I’m not entirely sure how we missed that data on India’s enormous germplasm collection is now online. While this is welcome, I think it’s fair to say that NBPGR’s PGR Portal still needs some work in terms of user experience. It took me a while to figure out, for example, that if you type a letter under “Crop/Plant Name,” in Passport or in Characterization and Evaluation Search, you get a list of crops beginning with that letter, which you can then choose from. 1 Once you do that you get a list of taxonomic names to choose from, but you can only select one at a time to do your search. And why no rice data at all? There is a nice way of looking at the distribution of different character states for each characterization and evaluation descriptor, but no mapping facility. And you can’t use the portal to order germplasm. To do that you have to fill in a form, which makes no mention of the International Treaty on PGRFA or its SMTA, and email it in. And there are some funny restrictions on use: “All users can search and see the desired information. only registered users can copy and download.” But I couldn’t find a way to register. So, good to see, though clearly a work in progress. Will follow its development closely, and hope to see it link up with Genesys in due course, joining the CGIAR, European and US genebanks.
Brainfood: Climate in Cameroon, Payments for Conservation, Finger Millet, GWAS, Populus genome, miRNA, C4, Cadastres, Orange maize, Raised beds, Contingent valuation, Wild edibles, Sorghum genomics, Brazilian PGR, Citrus genomics
- Climate and Food Production: Understanding Vulnerability from Past Trends in Africa’s Sudan-Sahel. Investment in smallholder farmers can reduce vulnerability, it says here.
- An evaluation of the effectiveness of a direct payment for biodiversity conservation: The Bird Nest Protection Program in the Northern Plains of Cambodia. It works, if you get it right; now can we see some more for agricultural biodiversity?
- Finger millet: the contribution of vernacular names towards its prehistory. You wouldn’t believe how many different names there are, or how they illuminate its spread.
- Genome-Wide Association Studies. How to do them. You need a platform with that?
- Revisiting the sequencing of the first tree genome: Populus trichocarpa. Why to do them.
- Exogenous plant MIR168a specifically targets mammalian LDLRAP1: evidence of cross-kingdom regulation by microRNA. “…exogenous plant miRNAs in food can regulate the expression of target genes in mammals.” Nuff said. We just don’t understand how this regulation business works, do we.
- Anatomical enablers and the evolution of C4 photosynthesis in grasses. It’s the size of the vascular bundle sheath, stupid!
- Land administration for food security: A research synthesis. Administration meaning registration, basically. Can be good for smallholders, via securing tenure, at least in theory. Governments like it for other reasons, of course. However you slice it, though, the GIS jockeys need to get out more.
- Genetic Analysis of Visually Scored Orange Kernel Color in Maize. It’s better than yellow.
- Comment on “Ecological engineers ahead of their time: The functioning of pre-Columbian raised-field agriculture and its potential contributions to sustainability today” by Dephine Renard et al. Back to the future. Not.
- Environmental stratifications as the basis for national, European and global ecological monitoring. Bet it wouldn’t take much to apply it to agroecosystems for agrobiodiversity monitoring.
- Use of Contingent Valuation to Assess Farmer Preference for On-farm Conservation of Minor Millets: Case from South India. Fancy maths suggests farmers willing to receive money to grow crops.
- Wild food plant use in 21st century Europe: the disappearance of old traditions and the search for new cuisines involving wild edibles. The future is Noma.
- Population genomic and genome-wide association studies of agroclimatic traits in sorghum. Structuring by morphological race, and geography within races. Domestication genes confirmed. Promise of food for all held out.
- Response of Sorghum to Abiotic Stresses: A Review. Ok, it could be kinda bad, but now we have the above, don’t we.
- Genetic resources: the basis for sustainable and competitive plant breeding. In Brazil, that is.
- A nuclear phylogenetic analysis: SNPs, indels and SSRs deliver new insights into the relationships in the ‘true citrus fruit trees’ group (Citrinae, Rutaceae) and the origin of cultivated species. SNPs better than SSRs in telling taxa apart. Results consistent with taxonomic subdivisions and geographic origin of taxa. Some biochemical pathway and salt resistance genes showing positive selection. No doubt this will soon lead to tasty, nutritious varieties that can grow on beaches.
Nibbles: Mashua info, Veggies programme, Rice research, Genomes!, Indian malnutrition, Forest map, British agrobiodiversity hero, GMO “debate”, Lactose tolerance, Beer
- New Year Resolution No. 1: Take the mashua survey.
- New Year Resolution No. 2: Give the Food Programme a break, it can be not bad. As in the case of the recent episode featuring Irish Seed Savers and the only uniquely British veg.
- New Year Resolution No. 3: Learn to appreciate hour-plus talks by CG Centre DGs. And other publicity stunts…
- New Year Resolution No. 4: Give a damn about the next genome. Well, actually…
- New Year Resolution No. 5: Try to understand what people think may be going on with malnutrition in India. If anything.
- New Year Resolution No. 6: Marvel at new maps without fretting about how difficult to use they may be.
- New Year Resolution No. 7: Do not snigger at the British honours system.
- New Year Resolution No. 8: Disengage from the whole are-GMOs-good-or-bad? thing. It’s the wrong question, and nobody is listening anyhow.
- New Year Resolution No. 9: Ignore the next lactose tolerance evolution story. They’re all the same.
- New Year Resolution No. 10: Stop obsessing about beer. But not yet. No, not yet.
- Happy 2013!
The history of the tomato
One reason to love the internets, back into which, fully refreshed, we plunge, is this comment:
[T]he plant Galen mentions is the λυκοπέρσιον, lykopersion, not lykopersikon. The name means ravager or slayer of wolves, like our wolfsbane. The transition to the “wolf-peach” happened sometime later, probably a scribe’s error. Liddell-Scott’s Greek-English Lexicon describes it as an Egyptian plant with strong-smelling, yellowish juice and identifies it as Hyoscyamus muticus, one of the very poisonous, tropane-bearing Solanaceae. There are plenty of other seriously deadly Solanaceae in Egypt but this is as good a guess as any.
That’s from Pat the Plant 2 in response to this (very familiar) bit in a long and fascinating post about the tomato from Hollis at In the Company of Plants and Rocks.
“Lycopersicum” means “wolf peach”, and probably was selected by Linnaeus from the classical literature. Lycopersicon was a plant described by the Roman physician Galen as being both delicious and dangerous — appropriate for the tomato during Linnaeus’s time (see discussion below). No one has figured out what Galen’s lycopersicon actually was, and there’s no reason to think it was the tomato of the Americas, given that he lived in Europe during the second century AD. (“Wolf peach” is sometimes attributed to German were-wolf legends, for example here).
I found Hollis’ post, somewhat belatedly, via the latest Berry go Round, hosted by Susannah at On the other hand. Being partly responsible for BGR, I feel bad that it has been a little hit and miss lately, and glad that Susannah is going to feed and water it going forward until it is once again bursting with the best botany blogging the internets can offer. Why not submit your own work?
Implementation of AnGR plan of action initiated
FAO has just announced that 13 projects, involving 30 countries, have been selected for funding as contributions to the implementation of 2007’s Global Plan of Action for Animal Genetic Resources. That’s thanks to the Governments of Germany, Norway and Switzerland, who put more than US$1 million in voluntary contributions into the appropriate FAO Trust Account, as per the Funding Strategy of the GPA. What are these projects? Well, it’s not all that easy to say. These are the directions FAO gives us:
Details of the projects are available here (scroll down to the map).
The map in question is nice enough, and clicking on the country gives you lots of information on each project, but what I really wanted was just a list, giving titles and countries. And I couldn’t find that anywhere, though maybe I just didn’t look hard enough. With just that map, interactive and all, you get a good overall idea of geographic coverage, but it’s very difficult to figure out the range of livestock species involved in the projects, or how many are single-country as opposed to multi-country initiatives, for example. A pity.
Ah, but fear not, we’ve got you covered. Here’s the list you know you wanted but FAO wouldn’t let you have, going roughly from east to west, painstakingly extracted from that ever-so-pretty map.
- Regional Project: Cook Islands, Fiji and Niue
Title: South West Pacific Animal Genetic Resources Project — Conservation of indigenous pig and chicken breeds in Fiji, Niue and Cook Islands - Country: India
Title: Documenting and supporting community-based conservation of four local breeds - Regional Project: Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro, The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia,
Title: BushaLive (cattle) - Regional Project: Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda
Title: Promotion of indigenous chicken for improved livelihood and income generation - Country: Mozambique
Title: Conservation of native cattle breeds of Mozambique, for their present and future use - Country: Nigeria
Title: Conserving the Muturu Breed of Cattle in South Rain Forest Zone of Nigeria - Country: Togo
Title: Phenotypic and molecular characterization of local chicken in Togo - Regional Project: Gambia, Guinea, Mali, Senegal
Title: Assessment of the impact of transhumance on the sustainable management of animal genetic resources - Regional Project: Algeria, Morocco
Title: Preservation of Beni Guil sheep breed by semen exchanges between countries - Regional Project: Argentina, Brasil, Costa Rica
Title: Enhancement of Farmers Communities through Goats Utilization and Genetic Improvement - Regional Project: Bolivia, Peru
Title: Capacity strengthening for the implementing breeding strategies for llamas in Bolivia and Peru - Country: Uruguay
Title: Caracterizacion productiva y conservacion en ovinos criollos de Uruguay - Country: Chile
Title: Estrategias de conservacion in situ para bovinos y caprinos
Funny this coming hot on the heels of the launch of FAO’s monumental new data portal.