- Molecular Markers for Genetic Diversity Studies in African Leafy Vegetables. Not surprisingly, only 3% of 33 studies since 1998 are on Cleome, more than half on cowpea. And a quarter used RAPDs. Orphan crops, anyone? These one don’t even get a table summarizing and comparing findings across species.
- Conservation priorities of Iberoamerican pig breeds and their ancestors based on microsatellite information. Depending on how you crunch the genetic numbers, Iberoamerican pig breeds could conceivably best be looked after by conserving their ancestral Iberian pig breeds. But it’s not just about the genetics, is it?
- Native fruit tree genetic resources in Japan. Only a Castanea was domesticated in pre-modern times, and they’re all endangered in post-modern times.
- Perceptual selection and the unconscious selection of ‘volunteer’ seedlings in clonally propagated crops: an example with African cassava (Manihot esculenta Crantz) using ethnobotany and population genetics. It’s seedlings that look most like existing varieties that farmers try to keep.
- Changes in sunflower breeding over the last fifty years. From yield under optimal conditions to disease resistance, from oil quantity to quality. But international collaboration still needed.
- Angolan vegetable crops have unique genotypes of potential value for future breeding programmes. Unique material documented, and hopefully made available for use.
- Maize Germplasm Conservation in Southern California’s Urban Gardens: Introduced Diversity Beyond ex situ and in situ Management. Migrants bring along their crops.
- An assessment of the conservation status of Mesoamerican crop species and their wild relatives in light of climate change. Priority areas for on farm and in situ conservation don’t by and large coincide with protected areas.
- A Proposal Regarding Best Practices for Validating the Identity of Genetic Stocks and the Effects of Genetic Variants. Just do it.
Nibbles: Chinese genebanks, Rough times at Roughwood, EU seed laws, Cacao & coffee migrations, CIMMYT pix
- China’s largest genebank just got a little bit larger. And some context.
- Small Pennsylvania genebank may get a lot smaller.
- Denmark shows the way on seed saving in Europe.
- Chocolate really got around.
- Coffee didn’t do too badly either. But home is where the heart is.
- More pix of wheat wild relatives than you can shake a stick at.
Nibbles: BananaGuard, Wheat has a blast, Grow your own antibiotic, Bhutanese cypress, Natural history collections, Genebanks big & small, Better grasslands, Local foodways
- Who needs resistant banana varieties when you have synthetic biology? And more.
- More trouble for wheat, and climate change is to blame. Maybe Vavilov can help there too?
- DIY penicillin.
- Saving the sacred cypress. Try saying that quickly.
- What have herbaria ever done for us? Apart from giving us endless joy, you mean?
- The Indian and other genebanks securing the future of food. But see also our earlier post on Dr Tyagi’s paper.
- Aboriginal community gets a genebank.
- We need better grass. No, not that kind of grass. Well, not only that kind of grass.
- A pean for African food cultures. And Pacific ones too.
Fancy maths meets haystack
One of the authors, Michael Mackay, tells us about a new book that is sure to set pulses racing.
A question anyone involved in crop improvement — breeders, pre-breeders, genebank managers, genetic resources experts of all hues — has invariably asked is: where can I find some new genetic variation to overcome this nasty new problem that’s hammering productivity in my region? We all know there is an enormous reservoir of plant genetic resources held in ex situ or in situ around the globe. To use a cliché that’s been much used but never bettered in this context: it’s all too often like looking for a needle in a haystack. Sure, molecular biology is increasingly predicting, and occasionally even delivering, a more rapid pathway to identifying and using those elusive new genes or alleles. But are we making the best possible use of the information that’s out there already?
Enter Applied Mathematics and Omics to Assess Crop Genetic Resources for Climate Change Adaptive Traits. This book, just published by CRC Press, applies the latest statistical techniques to explore plant genetic resources data of all different kinds. The aim is to help researchers create manageable, trait-specific, sub-sets of germplasm. These should end up being best-bet candidates for evaluation and further research. Think of core collections, but skewed towards — enriched for — particular traits, rather than efficiently covering diversity overall. Think of a smaller haystack with a much better chance of containing that needle.
While the book proposes a general conceptual mathematical framework for exploring how different data can be used to estimate the likelihood of specific variation existing within a given accession, there is a particular focus on climate change. It includes discussion of how genetic resources can be used to mitigate and adapt to climate change, and how different plant traits are likely to become more important as the climate changes.
So, as genebanks accumulate information on their germplasm — making the haystack ever bigger — and plant breeders come up with ever better ways to use that elusive needle, this book identifies an opportunity to bring these two communities together in the cause of adaptation to climate change. The maths needed to facilitate a more effective ‘mining’ of novel genes and alleles from the world’s genebanks is certainly fancy. But this books puts it within the reach of anyone with a computer. Or a pitchfork.
Nibbles: Strampelli, Gender, State of World’s Plants, Wild peanuts, Istambul gardens, ICRAF & CIFOR DG chat, Biofortification, Cowpea genome, SSEx Q&A, Rice resilience, Cacao & coffee microbiome, Mapping crops, BBC Discovery, EU seed law
- “È curioso che il grano Cappelli, ora diventato un simbolo della “pasta da gourmet”, fosse una volta il comune grano della pasta di tutti i giorni, e che venga da alcuni considerato “autoctono” quando in realtà è una varietà tunisina.” Curious indeed.
- A woman’s crop? Not as straightforward as it may sound.
- State of the World’s Plants symposium, 11-12 May.
- Above will no doubt consider crop wild relatives such as the peanut’s.
- More on the urban vegetable gardens of Istanbul.
- Tree DGs in the garden getting coffee. On International Forest Day.
- The “Bernie Sanders” vision of biofortification.
- Cowpea to get a genome.
- Q&A with John Torgrimson of Seed Savers Exchange.
- The resilience of rice: “You never find a crop that can span this latitude and altitude.” Really? Wheat?
- Cacao and coffee have a microbial terroir.
- Crop mixes are geographically stable.
- Prof. Kathy Willis of Kew on Feeding the World, including using crop wild relatives. IRRI Kew genebanks featured.
- Denmark interprets EU law to allow seed saving.