- Mapping climatic mechanisms likely to favour the emergence of novel communities. New climate combinations are rare (3.4% of evaluated cells), but mean displacement moderately rapid (3.7 km per decade) and divergence high (>60° for 67% of cells). What will all this mean for CWR? As many are ruderals, maybe nothing?
- Why biodiversity matters. Inaugural issue of Nature Ecology & Evolution. Not much on agricultural biodiversity, alas.
- Bridging the practitioner-researcher divide: Indicators to track environmental, economic, and sociocultural sustainability of agricultural commodity production. Again, no surprise that biodiversity is hardly considered by either researchers or practitioners in monitoring sustainability, though that’s not the point of the paper.
- Plausible rice yield losses under future climate warming. More even than IFPRI thought: −8.3 ± 1.4% per degree.
- Recent breeding programs enhanced genetic diversity in both desi and kabuli varieties of chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.). But from a low baseline?
- EU-Forest, a high-resolution tree occurrence dataset for Europe. Want European tree diversity, go to the Pyrenees.
- Farmer fidelity in the Canary Islands revealed by ancient DNA from prehistoric seeds. New barley same as old barley.
- Evaluation of 19,460 Wheat Accessions Conserved in the Indian National Genebank to Identify New Sources of Resistance to Rust and Spot Blotch Diseases. 45 accessions had known resistance genes against all three rusts as well as a QTL for spot blotch resistance.
- Promoting the Use of Common Oat Genetic Resources through Diversity Analysis and Core Collection Construction. Interesting, but 21 out of 91 is hardly a core collection.
- Utilization of genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge in academic research. A good practice guide for access and benefit-sharing. Well there’s no excuse now.
- Identifying species threat hotspots from global supply chains. Global maps of which countries, and which commodities they consume, most endanger threatened species around the world.
Nibbles: Catching up edition
- And we’re back.
- India wants to set up a fish genebank. Because climate change, which is scrambling up climates everywhere. And fish are important, so don’t scoff.
- Nepal’s community seed banks in the news. Also Brazil’s. And New Zealand’s, since we’re at it.
- Don’t forget India’s. And not just the community sort, either.
- Our friends at Kew on the wonders of genebanks.
- Someone mention genebanks? Latest photos from Ft Collins.
- You can make your own. Genebank, that is.
- Podcast on a really long-term seed viability experiment.
- It’s not just about the genebanks, though. Or all that biotechnology for that matter. Indeed not, as iPES-Food reminds us.
- Italian monks help rebuild earthquake-hit town. With beer.
- French monks are at it too. Beer, that is.
- Go ahead, have that piece of cheese with that monk-brewed beer.
- Or with a nice IPA for that matter.
- Or a banana beer.
- Sure, take all the romance out of beer, why don’t you.
- The Mesoamerican, entomological roots of the colour scarlet.
- Don’t keep people out if you want to protect forests. I can’t understand why this still needs to be said.
- The story of the quest for super-sweet corn. And a celebration of the life of a giant of corn (as in maize) research.
- And for the “ultimate” avocado.
- How about ultimate dope?
- The traditional, end-of-year, save-the-apple and the-end-of-frankincense stories. Actually there were two on apples. And it’s not all bad news for frankincense.
- Saving the Tamworth pig in Australia. And the camel in Rajasthan.
- Cool map of French traditional foods.
- For your next Saturnalia feast.
- The Met has a “corne field.”
- Earliest evidence of potatoes from the central Andes. What, not Canada?
- Neolithic hunter-gatherers of the Libyan Sahara liked their veggies. Which we all should. But not at these prices. Ah, wait, though, is the melon a vegetable, or a fruit?
- Some crops come, some go.
- Which seems a good place to bring this first, gigantic Nibble of 2017 to a close. Did you miss us? I know you did. But did we miss anything over the holidays? Let us know.
Brainfood: African sorghum, Dying living collections, Safe oats, Faba relative, Monitoring erosion, Driving livestock diversity, Sweet cryo, Wild rice genomes, Indian foxtails, Bonsai cassava, Sahelian food trees
- Assessment of genetic diversity of sorghum [Sorghum bicolor (l.) Moench] germplasm in East and Central Africa. Each country is different.
- A Review of Living Collections with Special Emphasis on Sustainability and Its Impact on Research Across Multiple Disciplines. Crop genebanks are just the tip of the iceberg, but they all have the same problems.
- Why Oats Are Safe and Healthy for Celiac Disease Patients. Because of the avenins.
- 14,000-year-old seeds indicate the Levantine origin of the lost progenitor of faba bean. Eureka!
- Monitoring Changes in Genetic Diversity. Needs genetic data.
- An exploratory analysis on how geographic, socioeconomic, and environmental drivers affect the diversity of livestock breeds worldwide. More animals = more breeds.
- Cryopreservation and evaluations of vegetative growth, microtuber production and genetic stability in regenerants of purple-fleshed potato. Apparently the first time it was done for this colour of sweet potatoes.
- Sequencing of Australian wild rice genomes reveals ancestral relationships with domesticated rice. N. Australia is the centre of diversity of genome A.
- Genetic diversity and variability in Foxtail millet [Setaria italica (L.)] germplasm based on morphological traits. 51 Indian elites form non-geographic groups.
- The Bonsai as an alternative safety duplication system of the world cassava collection preserved at CIAT. So cool.
- Conservation of food tree species in Niger: towards a participatory approach in rural communities. Adansonia, Boscia and Maerua need watching.
Nibbles: Royal Soc discussion, Meyer Medal, Adopt-a-seed, Organic coffee, Seed book, CGIAR genebanks, Open source seeds, EUCARPIA conference, Vegetables, Geographic indications
- Prof. Brian Cox presents “Feeding the Future,” and it’s not entirely about GMOs. Worth sitting through the whole thing.
- Did we say that Cary Fowler recently received the Frank N. Meyer Medal for Plant Genetic Resources? This is what he had to say on a different recent occasion.
- Want to adopt a coffee seed? Kew will let you give a really cool Christmas gift.
- Or you could buy some Ethiopian coffee.
- Speaking of Christmas gifts…
- CIAT’s bean diversity collection gets its 15 minutes of fame. And ICARDA’s chickpea collection is not far behind.
- More on “open source seeds.”
- Mobilizing the green gold of plant genetic resources: maybe if they were open source…
- Not just green, though, right? Veggies come in all sorts of colours.
- Brexit may do for Wensleydale. I knew there must be a silver lining.
Indications of lack of progress on agrobiodiversity indicators
Over at the work blog, I’m busy jumping on the biodiversity mainstreaming bandwagon, but I wrote that piece before news came out this morning from the Convention on Biological Diversity meeting in Cancun of the disappointing lack of progress around the world in meeting the Aichi Targets.
You remember the Aichi Targets, don’t you? We’re supposed to be doing a lot of good things for biodiversity by 2020, including, in Target 13, for agro-biodiversity:
the genetic diversity of cultivated plants and farmed and domesticated animals and of wild relatives, including other socio-economically as well as culturally valuable species, is maintained, and strategies have been developed and implemented for minimizing genetic erosion and safeguarding their genetic diversity.
Here’s how we’re getting on, according to the just-published assessment. Spoiler alert: not very well. Green means “On track to meet or exceed the Aichi Target,” orange is “Progress to achieve the Aichi Target but at insufficient rate,” and red denotes “No progress, or a decline against the Aichi Target.” And remember that not all national targets are necessarily well aligned with the Aichi targets, for Target 13 75% being less ambitious or poorly aligned.
The assessment summarizes how countries say they’re doing. Or rather, how the CBD interprets how countries say they’re doing, in meeting the different targets:
101 parties submitted their National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plans (NBSAPs) and 5th National Reports between 2011 and 2016. As of July 2016, 5th National Reports have been submitted by 90% of the Parties, and NBSAPs by 52%. These were collated, analysed and scored by the CBD Secretariat (SCBD).
Here’s the raw data, if you’re interested. How does Venezuela, say, know that it is “on track to achieve” Target 13? There are lots of possible indicators out there. The CBD itself suggested a couple early on in its “quick guide” to Target 13:
• Trends in genetic diversity of cultivated plants, and farmed and domesticated animals and their wild relatives
• Trends in genetic diversity of selected species
• Trends in number of effective policy mechanisms implemented to reduce genetic erosion and safeguard genetic diversity related to plant and animal genetic resources
And a little later, in 2016, in the 5th edition of the Global Biodiversity Outlook, National Reporting and Indicators for Assessing Progress towards the Aichi Biodiversity Targets (UNEP/CBD/SBSTTA/20/13), it came up with this little lot (click to read better):
Note that a couple of indicators (number of accessions in genebanks, number of livestock breeds at risk) are also being proposed for SDG Target 2.5, which echoes the wording of Aichi 13. Note also that, as we blogged about yesterday, some progress is being made on the indicator on Red Listing crop wild relatives. And finally, the Commission on Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture did come up with a very thorough assessment of global plans of action for plant genetic resources earlier this year.
But it’s not over, not by a long chalk. The Biodiversity Indicator Partnership seems to have ideas of its own (though it likes the breeds indicator)…
• Proportion of local breeds classified as being at risk, not-at-risk or at unknown level of risk of extinction
• Growth in species occurrence records accessible through GBIF
and it wants to hear from you if you’ve got better ones.
They may well hear from me eventually, because we’ve been thinking about this whole indicator thing at work too. Stay tuned… In the meantime, I don’t know which specific indicator(s) Venezuela (or any other country) used, I’m afraid. I’d have to look at its NBSAP, and maybe I will one day. Or more likely, get an intern to do it. But if we take the CBD assessment at face value, and it’s the best we have at the moment, we do have some work to do on Target 13. 2020 is not that far away. Lots more mainstreaming to do.