- Diversity and heritability of the maize rhizosphere microbiome under field conditions. There’s a lot of it, but only measured in inbreds so far. One wonders about landraces.
- The Vulnerability of Biodiversity to Rapid Climate Change. We should focus on increasing the adaptive capacity of species and ecosystems, but predictions are difficult, especially about the future.
- The Capsella rubella genome and the genomic consequences of rapid mating system evolution. Sex is better with two.
- Progress Toward Understanding Heterosis in Crop Plants & Genomic and epigenetic insights into the molecular bases of heterosis. It’s the allelic interactions, stupid. Now to make use of this.
- Deforestation in an African biodiversity hotspot: Extent, variation and the effectiveness of protected areas. Protected areas have worked for the evergreen forest, but don’t forget the miombo! Would be intersting to know what this all means for crop wild relatives.
- Comprehensive genotyping of the USA national maize inbred seed bank. Ladies and gentlemen, I have seen the future of genebanks.
Nibbles: Tree domestication, Sacred groves, Solomons aquaculture, Bees and diversity
- Cultivate medicinal trees to save them. Oh, and provide medicines.
- Or you could harvest them sustainably from sacred forests?
- Reef fished out? Aquaculture to the rescue. Sounds a bit like the aquatic equivalent of the above, no? But do they have sea cucumbers and their poop in those inland ponds?
- Growing diverse crops good for bees, good for crops. Buckwheat diverse enough for ya?
Nibbles: Indian farmer, Indian farming landscape, Guatemalan protected areas, Old phones, Geo-data, HarvestPlus funding, Cavia, Agronomy, Bee bank, De-extinction
- Bhogpur farmer Subash Chander Misra gets Plant Genome Savior Farmer award 2012 for pear conservation.
- While a whole farming system gets protected in Kerala.
- Hope it doesn’t go the way of protected areas in Guatemala. Maybe they need old mobile phones. Or a better roads or urban expansion dataset. Or maybe just their own maps.
- UK government puts money where mouth is with grant to HarvestPlus. For things like this from ICRISAT. And have you seen the BBC slideshow?
- Funnily enough, nobody talking about guinea pigs as a solution for malnutrition.
- How Australian agriculture improved its water use efficiency. Clue: it’s not one thing. Good to be reminded, yet again, that’s it’s not necessarily always and only about the diversity. Keeps us centred.
- Bees get a bank?
- The de-extinction debate rumbles on. Centred, did someone say?
Nibbles: Private sector support, Ecosystems, CWR, Prioritization, Training
- Companies should pay to protect ecosystems.
- Like these? Hope they include some agricultural ones. Maybe even urban ones.
- Why you’d want to is not least because of these plants. Which can be better for micronutrients. Not to mention mainly outcrossing.
- Yeah, not all species are equal. Right?
- I wonder if any of this philanthropic training money will go to work on rice wild relatives.
Brainfood: Maize domestication, Restoration success, Rare species, Pollinator loss, Diversity and productivity, Cacao/coffee & ecosystem services, Brazilian coffee, GM cotton benefits
- Genetics and Consequences of Crop Domestication. The domestication bottleneck has consequences.
- Evaluating Ecological Restoration Success: A Review of the Literature. There’s more of it going on. Evaluation, that is. Which is good. But still mainly from the USA and Australia, and not enough of the socioeconomic kind.
- Rare Species Support Vulnerable Functions in High-Diversity Ecosystems. Ecosystems are distinctive because of their rare species.
- Environmental factors driving the effectiveness of European agri-environmental measures in mitigating pollinator loss — a meta-analysis. We know how to lessen, but not how to mitigate, loss of pollinators.
- Experimental evidence that evolutionarily diverse assemblages result in higher productivity. And the more distantly related the species, the higher the productivity gain.
- A global meta-analysis of the biodiversity and ecosystem service benefits of coffee and cacao agroforestry. Agroforests better than plantations, but forests best of all.
- Coefficient of Parentage in Coffea arabica L. Cultivars Grown in Brazil. Be afraid.
- Genetically Modified Crops and Food Security. Turns out GM cotton has increased the income and thus improved the diets of adopting Indian farmers. Well, maybe.