Information

November 23, 2017

New livestock diversity information system is here, almost

With about 20% of the world’s local farm animal breeds currently at risk of extinction, urgent action is needed to safeguard livestock diversity. This event will showcase the launch of an updated FAO tool, called the Domestic Animal Diversity Information System, or DAD-IS, that countries can use to monitor animal genetic resources that are important for food and agriculture. Containing information on 8,800 breeds of livestock and poultry across the world, the new DAD-IS platform can be used to measure SDG progress, create attractive graphics and tables for internal reporting purposes or export data for scientific analysis.

Sounds great, and you can see all the details on the recent webcast from FAO. But it’s still the old version that’s online, damn it. So when are we going to see (or hear) all the new bells and whistles? Well, as it happens, a member of the audience asked that very same question, and the answer is about 1:29 hours (sic) in: Monday, 27 November. How am I going to get through the weekend? Stay tuned for the results of my road test.

November 10, 2017June 13, 2019

Malagasy yams win internet

Dioscorea bako (EN, IUCN) #OviGasy the most yam apprecieted by Menabe #Madagascar people and cultivated and conserved through the KMCC project @TeamKMCC pic.twitter.com/kmCRruuXlK

— Mamy Tiana Rajaonah (@RajaonahMamy) November 10, 2017

Seeing this amazing yam on Twitter reminded me that it’s about time I gave a shout-out to the project “Conserving Madagascar’s yams through cultivation for livelihoods and food security,” being coordinated by Kew with funding from the Darwin Initiative. It’s really active on Twitter, as you can see, but has also been churning out scientific publications. What I can’t quite figure out is whether there’s a formal ex situ conservation component, and perhaps even some linkages to breeders of cultivated yams.

LATER: The best way to follow the exploits of the yam team in Madagascar is to use the hashtags #AprilTrust and #OviGasy.

November 8, 2017

Nibbles: Halloween roots, Fred’s great potatoes, Ellis on TV, CIP genebank online, Weird potato, Weird watermelon, Paul Gepts, Caucasian sheep, Livestock hybrids, COP23

Halloween is an agricultural thing. Basically.
Frederick the Great had a thing for potatoes. Among other things.
CIP genebank manager on TV. He has a thing for potatoes too. As you can tell from his new website.
Pop quiz: Can you find this N American potato in the CIP genebank?
The extraordinary story of the ancient Native American crookneck watermelon. Bet it goes well with S. jamesii.
Paul Gepts gets award. No word on his thoughts on potatoes, but he does like beans.
Transhumance lives in the Caucasus.
What in tarnation is a zubron?
Making the case for climate action on agriculture at COP23. And vice versa.

October 30, 2017October 26, 2017

Brainfood: Rice introgression, African rice cores, Cereal domestication rates, Power vegetables, Biodiversity services, Afrikaner cattle diversity, Conservation funding

Introgression from cultivated rice alters genetic structures of wild relative populations: implications for in situ conservation. Not totally wild any more.
Genetic Variation and Population Structure of Oryza glaberrima and Development of a Mini-Core Collection Using DArTseq. 2,179 accessions, 5 geographic groups, 16% recover >95% of polymorphisms.
Geographic mosaics and changing rates of cereal domestication. Applying fancy maths to archaeobotanical remains shows that selection pressures varied in time, and started slow.
Tapping the economic and nutritional power of vegetables. Eat your veggies, damn it!
To what extent can ecosystem services motivate protecting biodiversity? Not enough.
Genetic diversity of Afrikaner cattle in southern Africa. 3 groups, but not geographically determined, and lots of diversity despite recent declines in numbers.
Nominal 30-m Cropland Extent Map of Continental Africa by Integrating Pixel-Based and Object-Based Algorithms Using Sentinel-2 and Landsat-8 Data on Google Earth Engine. Next level. But when will be be able to distinguish crops?
Reductions in global biodiversity loss predicted from conservation spending. But the impact of spending goes down with with increasing development pressure.

October 23, 2017October 23, 2017

Brainfood: Yeast census, Kansas collections, Species abundance, Dietary diversity, Seed longevity, Tree conservation, Yam metabolomics, Ethiopian mustard shattering, Improving ITPGRFA

Census of Yeasts Isolated from Natural Ecosystem and Conserved in Worldwide Collections. 27 countries, 41 collections, 58,095 strains.
The Curiosity of Collections: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at What’s in the Drawers, Cabinets and Refrigerators of K-State Collections and Why It’s Important. Including the Wheat Genetics Resource Center.
Species are not most abundant in the centre of their geographic range or climatic niche. Even trees.
Tartary Buckwheat Genetic Diversity in the Himalayas Associated with Farmer Landrace Diversity and Low Dietary Dependence. Relying on fewer food crops is bad for crop genetic diversity.
Contrasting tocol ratios associated with seed longevity in rice variety groups. It’s the relative amounts of different homologues, not the total.
Gene conservation of tree species — Banking on the future. Proceedings of a workshop. USA-centred, but lessons more generally applicable.
Deep Learning for Multi-task Plant Phenotyping. Computer can count wheat spikes and spikelets.
Metabolite profiling of yam (Dioscorea spp.) accessions for use in crop improvement programmes. 200 compounds on 49 accessions in 4 species. But now what?
Molecular diversity analysis and genetic mapping of pod shatter resistance loci in Brassica carinata L. 5 QTLs for shatter resistance found in Australian collection. In other news, there’s an Australian collection of Ethiopian mustard.
Access without benefit-sharing: Design, effectiveness and reform of the FAO Seed Treaty. Hybrid SMTA/subscription model, gradual Annex I expansion, successively improving domestic implementation.