- Domestication history and geographical adaptation inferred from a SNP map of African rice. Evidence of strong selection for salt tolerance over protracted domestication period.
- Genome-Wide Association Study of Resistance to Soybean Cyst Nematode (Heterodera glycines) HG Type 2.5.7 in Wild Soybean (Glycine soja). 43 resistant accessions out of 235.
- Food incursions into global heritage: Peruvian cuisine’s slippery road to UNESCO. How the 1% eat.
- Differentiation and description of aromatic short grain rice landraces of eastern Indian state of Odisha based on qualitative phenotypic descriptors. There’s morphological diversity within aromatic types.
- Genetic Diversity and Population Structure of Cowpea (Vigna unguiculata L. Walp). 768 cultivated types from 56 countries in the USDA collection fall out into 3 genetic groups, but no obvious geographical structure.
- Geography of Genetic Structure in Barley Wild Relative Hordeum vulgare subsp. spontaneum in Jordan. 3 genetic groups again, and no geographic or climatic structure, again.
- Utilization of a high-throughput shoot imaging system to examine the dynamic phenotypic responses of a C4 cereal crop plant to nitrogen and water deficiency over time. Who needs morphological descriptors?
- Establishment of a Core Collection of Traditional Cuban Theobroma cacao Plants for Conservation and Utilization Purposes. 185 out of 537 hardly seems worth it.
- Promotion and Utilization of Niche Foods for Food and Nutrition Security. Termites with your spider plants, madam?
- The History of Wheat Breeding in Tajikistan. Seems, according to the authors, to have been a waste of time.
Nibbles: Saffron startup, Genebank software, Teff redux, Heirloom fruit & veg
- Counting on saffron in Afghanistan.
- Counting on GRIN-Global in genebanks.
- Counting on teff as the new super grain.
- Counting on heirlooms.
Eat this newsletter
Jeremy’s latest Eat This Podcast newsletter is out, chock full of tasty tidbits. As for the podcast itself, the most recent is about Elkstone Farm in Colorado, and asks the question: How do you grow food when the growing season is less than three months long? Spoiler alert: bears are an issue too.
Finger on the pulse in Rio
My latest from the work blog:
There seems to be a bit of an issue over at the Olympics with fast food marketing, but if athletes in Rio, or indeed spectators, want a simple, cheap meal that’s also healthy, and hopefully sourced more sustainably, they could do a lot worse than tucking into the Brazilian staple of rice and beans (but don’t forget the vegetables and the tropical fruit juice). This is such an established part of Brazilian life that EMBRAPA, the country’s agricultural research organization, has a whole research unit called Arroz e Feijão – Rice & Beans.
Unfortunately, the level of attention beans get in Brazil is not typical around the world, even in other places that eat a lot of them, and the situation is even worse for other pulses – the general term often used to refer to the dry seeds of members of the plant family Leguminosae (technically, it’s now called the Fabaceae, but life is too short as it is), crops like chickpeas, lentils, peanuts, cowpeas and a host of others. That, at least, is the contention of a paper just published in Nature Plants ((Christine H. Foyer et al. (2016). Neglecting legumes has compromised human health and sustainable food production. Nature Plants, 2 (16112) : 10.1038/nplants.2016.112)), which also sets out to show that this relative neglect has been bad for global food and nutritional security.
Table 1 from the paper, which I discuss in the post, is also available as a website listing various resources for each pulse species.
Brainfood: Ryegrass genome, Pest distributions, German oregano, Pápalos distribution, Chinese pea, Dutch cattle, Animal biobanking, Legumes everywhere, Crop diversification in China, Asian fermentation
- An ultra-high density genetic linkage map of perennial ryegrass (Lolium perenne) using genotyping by sequencing (GBS) based on a reference shotgun genome assembly. Zzzzzzz.
- Future Risks of Pest Species under Changing Climatic Conditions. We’re doomed.
- Antioxidant capacity variation in the oregano (Origanum vulgare L.) collection of the German National Genebank. It’s huge. Fantastic. The best variation you’ve ever seen, I guarantee it.
- The distribution of cultivated species of Porophyllum (Asteraceae) and their wild relatives under climate change. New one on me.
- Biodiversity analysis in the digital era. Using the Atlas of Living Australia as an example.
- Large-scale evaluation of pea (Pisum sativum L.) germplasm for cold tolerance in the field during winter in Qingdao. 214 out of 3672, mainly coming from, wait for it, the winter production regions.
- Conservation priorities for the different lines of Dutch Red and White Friesian cattle change when relationships with other breeds are taken into account. 5 out of 7 genetic lines don’t need to be conserved.
- Domesticated Animal Biobanking: Land of Opportunity. “…journals should apply the same standard to samples and associated data, as they currently apply to molecular data, in terms of storage in formalized repositories prior to publication.”
- Neglecting legumes has compromised human health and sustainable food production. Includes nice summary of genebank holdings, using Genesys as a source of information.
- Crop Diversity and Land Simplification Effects on Pest Damage in Northern China. Diversity to the rescue. But…
- Ethnic Fermented Foods and Alcoholic Beverages of Japan. Just one chapter in a whole book on fermentation in Asia.