Information

March 30, 2022March 31, 2022

A remarkable pomologist

There was a fascinating tweet yesterday from Trevor & Frances FitzJohn, cider makers in Wairarapa, New Zealand.

One of the most courageous pomologists was Bavarian priest Korbinian Aigner. He was outspoken during WW2 and sent to Dachau concentration camp where he secret continued his apple breeding.

— TeePee Cider (@Trevor_FJ) March 29, 2022

It’s about the Bavarian priest, pomologist and artist Korbinian Aigner. I’m sorry to say I’d never heard of him. He apparently continued his apple breeding efforts even while imprisoned at Dachau.

Between two barracks he planted apple trees, and he even succeeded in breeding new varieties which he named KZ-1, KZ-2, KZ-3 and KZ-4, though by 2016 only KZ-3 (later named the Kobinian Apple in his honor) was still in existence. The saplings were smuggled out of the camp by a young novice nun, who visited the plantations in order to collect fruit and vegetables for a local orphanage.

Alas, I can’t find his KZ-3 variety in any of the usual genebank databases. Has anyone out there come across it?

March 28, 2022March 22, 2022

Brainfood: NPGS use, Descriptor clustering, Fast phenotyping, Flax duplicates, Photosynthesis variation, Brassica breeding, Robusta & CC, Seaweed domestication, Fighting fish domestication, Hotspots & diets, Cotton & wildlife

Developing country demand for crop germplasm conserved by the U.S. National Plant Germplasm System. 5 years, 10 crops, 100,000 samples.
cacGMS: An Algorithm Cluster Germplasm based on Categorical Genetic Traits. Build a better cluster algorithm for categorical descriptors and the world will beat a path to your genebank. If it isn’t already.
Deep learning: as the new frontier in high-throughput plant phenotyping. A really fancy way of scoring those descriptors.
Selection of duplicates of flax accessions – an important task in the management of collection of genetic resources of Linum usitatissimum L. But you can do a lot with passport data.
Mining for allelic gold: finding genetic variation in photosynthetic traits in crops and wild relatives. Let the gene editing begin!
Expanding the genetic variation of Brassica juncea by introgression of the Brassica rapa genome. AABB gets a shot of AA.
Adaptive potential of Coffea canephora from Uganda in response to climate change. Some populations are going to do better than others under climate change. Ah, but are they the best populations for other traits?
Pre-domestication bottlenecks of the cultivated seaweed Gracilaria chilensis. Founder effect and over-exploitation mean that more diversity from New Zealand might be needed.
Genomic consequences of domestication of the Siamese fighting fish. You don’t need huge genetic diversity to get huge phenotypic diversity, even with strong selection. But will new diversity be needed eventually? From Siam?
Food versus wildlife: Will biodiversity hotspots benefit from healthier diets? Some hotspots will actually do worse if people eat better, so we will have to look at better agriculture too. Including seaweed, for all I know.
Commodity crops in biodiversity-rich production landscapes: Friends or foes? The example of cotton in the Mid Zambezi Valley, Zimbabwe. Possibly an example of the above. Cotton was better for wildlife than what came after prices dropped.

March 22, 2022March 23, 2022

Nibbles: Future Seeds, Irish Seed Savers, ICRAF genebank, Cherry blossoms, Coffee futures, Eat This Newsletter

More on how Future Seeds fits into the global system of genebanks. And more still.
You can immerse yourself in the Irish Seed Savers genebank.
Do you want chips with your tree genebank?
There’s a sort of cherry blossom genebank in the Smithsonian Gardens.
The Economist fails to mention genebanks in its piece on how to save coffee from climate change. Here’s an EU project that’s using coffee diversity for adaptation.
Jeremy’s latest newsletter looks at everything from the denazification of cattle to yams. But not genebanks. Subscribe anyway!

March 14, 2022March 11, 2022

Brainfood: Kungas, Tomato domestication, Wild honeybees, Association mapping, Mixtures, Wild edible plants, DSI ABS, Fusarium wilt, Mango weeds, Conservation payments

The genetic identity of the earliest human-made hybrid animals, the kungas of Syro-Mesopotamia. According to 4500 year old DNA, these super-donkeys were sterile crosses between female domestic donkeys and wild male asses. I guarantee nothing below will be as much fun as this.
Haplotype analyses reveal novel insights into tomato history and domestication driven by long-distance migrations and latitudinal adaptations. I was wrong. Turns out tomatoes came about by one wild species evolving into a semi-domesticated one during a gradual migration from the Peruvian deserts to the Mexican rainforests and that fully domesticated Peruvian and Ecuadorian populations were the result of more recent back-migrations.
Semi-natural habitats promote winter survival of wild-living honeybees in an agricultural landscape. Wrong again. Rare wild honeybees have been found in Galician power poles.
High-resolution association mapping with libraries of immortalized lines from ancestral landraces. Actually, immortal landraces sound pretty cool too.
From cultivar mixtures to allelic mixtures: opposite effects of allelic richness between genotypes and genotype richness in wheat. Mixtures of inbred lines are generally better than pure stands for coping with blotch disease, but sometimes specific allelic combinations undermine this. Well, ancient super-donkeys it ain’t, but still.
Local communities’ perceptions of wild edible plant and mushroom change: A systematic review. The literature shows that local people are worried about the decreased abundance of the wild plants they rely on for food and nutrition security.
Weeds Enhance Pollinator Diversity and Fruit Yield in Mango. That should be “weeds.” They’re not weeds if they’re actually useful. Maybe some of them are even edible.
Multilateral benefit-sharing from digital sequence information will support both science and biodiversity conservation. We need a multilateral DSI benefit-sharing system which decouples access to DSI from sharing the benefits of DSI use. Where have I heard that before? And can I hear more about ancient hybrid super-donkeys instead?
Diversity of Fusarium associated banana wilt in northern Viet Nam. The dreaded TR4 is still rare, but the pathogen lurks among the wild species too.
Payments for Conservation of Animal Genetic Resources in Agriculture: One Size Fits All? I wonder what size would fit a hybrid super-donkey.

March 10, 2022March 10, 2022

Nibbles: CIAT genebank, Rome food museum, Sea farming, Hemp, Community seed bank, Indian MAPs

CIAT’s new genebank is a real looker.
Rome’s new cooking museum sounds like fun.
Give seaweed salad a chance.
What the hell is happening with hemp in the US?
The College of the Rockies really wants to put its genebank to work for the local community.
NBPGR building awareness of the importance of medicinal and aromatic plants in Arunachal Pradesh.