- A significantly enhanced role for plant genetic resource centres in linking in situ and ex situ conservation to aid user germplasm access. On-farm conservation must result in use of the conserved diversity, and genebanks can help with that. Just another way of saying the two approaches are complementary?
- Looking back to look ahead: the temporal dimension of conservation seed bank collections. Those genebanks may need to do repeated sampling of the same population though.
- Landrace diversity and heritage of the indigenous millet crop fonio (Digitaria exilis): Socio-cultural and climatic drivers of change in the Fouta Djallon region of Guinea. Repeated sampling would defintely have helped.
- Community seedbanks in Europe: their role between ex situ and on-farm conservation. Repeated sampling is kind of what community seedbanks do, no?
- Impacts of climate change on fonio millet: seed germination and suitability modelling of an important indigenous West African crop. Community seedbanks may not be enough though.
- Phylogenetics, evolution and biogeography of four Digitaria food crop lineages across West Africa, India, and Europe. Maybe the wild relatives will help.
- Black Ash – a Forgotten Domestication Trait in Garden Orach (Atriplex hortensis L.). It’s amazing what people domesticated plants for in the past. And might in the future.
- Quality seed production scenario of Egyptian clover (Trifolium alexandrinum) in India: A 24-year retrospective analysis. But in the end, you have to get high quality certified seeds out, and that’s not always easy.
- The potential of seedbank digital information in plant conservation. Will definitely need a pretty good documentation system to keep all the above straight.
Nibbles: Nourishing investments, Genebank RoI, Seed science double, Ecuador genebank, Ethiopian genebank, MSSRF genebank, CG genebanks, Botanic gardens, SwissAid saves seeds, Brazil conservation, Indian diner, Kenyan food, Saladino on citrus, Lost apple, Seed Savers, Hybrids, Germplasm crime
- All of IFAD’s 5 investments that will help nourish the world need crop diversity. Prove me wrong.
- And yet we still have to have articles on communicating the importance of genebanks.
- Cosmos tries to do it by pointing to the science.
- Smithsonian Magazine tries to do it by saying it’s tricky.
- Genebanks try to do it by having nice new websites and talking to the media. Some of the biggest media.
- CGIAR tries to do it by calling them an Accelerator.
- IIED tries to do it by saying even botanic gardens can help farmers.
- SwissAid thinks “[n]ational and international gene banks should give farmers’ organizations low-threshold access to their collections.” No argument there.
- Maybe we should have songs about genebanks, like the Maxakali have about the Atlantic Forest.
- Or we could just talk about food, food, glorious food.
- Could also just fall back on the good old canonical lost-heirloom-apple-found story.
- Or the canonical medical case for “ancient grains” story.
- Though even there the heirlooms vs hybrids debate will rage I suppose…
- But, whatever we do, let’s not take it to extremes, shall we?
Help FAO celebrate PGRFA management
To commemorate its 80th anniversary, FAO plans to recognize some of these outstanding best practices and innovative approaches in sustainable plant production and protection, which have occurred in the last 40 years.
And among the technical areas being considered is — wait for it… “Management of crop germplasm, including collecting, conservation, characterization, evaluation, documentation, and distribution of plant genetic resources for food and agriculture”!
Data everywhere, again — or rather, still
A bit of a roundup of data stuff today. Things have been piling up in my to-blog folder, and the time has come to tidy up.
First up, and most relevant here, is the webinar on how to use Genesys. It’s long, admittedly, but well worth it if you have anything to do with genebanks. Genesys can accommodate phenomic data, of course, and coincidentally here’s a set of training materials on how to do characterization and evaluation of plant genetic resources.
The botanic gardens community has its own Genesys-type thing, called PlantSearch, and there’s been an upgrade recently that readers here might be interested in. All that’s missing for the trifecta is herbaria :)
Finally, you might want to combine provenance data from Genesys (or indeed the forest genetic resources databases we blogged about earlier this week) with different features of the environment, right? Right. So let me quickly point to new spatial datasets on the world’s soils and agro-ecological zonation (which, interestingly, allows you to upload the sort of KML files that Genesys can spit out), the extent of cropland in Africa, and — why not? — the global distribution of cattle, goats, sheep and horses.
Brainfood: Andean chefs, Tricot, Enset ploidy, Minor livestock, NUS meals, Cocoyam breeding, Millets in India, Brazilian fruits, Indian fruits
- Grains of Wisdom: Insights into the Minds of Top Chefs—A Synthesis of Expert Interviews and Literature. A good chef can make even quinoa palatable.
- Citizen science informs demand-driven breeding of opportunity crops. I wonder if tricot can make quinoa palatable. Never mind, it’s good for a lot of other things.
- Recurrent evolution of cryptic triploids in cultivated enset increases yield. Unclear if triploid enset is any more palatable than the diploid. Interesting that traditional knowledge picks up ploidy.
- Is there unrecognized potential in neglected livestock species in Sub-Saharan Africa? A systematic review of four selected species. The benefits include sustainability, nutrition and income, but not higher palatability apparently.
- Enhancing Nutrition and Cost Efficiency in Kenyan School Meals Using Neglected and Underutilized Species and Linear Programming: A Case Study from an Informal Settlement. Better palatability was not included in the linear programming, alongside such staples (geddit?) as cost and nutritional value. But it could be, right?
- Cocoyam (Xanthosoma sagittifolium (L.) Schott) genetic resources and breeding: a review of 50 years of research efforts. Unclear if enhanced palatability is a breeding aim. But it should be.
- Strengthening the millet economy: lessons from a South Indian case study. Palatability is not an issue. Drudgery is.
- The traditional knowledge about the biodiversity of edible Brazilian fruits and their pollinators: an integrative review. Presumably includes data on palatability? And ploidy :)
- Wild edible fruit utilization patterns in Garhwal himalaya (Uttarakhand, India): a multi-decadal perspective. Reasons for decline in consumption include limited traditional knowledge transfer, time constraints, migration, generation gap, and hygiene concerns. But not, apparently, palatability.