interesting to know if there were any socioconomically useful plants (including crop wild relatives) among these remnants.
- Gender, Seeds and Biodiversity. Whether in Pennsylvania or Peru, it’s women that save seeds. (This is from an old book, which has presumably just been digitized, hence its appearance in my RSS feed.)
- Land Use Dynamics, Climate Change, and Food Security in Vietnam: A Global-to-local Modeling Approach. Agriculture is at risk. Better collect all that germplasm. Right? Right?
- Responses of plants, earthworms, spiders and bees to geographic location, agricultural management and surrounding landscape in European arable fields. Mineral N and pesticides not good for agricultural biodiversity. Too bad you can’t really conserve earthworms ex situ.
- Identification and evaluation of major quality characters of introduced sweet potato germplasm resources. 4 accessions out of 32 from CIP were likely to prove very useful, for different reasons. I’d say that was pretty good.
- Conservation and use of genetic resources of underutilized crops in the Americas – A continental analysis. Some underused crops are more underused than others, but policies don’t help any of them much.
- And this week’s theme, I’ve just realized, somewhat belatedly, is the complementarity of ex situ and in situ conservation. No, really, go back and check. And it was purely by chance too.
Nibbles: Diverse diets, Ancient diets, Urban veggies, Medicinal phylogenetics, Double blind cowpeas, Adaptation hope, Livestock emissions, Climate change data, Afghani poppies, Aussie ag & breeders, Chinese agrobiodiversity, Weird cherry
- Meaty presentation on how biodiversity in the food system delivers a diverse diet. Could hardly fail to, really, could it.
- What’s a diverse diet ever done for me, asks ancient farmer.
- Vegetables an important part of diverse diets, of course. Especially in urban areas.
- Interesting EU project on the phylogenetics of medicinal plants. Any vegetables in there?
- Improved cowpeas only improved when farmers know they are improved. Wow.
- Some glimmers of hope on adaptation? Maybe.
- Not all livestock bad for climate change. And room for improvement on those that are.
- Yeah, but who cares, global warming is just a giant natural fluctuation, no? No.
- Legalize it, already! Poppy cultivation as a climate change adaptation measure?
- Australian agriculture unprepared for climate change? With all these fancy breeders and access to the world’s genebanks?
- Meanwhile, in China, the focus is on food sovereignty.
- And in Japan on its spaced out cherry tree.