- Impacts of Global Food Systems on Biodiversity and Water: The Vision of Two Reports and Future Aims. It’s all connected, and not in a good way.
- On‐Site Capabilities of a Mobile Laboratory for Aquatic Germplasm Cryopreservation. Not so easy for plants, alas.
- Biogeography and conservation status of the pineapple family (Bromeliaceae). The Atlantic Forest, the northern Andes and Central America.
- A review of types of risks in agriculture: What we know and what we need to know. Very few studies look beyond production risk, largely ignoring four other types of risk, and the prevalence of multiple risks.
- Visual and olfactory floral cues related to ambophilous pollination systems in Poaceae. Insects can facilitate pollination in some grasses.
- Cassava Trait Preferences of Men and Women Farmers in Nigeria: Implications for Breeding. Women select on quality, men on agronomy.
- Phenotypic and physiological responses to salt exposure in Sorghum reveal diversity among domesticated landraces. Salinity tolerance was acquired early in domestication and then maintained or lost depending on prevalent soil conditions.
- Combining Focused Identification of Germplasm and Core Collection Strategies to Identify Genebank Accessions for Central European Soybean Breeding. Pre-core FIGS subset based on adaptation to high-latitude cold regions, followed by coring using genotype data: from >17,000 to 366 accessions.
- Adaptive introgression during environmental change can weaken reproductive isolation. Reverse speciation is upon us.
- The future of legume genetic data resources: Challenges, opportunities, and priorities. Centralize and standardise. Good luck with that.
- Application of Mixed Methods to Identify Small Ruminant Disease Priorities in Ethiopia. National disease controls programmes may be on the wrong track.
- Tartary buckwheat (Fagopyrum tataricum Gaertn.) landraces cultivated by Yi people in Liangshan, China. 13 landraces, but not very well differentiated as to use.
- The draft genome of a wild barley genotype reveals its enrichment in genes related to biotic and abiotic stresses compared to cultivated barley. More genes, more alleles in known genes.
- The endemic ‘sugar canes’ of Madagascar (Poaceae, Saccharinae: Lasiorhachis) are close relatives of sorghum. Closer than some actual Sorghum spp.
- Large genetic yield potential and genetic yield gap estimated for wheat in Europe. Long way to go to match the potential, modelled yield of ideotypes.
Nibbles: Sacred forests, Morning glory, Organic cereals, Sorghum diversity, Phoenix studentship
- The church forests of Ethiopia.
- Monumental monographic study of Ipomoea.
- New project on breeding cereals for organic farming in Europe.
- Sorghum genetic resources in the USA.
- Fun studentship on date palm diversity.
Deconstructing crop TED
TED-Ed has a bunch of videos on the history of different crops: cacao, tea, and maize for a start. They’re cute, and do provide some interesting information. But a pinch of salt is recommended with your corn on the cob.
Yes, we have plenty of banana information, take 2
A new version of the Musa Germplasm Information System (MGIS) is out. There’s more data, tools for better curation, a way to search for accessions cited in the literature, and re-organized menus. Do check it out. MGIS data eventually makes its way to Genesys.
And since I’m here, it’s worth noting that the banana is uniquely well-endowed with information resources. In addition to MGIS, there’s a whole slew of other databases and assorted information products, thanks to the wonder that is ProMusa.
ProMusa is a network of people promoting scientific discussions on bananas.
In alliance with the International Society for Horticultural Science (ISHS), the network organizes scientific symposia (reported in proceedings) to help its members stay up-to-date on the latest research developments and encourage collaborations within and between disciplines.
When not meeting face-to-face, ProMusa members stay in touch using the network’s mailing list.
This website is the network’s online platform, which offers news, knowledge and information on bananas.
The centrepiece is Musapedia, “an online, collaboratively built compendium of knowledge on bananas.” But there are also databases of scientific literature, images and contacts. And an excellent news area — InfoMus@.
You can follow — and interact with — ProMusa on Facebook and Twitter. I can’t think of a crop that has anything similarly comprehensive. It really should be your first port of call for anything to do with bananas.
Gabe Sachter-Smith laid out in a spiral a sample of the more than 100 types of bananas documented during the collecting mission to West New Britain, PNG. They include the ever mysterious Fe'i banana, photographed next to its possible ancestor, Musa maclayi. pic.twitter.com/HahIXm1P4K
— ProMusa (@promusa_banana) October 11, 2019
BTW, the title of this post refers to a previous foray into banana information resources.
PGR training needs identified
There’s an open access Crop Science Special Issue out under the title: Connecting Agriculture, Public Gardens and Science. Well worth having a look at. There’s great stuff on crop wild relatives, plant awareness, chefs, and trans-situ conservation, just to give you a flavour. There’s also a summary of the symposium that gave rise to the special issue. Our friend Colin Khoury was closely involved.
I’ll just highlight here the paper by Gayle Volk and others on training needs in plant genetic resources conservation. ((Volk, G. M., P. K. Bretting, and P. F. Byrne. 2019. Survey Identifies Essential Plant Genetic Resources Training Program Components. Crop Sci. 59:2308-2316. doi:10.2135/cropsci2019.05.0324.)) The authors sent out a survey and analyzed the feedback from 425 respondents by type of institution: academia, NPGS, CGIAR, national genebanks, NGOs and the private sector. There were, fortunately, some topics which a majority across all institutions considered high priority areas for training:
- accessing information
- crop wild relatives
- genotyping
- phenotyping
- intellectual property and regulatory issues
But there were also some differences.
The respondents from academia were also interested … in prebreeding, which is not surprising because many of these respondents were plant breeders. Respondents from the private sector were also interested … in requests/distributions and prebreeding, and respondents from NGOs were also interested … in collection gap analyses, explorations, germplasm preservation, intellectual property, and regulations. The genebank respondents (NPGS, CGIAR, non-NPGS government) considered germplasm preservation, intellectual property, and general concepts in plant genetic diversity as priority topics. These differences among the institutional types are not surprising due to their different missions.
This all came out of an initiative from the NPGS that started back in early 2018. Training materials of various types are being developed. Will keep you posted.