I paid tribute to the late great Hans Rosling in my recent post over at the work blog, but CIAT did it better. See also their very enjoyable pean to a bean explorer who is thankfully very much alive, though nearing retirement. And think about joining them.
Peering at pea data
In Europe, agriculture is highly dependent on imported soybean from South America. Potential alternative sources are protein from peas (Pisum sativum L.) or more local sources like other grain legumes or rapeseed meal (Brassica napus L. subsp. oliefera [sic]). These are also good rotation crops. For farmers, protein and yield are key traits. In this study, a dataset containing 37 descriptors and 1222 accessions from a germplasm collection of P. sativum was analyzed. Scatterplot matrixes and tree regression analysis were used to establish the relationship among descriptors and to identify the most important predictors for seed yield and protein content respectively. Number of flowers per plant was shown to be important for seed yield prediction, followed by number of inflorescences per plant and number of pods per plant. In general, a negative correlation between seed protein content and seed yield was detected, but a few accessions that had both high seed yield and high protein content were identified. The results are discussed in relation to crop improvement and the importance of maintaining germplasm collections.
That’s the abstract from a paper in Genetic Resources and Crop Evolution called “Seed yield and protein content in the Weibullsholm Pisum collection,” by Svein Øivind Solberg, Flemming Yndgaard, Gert Poulsen and Roland von Bothmer. The Weibullsholm pea collection was the brainchild of Stig Blixt, one of the greats plant genetic resources, who died in 2009: 1
Stig Blixt realized early the importance of building and maintaining a base collection of pea germplasm and he must have been one of the early leaders in using the power of a computerised database on the traits and origin of line. The research on peas at Weibullsholm ended in 1986 and by this time Stig Blixt had ensured the pea collection had been safely transferred to the Nordic Gene Bank. In 1988 he was employed as Head of Material Departement at the Nordic Gene Bank and 1989 he became Head of our development projects. He started our engagements in SADC (Southern Africa Development Community). In 1990 he was appointed Director for the gene bank and retired from his post at the end of 1992. He continued as Senior Scientist until his age retirement in 1995.
When I posted a link to the paper on Facebook, Dirk Enneking, who has contributed here in the past, had this to say:
We had three different prefixes in Australia for material from this collection. Peas from Weibullsholm are bound to be in every collection around the globe that keeps peas and my bet is that is highly replicated because of poor documentation in recipient collections, part of the problem being that no prefix was prescribed by the donor. The good news is that a lot of collections now have chance to link to a great set of evaluation data and if these don’t match with local experience to spot errors.
To which I can only say: I wish! Because of the lack of permanent identifiers for genebank accessions, making the link to this set of evaluation data will not always be possible. Ah but fear not, DOIs are coming!
Brainfood: Arabidopsis refugia, Potato diversity, Palm uses, Coffee phylogeny, Traditional harvesting, Buckwheat trends, Maize double haploids, African cattle, Endophenotype
- On the post-glacial spread of human commensal Arabidopsis thaliana. A bit like Neanderthals.
- Exploration of the genetic diversity of cultivated potato and its wild progenitors (Solanum sect. Petota) with insights into potato domestication and genome evolution. Elite cultivars are a pretty diverse lot.
- Fundamental species traits explain provisioning services of tropical American palms. Bigger, more widespread species are more important to local people. Which means some useful things may be being missed.
- Genotyping-by-sequencing provides the first well-resolved phylogeny for coffee (Coffea) and insights into the evolution of caffeine content in its species: GBS coffee phylogeny and the evolution of caffeine content. Origin of the genus could be Africa. Or Asia. Or the Arabian Peninsula. So that narrows it down.
- A quiet harvest: linkage between ritual, seed selection and the historical use of the finger-bladed knife as a traditional plant breeding tool in Ifugao, Philippines. People kept old harvesting technology because it helped them show due reverence to the rice plant, and select seeds.
- Old Crop, New Society: Persistence and Change of Tartary Buckwheat Farming in Yunnan, China. It’s going down, but won’t disappear. No word on what’s happening to diversity though.
- Tapping the genetic diversity of landraces in allogamous crops with doubled haploid lines: a case study from European flint maize. The things people have to do to make use of landraces.
- Conservation of indigenous cattle genetic resources in Southern Africa’s smallholder areas: turning threats into opportunities — A review. We now the breeds, but not all their characteristics, and how to get the most out of them.
- The Importance of Endophenotypes to Evaluate the Relationship between Genotype and External Phenotype. Oh for pity’s sake, something else to worry about.
A Sardinian grasspea is recognized
Congratulations to the Italian company Sa Laurera for receiving the 2016 Arca Deli Award for its Sardinian grasspea variety Inchixa.
In 2016, the SAVE Foundation announced the Arca Deli Award which is dedicated to products derived from the cultivation of local rare or endangered varieties that were recovered and maintained on a farm and are appropriately valued. We chose to compete with our Inchixa.
At the annual meeting of the foundation held in Metlika, Slovenia in September the SAVE jury met to evaluate products that had entered the competition.
A few weeks ago, we were informed that we are among the six winners! Sa Laurera is the only Italian company to have won the Arca Deli Award 2016, and our grasspea is the first Sardinian pulse to receive international recognition.
From a toxic plant, contraindicated for human consumption, to an interesting crop that deserves to be reassessed for its nutritional and nutraceutical features: It is particularly rich in protein, containing around 30g of protein per 100g of edible seeds, and seems to have positive effects for the prevention of cardiovascular diseases and osteoporosis.
The Inchixa example shows that small-scale farm work can be a starting point for the recovery and development of forgotten foods.
Preparing grasspea to eat is hard work, so “recovery and development” of this “forgotten food” must have been quite a challenge. But not an insurmountable one, apparently.
In Sardinia, new generations and urban dwellers, who are increasingly sensitive to issues related to health, food and local gastronomic traditions, not only appreciate the legume but actively seek it out.
I couldn’t find Inchixa in any of the usual databases, but “the name comes from from the Catalan word Guixa,” and there are lots of accessions of things with this name in the Spanish genebank.
Other Sardinian local names for grasspea are Denti de bècia, Piseddu, Pisu-faa, Pisu a tres atzas. Propagation material used to start the recovery of landrace derives from small-scale cultivations of our relatives, who have mostly cultivated this crop for self-consumption.
Piseddu is the only one of these which I found on Genesys, collected in Sardinia and conserved in Germany. Thank goodness for those relatives, but I hope they put all of these landraces in a genebank somewhere. Perhaps ICARDA’s? They have very little from Italy, but lots from the rest of the area of the crop (click to enlarge the map).
Nibbles: Meet a breeder, Radiation breeding, Cassava IK, Banana apocalypse, Chestnut doom & gloom, Crazy grafter, Crazy recombination, Obsidian sickle, Cat rug
- Meet a pumpkin breeder.
- Meet the history of atomic plant breeding.
- Meet a cassava anthropologist.
- Dial back the banana apocalypse stuff, banana guy says.
- On the other hand, the American chestnut apocalypse is all too real.
- A really wild pig.
- Grafting gone wild.
- Wild plants reveal a gene to speed plant breeding, someday.
- Beautiful Neolithic tools from the Sea of Galilee.
- And a beautiful, but slightly freaky, Egyptian rug. Made of cat hair.