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November 4, 2020November 4, 2020

A bean thread for the ages

Since I’m on a Twitter thread kick, get a load of this mega-thread on beans from Jorge Berny.

Beans are getting popular and they have helped me endure grad school. I´ll post some of my favorites while this pandemic endures.

Tzama´ are mostly grown in Southern Mexico, Belize and Guatemala. Planted later, as a relay after maize, with a shorthish cycle. Tasty AF. pic.twitter.com/OqAnRedHk7

— Jorge C. Berny Mier y Teran (@JorgeCBerny) March 26, 2020

Here’s the ThreadReader version for those of you who are averse to Twitter. Epic.

And, you can even wear them.

November 3, 2020

Nibbles: NordGen, Xylella, Finger millet, Indian genebanks, Seed saver

NordGen genebank information system gets a boost.
Uji for everyone in Kenya, thanks to genebank and breeding.
Assam’s government supports a field genebank. One of many such efforts in India.
Will Bonsall‘s genebank needs help. Maybe should move to India.
Video on the Italian olive plague. This is why we need genebanks.

November 2, 2020November 2, 2020

Brainfood: Now what edition

Image-Based Goat Breed Identification and Localization Using Deep Learning. Fancy maths can identify goat breeds from photos. Ok, cool, now what?
AI Naturalists Might Hold the Key to Unlocking Biodiversity Data in Social Media Imagery. Fancy math can often identify common flowers on Flickr. Ok, cool, now what?
FoodMine: Exploring Food Contents in Scientific Literature. Fancy maths can trawl the literature to pick out the chemical components of different foods. Ok, cool, I guess, now what?
Cultural and linguistic diversities are underappreciated pillars of biodiversity. Well, yeah. But now what?
Global priority areas for ecosystem restoration. Fancy maths says restoring 15% of converted lands in identified priority areas could avoid 60% of expected extinctions while sequestering 30% of the total CO2 increase in the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution. Cool, now what?
An unexpectedly large count of trees in the West African Sahara and Sahel. Wait, does that mean some of the above won’t be necessary?
Cost and affordability of nutritious diets at retail prices: Evidence from 177 countries. Fancy maths shows that nutritious diets are almost 3 times as expensive as diets supplying basic energy needs, and costs increase with remoteness. Ok, cool, now what?
Phylogenetic inference enables reconstruction of a long-overlooked outbreak of almond leaf scorch disease (Xylella fastidiosa) in Europe. The olive plague started on almonds. Ok, now what though?
Genome-wide association study in accessions of the mini-core collection of mungbean (Vigna radiata) from the World Vegetable Gene Bank (Taiwan). Genotyping, phenotyping and fancy maths find that mungbean could grow in temperate conditions. Ok, cool, now what?
Enhancing the searchability, breeding utility, and efficient management of germplasm accessions in the USDA−ARS rice collection. Genotyping and fancy maths can improve genebank management. Well, yeah, but now what? No, wait, we know exactly now what: digital genebanks!
Ok, that was a bit of fun, but the important point is that research, no matter how cool, is only the beginning.

October 30, 2020

Seed production in times of climate change

Interested? It’s the topic of an online symposium planned for 9-11 March 2021. Details on the IPK website.

October 23, 2020October 23, 2020

Biodiversity Information System for Europe loses genebanks?

The Biodiversity Information System for Europe is a partnership between the European Commission and the European Environment Agency. It seems to have recently updated its website. Or at least that’s the impression I got from a recent tweet, so I checked it out. There’s no search function on the site, but some rapid browsing could not turn up any references to genebanks or agricultural biodiversity. So I googled “genebanks in:biodiversity.europa.eu” and I got a hit on a page that is no longer on the site. WayBackMachine turns up a 2016 version with some basic information on genetic resources for food and agriculture, including genebanks, that seems to have disappeared in the interim. Maybe the Biodiversity Information System for Europe has decided to focus on in situ conservation only? It seems a pity, if true.