- Genome-Wide Association Mapping of Seedling Net Form Net Blotch Resistance in an Ethiopian and Eritrean Barley Collection. 8 new QTLs, just like that.
- Vegetable Genetic Resources in China. 36,000 accessions. Just like that.
- Building a botanical foundation for perennial agriculture: Global inventory of wild, perennial herbaceous Fabaceae species. Check out the Perennial Agriculture Project Global Inventory.
- Ecosystem services and nature’s contribution to people: negotiating diverse values and trade-offs in land systems. Biological diversity has a diversity of values. Duh.
- Development of a drought stress-resistant rice restorer line through Oryza sativa–rufipogon hybridization. From F6 via BC5F5 to BIL627.
- Eggplants and Relatives: From Exploring Their Diversity and Phylogenetic Relationships to Conservation Challenges. The taxonomy is “arduous and unstable.”
- Morphometric and colourimetric tools to dissect morphological diversity: an application in sweet potato [Ipomoea batatas (L.) Lam.]. Beyond colour charts. Way beyond.
- Chemotaxonomy of domesticated grasses: a pathway to understanding the origins of agriculture. Fancy maths can identify pollen grains.
- Origin of the Aromatic Group of Cultivated Rice (Oryza sativa L.) Traced to the Indian Subcontinent. Arose when japonica hybridized with local wild populations.
- Orange-fleshed cucumber (Cucumis sativus var. sativus L.) germplasm from North-East India: agro-morphological, biochemical and evolutionary studies. Possible niche market?
- Progress in genetic improvement of citron watermelon (Citrullus lanatus var. citroides): a review. These are all orange-fleshed.
- Review: Domestic herbivores and food security: current contribution, trends and challenges for a sustainable development. Can’t live without them, but gotta do something about that enteric fermentation.
- Evaluation of Malus genetic resources for tolerance to apple replant disease (ARD). It’s the wilds, of course.
Nibbles: Organic Greek, Mexican maize heirloom, Community seedbank, Arizona chilli, African maize, Chinese trifecta, Sex-changing solanum, Breeding oddities, Breeding costing tool, Chicken project, WFP, Cattle book, Agroforestry database, Minor cereals, Reviewing genebanks, Wheat breeding, Rice seeds
- Greek organic farm resists.
- Communities getting into seed banking all over.
- Saving zapalote chico.
- Would you like chiltepines with that?
- No zapalote chico in South Africa, but lots of other maize.
- Conserving agricultural biodiversity in China.
- Including in Hainan.
- At the same time, China restricts foreign access to human genome data.
- Sexually plastic Australian wild tomato named at long last.
- Breeding flavour crops.
- And figuring out how much it will cost.
- Interesting project on human-chicken interactions.
- Veggie breeder wins World Food Prize.
- New coffee table book on cattle in Africa.
- Flagship agroforestry database gets new version. Anyone wanna test it for us?
- Minor cereals in Europe are anything but minor.
- And lots are conserved in Europe’s increasingly scrutinized genebanks.
- Meanwhile, a major cereals keeps getting the attention it also needs.
- “The candidate markers could be used by any rice genebank to potentially identify varieties with seeds that are particularly short- or long-lived in storage. Viability monitoring intervals could then be customized by variety.” And wheat?
Brainfood: Seed viability double, Forest reserves, Biodiversity value, Hunter-gatherers, Seed concentration, Past CC, Hot lablab, Mungbean adoption, Climate smart impacts, Tree threats, Chicken domestication, Top sorghum, Ancient wines, Plant extinctions
- Variation in seed longevity among diverse Indica rice varieties. 8 major loci associated with seed longevity.
- Seeds and the Art of Genome Maintenance. Viability is about the DNA repair response. Snap.
- Are Mayan community forest reserves effective in fulfilling people’s needs and preserving tree species? Sure they are.
- The power of argument. People don’t respond to utilitarian arguments when it comes to biodiversity. In the Netherlands.
- Do modern hunter-gatherers live in marginal habitats? Nope. What can I tell ya?
- New evidence on concentration in seed markets. Not as bad as some people think.
- Climate change has likely already affected global food production. From 2003 to 2008, there’s been a ~1% average reduction in consumable food calories in barley, cassava, maize, oil palm, rapeseed, rice, sorghum, soybean, sugarcane and wheat.
- Selection of Heat Tolerant Lablab. 6 out of 44 accessions from the WorldVeg genebank are heat tolerant. Seems a lot.
- Counting the beans: quantifying the adoption of improved mungbean varieties in South Asia and Myanmar. 1.2 million farmers reached by WorldVeg varieties. Lablab next?
- Climate smart agricultural practices and gender differentiated nutrition outcome: An empirical evidence from Ethiopia. They work, but they’re better in combination.
- Pests and diseases of trees in Africa: A growing continental emergency. Into Africa…
- Genetics of adaptation in modern chicken. Not much of a domestication bottleneck; that came later.
- Multi-Trait Diverse Germplasm Sources from Mini Core Collection for Sorghum Improvement. From 40,000 in the genebank, to 242 in the mini-core, to 6 really cool ones (from Yemen, USA, China, Mozambique, and India x2 if you must know).
- Palaeogenomic insights into the origins of French grapevine diversity. Ancient DNA from 28 pips dating back to the Iron Age provides pretty good matches to grapes grown today.
- Global dataset shows geography and life form predict modern plant extinction and rediscovery. Almost 600 plants went extinct in modern times, at least, and I count about 20 crop wild relatives among them.
Brainfood: Habitat restoration, ICRISAT proso, Mobile advice, Cowpea genome, Wheat resilience, World climate, Wheat biogeography, African durum, Microalgae, Gender, Iberian barley adaptation
- Indigenous Grasses for Rehabilitating Degraded African Drylands. Promising results, but it’s not easy.
- Variability in the Global Proso Millet (Panicum miliaceum L.) Germplasm Collection Conserved at the ICRISAT Genebank. Asian, European and mixed clusters, based on morphology. Out of over 800 accessions, 3 (IPm 2069, IPm 2076 and IPm 2537) are rich in grain Fe, Zn, Ca, and protein.
- Household-specific targeting of agricultural advice via mobile phones: Feasibility of a minimum data approach for smallholder context. A little household data goes a long way. Includes crop diversity info?
- The genome of cowpea (Vigna unguiculata [L.] Walp.). There’s a gene for multiple organ gigantism.
- Reduced response diversity does not negatively impact wheat climate resilience. The suggestion that the statistical methods used were faulty means wheat may not be as in trouble in Europe as a previous paper suggested.
- Evaluating WorldClim Version 1 (1961–1990) as the Baseline for Sustainable Use of Forest and Environmental Resources in a Changing Climate. Maybe not as good as it might be. But what’s the alternative?
- Worldwide phylogeography and history of wheat genetic diversity. Three groups, with one (the Asian genepool) hardly used in breeding.
- Durum Wheat (Triticum durum Desf.): Origin, Cultivation and Potential Expansion in Sub-Saharan Africa. From the Ethiopian highlands and Saharan oases to the mainstream?
- Global mapping of cost‐effective microalgal biofuel production areas with minimal environmental impact. The dry coasts of N and E Africa, the Middle East, and western S America. But how minimal is minimal?
- From women’s empowerment to food security: Revisiting global discourses through a cross-country analysis. The patriarchy is resourceful.
- Genetic association with high‐resolution climate data reveals selection footprints in the genomes of barley landraces across the Iberian Peninsula. Cold temperature, late‐season frost occurrence and water availability have driven landrace genetic differentiation.
Nibbles: Coffee science, Bob Marley’s weed, Diversity video, CIP genebank, Cornell potatoes, Fiji hibiscus, Cereal festival, Organic breeding, British Neolithic, Wheat & CC, Celery history
- The Coffee Science Foundation is the science foundation we all need.
- In search of Bob’s ganja.
- Vox vid on saving crop diversity. Pretty good, except for that thorn apple thing.
- GIZ support for the CIP genebank.
- Ex-CIP breeder works with VIR to bring wild potatoes to Cornell.
- Or friend Lex Thomson on why Fiji is a hibiscus hotspot.
- Celebrate European cereal diversity.
- Dan Barber on freeing the seed. The polarisation continues.
- The first British farmers walked there.
- CIMMYT rebuttal of a paper saying European wheat varieties are decreasing in their climate resilience.
- Celery was once a luxury.