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November 13, 2024November 14, 2024

Wild strawberries and other Nordic resources

NordGen is running a great series of weekly webinars on crop wild relatives conservation. You can find recordings of the past three on their website, but I can’t figure out how to sign up for future ones.

LATER: Thanks to Sara for her comment providing the link you’ll need to sign up for future webinars.

October 28, 2024October 26, 2024

Brainfood: Heraclitus, Cocoyam, Pollen, Dry chain, DSI, Global Biodiversity Framework

Will a plant germplasm accession conserved in a genebank change genetically over time? Sure, change is inevitable, but it can be minimized, and some can be accepted.
Cocoyam (Xanthosoma sagittifolium (L.) Schott) genetic resources and breeding: a review of 50 years of research efforts. Conventional breeding, based on inducing flowering, is possible, but will require more international exchange of germplasm. I hope someone is saving the seeds.
Pollen banking is a critical need for conserving plant diversity. Even if it changes genetically over time.
Applications of dry chain technology to maintain high seed viability in tropical climates. You’ve got to dry your seeds fast and hard. Probably your pollen too, come to that.
Harmonize rules for digital sequence information benefit-sharing across UN frameworks. The big question is, should there be a single trigger point for monetary benefits, or separate ones for each treaty? At least the sequences do not change over time. But what about if the accessions from which they are derived do?
Involving citizens in monitoring the Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. Yes, let’s get citizens to help us monitor all that change.

September 30, 2024September 30, 2024

Brainfood: EU landraces, EU GIs, Citizen fruit scientists, Nordic potatoes, Czech wheat, German wheat, Wild Brassica collecting, Chinese & European soybeans, Italian goats

Landrace in situ (on-farm) conservation: European Union achievements. Lots of organizations and farmers are conserving landraces in Europe, in lots of ways, and pretty successfully, but the most sustainable way to do so would be to decrease barriers to their marketing, in particular in the context of organic agriculture.
An assessment of the implementation of the EU policy for conservation varieties from 2009 to 2023 and its relationship to Geographical Indications. Few European GIs use conservation varieties (i.e. landraces), but this should, and probably will, change.
New citizen science initiative enhances flowering onset predictions for fruit trees in Great Britain. Imagine doing this for European landraces.
Genetic markers identify duplicates in Nordic potato collections. Ooops, some alleged landraces in European genebanks turn out to be old improved varieties.
Curation of historical phenotypic wheat data from the Czech Genebank for research and breeding. You need data on all those landraces if people are going to use them. Citizen scientists might help, I guess.
Trait-customized sampling of core collections from a winter wheat genebank collection supports association studies. But you need to use that data to create subsets first, and you can do that in lots of different ways, for different purposes: let the German genebank show you how.
Collecting Mediterranean wild species of the Brassica oleracea group (Brassica sect. Brassica). Even in Europe some gap-filling collecting is still necessary.
A comparison of Chinese wild and cultivar soybean with European soybean collections on genetic diversity by Genome-Wide Scan. Even breeders in the soybean center of diversity might find material from Europe’s genebanks useful.
Can Sustainability and Biodiversity Conservation Save Native Goat Breeds? The Situation in Campania Region (Southern Italy) between History and Regional Policy Interventions. Conservation livestock breeds, anyone?

September 25, 2024September 26, 2024

Nibbles: CWR double, Banana threats, Banana collecting, Rice breeding, Cassava breeding, SADC livestock genebank, Community seedbank, Sunflower mapping, Restoration

Why we need crop wild relatives.
No, really, we need crop wild relatives.
The banana is in trouble.
Which is why we need to conserve banana wild relatives and landraces.
Lots of wild relatives are conserved in the IRRI genebank mentioned in this Guardian article on breeding low glycemic index and high protein rice. Some of them may even have been used in this work. May look that up one day.
I doubt that IITA used wild relatives in breeding these high quality cassava varieties, but there’s always a first time, and there may even be some in its genebank. I should probably look but I don’t have time for this rabbit hole today.
And livestock get conserved in genebanks too, though not as much as crops. I’m really not sure how many livestock wild relatives are in the world’s genebanks, but my guess is not many.
Farmers conserve crop (and livestock) diversity too, of course. And sometimes even their wild relatives.
It’s amazing what can be done from space to figure out what farmers are growing. This is an example of sunflower in Ukraine, but one day we’ll even be able to locate crop wild relatives, I’m sure.
To finish off, a reminder that we need conserved seed of wild species for more than just breeding: restoration too.

September 4, 2024

Brainfood: Ag research ROI, CGIAR & climate change, Crop species diversity, Training plant breeders, AI & plant breeding, Wheat breeding review, Wheat landraces, CIMMYT wheat breeding, Wheat D genome, Forages pre-breeding, Impact of new varieties, Two long-term barley experiment, High protein peas, Watermelon super-pangenome, Resynthesizing mustard, Consumer preference and breeding

Benefit–Cost Analysis of Increased Funding for Agricultural Research and Development in the Global South. Fancy model says funding agricultural research is great value for money. Ok, let’s see if we can find some examples.
Exploring CGIAR’s efforts towards achieving the Paris Agreement’s climate-change targets. Yeah, but in designing such research to mitigate climate change there should be more complete integration of food-systems perspectives.
Crop species diversity: A key strategy for sustainable food system transformation and climate resilience. Now there’s a nice thing to integrate into your climate change adaptation and integration research.
Cultivating success: Bridging the gaps in plant breeding training in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. Gonna need more plant breeders also, though.
Artificial intelligence in plant breeding. Yeah, and probably more artificial intelligence too.
Wheat genetic resources have avoided disease pandemics, improved food security, and reduced environmental footprints: A review of historical impacts and future opportunities. Great advances have been made (even without AI) by wheat breeders, but there’s still a lot of untapped diversity out there.
Harnessing landrace diversity empowers wheat breeding. For example in the A. E. Watkins landrace collection.
Enhanced radiation use efficiency and grain filling rate as the main drivers of grain yield genetic gains in the CIMMYT elite spring wheat yield trial. Gotta wonder if there’s a limit though.
Origin and evolution of the bread wheat D genome. Maybe we can squeeze a bit more out of the D genome. I wonder what AI says about that.
The Role of Crop Wild Relatives and Landraces of Forage Legumes in Pre-Breeding as a Response to Climate Change. As above, but for a bunch of forages.
Stakeholder Insights: A Socio-Agronomic Study on Varietal Innovation Adoption, Preferences, and Sustainability in the Arracacha Crop (Arracacia xanthorrhiza B.). Here’s an interesting methodology to evaluate the impact of new varieties designed and developed by AI (or not).
Deep genotyping reveals specific adaptation footprints of conventional and organic farming in barley populations — an evolutionary plant breeding approach. An initial, diverse barley population is allowed to adapt to contrasting organic and conventional conditions for 2 decades and diverges considerably genetically as a result. Don’t need AI to predict that. Perhaps more surprisingly, analysis suggests organic-adapted populations need to be selected for root traits to catch up in yield.
Natural selection drives emergent genetic homogeneity in a century-scale experiment with barley. What is it with barley breeding and long-term experiments? This one shows that a hundred years of natural selection has massively narrowed genetic diversity. Why aren’t there long-term wheat experiments? Or are there?
Association study of crude seed protein and fat concentration in a USDA pea diversity panel. Really high protein peas are possible. No word on whether kids will like them any better. Let’s check again in a hundred years?
Telomere-to-telomere Citrullus super-pangenome provides direction for watermelon breeding. Forget sweetness and disease resistance, maybe one of these wild species will help us grasp the holy grail of seedlessness. Wait, let me check on the whole cost-benefit thing for this.
An indigenous germplasm of Brassica rapa var. yellow NRCPB rapa 8 enhanced resynthesis of Brassica juncea without in vitro intervention. Sort of like that wheat D genome thing, but for mustard. I do wonder why we don’t try crop re-synthesis a lot more.
Special issue: Tropical roots, tubers and bananas: New breeding tools and methods to meet consumer preferences. Why involving farmers in all of the above could be a good idea.