- Assessment of Genetic Diversity and Population Structure in a Global Reference Collection of 531 Accessions of Carthamus tinctorius L. (Safflower) Using AFLP Markers. Bayesian analysis of genetic diversity of global (43 countries) collection held in India reveals 19 geographic groups, with most diversity in the Near East and Iran–Afghanistan regions.
- Molecular evaluation of orphan Afghan common wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) landraces collected by Dr. Kihara using single nucleotide polymorphic markers. Analysis (Bayesian, natch) of genetic diversity of over 400 wheat landraces collected 1950-1970 and conserved at the Kihara Institute for Biological Research, Japan reveals agroecological patterning and hotspot in Badakhshan province.
- Sources of pest resistance in cassava. Analysis of 89 trials over 25 years involving the CIAT cassava collection identifies 129 landraces with high resistance to thrips, 33 to green mites and 19 to whiteflies.
- Screening sweetpotato genotypes for tolerance to drought stress. Days to permanent wilting point (DPWP) points to 8 promising clones in Kenya.
- Olive domestication and diversification in the Mediterranean Basin. About 400 wild and cultivated accessions divide up into W, central and E groups and show evidence of admixture among them and local domestication events.
- The Multiple Functions and Services of Community Seedbanks. More than just conservation.
- Diversification practices reduce organic to conventional yield gap. More data and fancier maths finds a lower organic yield gap (20%), which is halved by multi-cropping and crop rotations.
- Conserving landraces and improving livelihoods: how to assess the success of on farm conservation projects? All you need is two graphs.
- Finding Our Way through Phenotypes. “We urge all biologists, data managers, and clinicians to actively support the development, evaluation, refinement, and adoption of methodologies, tools, syntaxes, and standards for capturing and computing over phenotypic data and to collaborate in bringing about a coordinated approach.” Amen.
- Wild food in Europe: A synthesis of knowledge and data of terrestrial wild food as an ecosystem service. 65 million people collect, and at least 100 million consume, wild food. But only 81 plants? Thought it would be more. But even so, quite an ecosystem service.
Global Forest Genetic Resources: Taking Stock
December saw the publication of a special, open access issue of Forest Ecology and Management on “Global Forest Genetic Resources: Taking Stock.” Ian Dawson, one of the editors, has blogged chez nous about a couple of the papers. Here is the full table of contents, with links to both the papers and Ian’s posts.
Loo J, Souvannavong O, Dawson IK (2014) Seeing the trees as well as the forest: the importance of managing forest genetic resources. Forest Ecology and Management, 333, 1-8.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.foreco.2014.08.014
Dawson IK, Leakey R, Clement CR, Weber JC, Cornelius JP, Roshetko JM, Vinceti B, Kalinganire A, Tchoundjeu Z, Masters E, Jamnadass R (2014) The management of tree genetic resources and the livelihoods of rural communities in the tropics: non-timber forest products, smallholder agroforestry practices and tree commodity crops. Forest Ecology and Management, 333, 9-21.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.foreco.2014.01.021
Koskela J, Vinceti B, Dvorak W, Bush D, Dawson IK, Loo J, Kjaer ED, Navarro C, Padolina C, Bordács S, Jamnadass R, Graudal L, Ramamonjisoa L (2014) Utilization and transfer of forest genetic resources: a global review. Forest Ecology and Management, 333, 22-34.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.foreco.2014.07.017
Graudal L, Aravanopoulos F, Bennadji Z, Changtragoon S, Fady B, Kjær ED, Loo J, Ramamonjisoa L, Vendramin GG (2014) Global to local genetic diversity indicators of evolutionary potential in tree species within and outside forests. Forest Ecology and Management, 333, 35-51.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.foreco.2014.05.002
Wickneswari R, Rajora OP, Finkeldey R, Aravanopoulos F, Bouvet J-M, Vaillancourt RE, Kanashiro M, Fady B, Tomita M, Vinson C (2014) Genetic effects of forest management practices: global synthesis and perspectives. Forest Ecology and Management, 333, 52-65.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.foreco.2014.06.008
Thomas E, Jalonen R, Loo J, Boshier D, Gallo L, Cavers S, Bordács S, Smith P, Bozzano M (2014) Genetic considerations in ecosystem restoration using native tree species. Forest Ecology and Management, 333, 66-75.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.foreco.2014.07.015
Alfaro RI, Fady B, Vendramin GG, Dawson IK, Fleming RA, Sáenz-Romero C, Lindig-Cisneros RA, Murdock T, Vinceti B, Navarro CM, Skrøppa T, Baldinelli G, El-Kassaby YA, Loo J (2014) The role of forest genetic resources in responding to biotic and abiotic factors in the context of anthropogenic climate change. Forest Ecology and Management, 333, 76-87.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.foreco.2014.04.006
Pritchard HW, Moat JF, Ferraz JBS, Marks TR, Camargo JLC, Nadarajan J, Ferraz IDK (2014) Innovative approaches to the preservation of forest trees. Forest Ecology and Management, 333, 88-98.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.foreco.2014.08.012
I wonder how many of the recently-published top 20 research questions on forestry and landscapes we can now tick off.
Nibbles: Sake worries, Idaho apples, Local cuisine, SP leaves, Baobab superfood, CWR training, Physic gardens, Forest questions
- As if Japan doesn’t have enough to worry about, its sake is in trouble.
- Update on that Idaho Heritage Tree Project.
- Why local cuisine is best. Who needs fusion, eh?
- Sweet potato leaves are good, and good for you. But you can’t eat them if they’re not part of your local cuisine.
- Same goes for baobab.
- New Samara has report on crop wild relatives training in Uganda.
- A medicinal plant garden in Philadelphia.
- How can we improve agriculture to reduce the pressure in forested areas? One of the top 20 questions for forestry and landscapes, apparently.
All maize, all the time
Lots on maize on the interwebs lately. First, there was a Nature Plants paper on the origin of the crop in the southwestern US, comparing DNA from ancient cobs with that from Mexican landraces:
“When considered together, the results suggest that the maize of the U.S. Southwest had a complex origin, first entering the U.S. via a highland route about 4,100 years ago and later via a lowland coastal route about 2,000 years ago,” said Jeffrey Ross-Ibarra, an associate professor in the Department of Plant Sciences.
A separate article in the journal summarized the results and set them in a wider context:
As genomic and palaeo-genomic studies have become more common, it has become increasingly clear that virtually every domestic plant and animal has incorporated genomes of numerous populations, including many that were not involved in the original domestication process. For example, although grapes, apples and pigs were domesticated outside of Europe, admixture with native wild European species has been so significant as to obscure the geographic origins of the modern domestic populations.
Meanwhile, the controversy over how to measure genetic erosion in maize continues, though I’m afraid in this case only the extract is free.
Which all means that the rather nice learning resource on maize domestication at the University of Utah, which I coincidentally recently came across, may need to be tweaked a bit.
Incidentally, if you plug Zea into the Native American Ethnobotany database at the University of Michigan, also a serendipitous find over the holidays, you’ll see that maize was far from being just a food plant.
There are even a couple of historical maize specimens included in the beta version of the new data portal of the Natural History Museum in London, which seems to be getting the softest of launches just now. Great to browse through. Not sure what kind of launch Brazil’s new(ish) biodiversity information system (SiBBs) got, but it too features maize records, over 400 in this case, though only 10 georeferenced. The source of most is given as “Dados repatriados – United States (no coordinates)”, which means that they came from GBIF, and in the case of maize are probably therefore mostly from GRIN. As I said a couple of posts ago for wheat, data sure does get around online.
One wheat database to rule them all
Interesting to see Brockwell Bake, of all people, come up with an online database which
…brings together publicily available data for around 398,000 wheat lines from many wheat germplasm collections including the European Wheat Database, the Vavilov Insitute (Russia), the Australian winter cereals collection, USDA/GRIN (USA), CIMMYT, ICARDA and the Nordic Gene Centre with additional collection site information from FIGS plus pedigree, synonym and genetic data from GRIS and gene symbol and class information from the Catalogue of Gene Symbols to create a central point to help you find wheat lines of interest to you.
In terms of coverage, that’s not far short of what Genesys has, which is 415,070 accessions. Online data does get around…