- Seeing nature as a ‘universal store of genes’: How biological diversity became ‘genetic resources’, 1890–1940. “Beyond the space-time of Neo-mendelian and Morganian laboratory genetics, genes became understood though a geographical gaze at a planetary scale.”
- Harnessing the potential of germplasm collections. Start with diverse germplasm, then edit in domestication genes.
- Spatial proximity determines post-speciation introgression in Solanum. But said introgression is not that important, in the grand evolutionary scheme of things, at least for these wild tomatoes.
- Understanding Grass Domestication through Maize Mutants. It’s not straightforward, because domestication genes work differently in maize, because of differences in regulation.
- May innovation on plant varieties share agricultural land with nature, or spare land for it? It may do both, under certain conditions. If I understand the economics jargon correctly.
- Photoperiod Response of Annual Wild Cicer Species and Cultivated Chickpea on Phenology, Growth, and Yield Traits. They need 15-18h to flower.
- China’s Legal Issues in the Access and Benefit-sharing of the Genetic Resources. …need addressing urgently.
- Insights from genomes into the evolutionary importance and prevalence of hybridization in nature. It’s everywhere, but whether it’s adaptive is hard to prove. One crop example: common bean.
- Incorporating basic needs to reconcile poverty and ecosystem services. Complicated but workable methodology to identify the win-win solution space.
- Flax latitudinal adaptation at LuTFL1 altered architecture and promoted fiber production. Flax became a fibre crop when it was carried north into Europe as a result of adaptation to higher latitudes, including by introgression from local wild species.
- A method for generating virus-free cassava plants to combat viral disease epidemics in Africa. Chemo- and thermotherapy in tissue culture.
Nibbles: Open data, Banana virus, Potato impact, Peruvian agrobiodiversity, Malagasy Coffea, Evolution experiment, A2S
- “It’s embarrassing if your lab is the only one that isn’t sharing data.” One would hope so, but…
- CRISPR snips out virus from banana genome.
- CIP-related potato varieties are planted on about 1.43 Mha, or 19% of total area.
- Saving Peru’s agricultural biodiversity is more than just about markets.
- I suspect the same is the case for Madagascar’s wild coffees.
- Studying evolution experimentally. Using mice. Plants would have been cooler.
- More on Access to Seeds Index: “Seeds of Nope” seems unnecessarily negative, though.
Nibbles: Heirlooms double, Seed huntress, Sequencing, ABS
Brainfood: Tibetan barley, Eastern Sahel domestication, CC & coffee, Good bugs, Garden Organic, Amazonian domestication, Maize domestication, Maize & CC, Acidless citrus, Seed commons book, Crispy blueberry, African hunter-gatherers, Indian forages, Brazilian PGR, Cloudberry picking, Wheat & CC
- Origin and evolution of qingke barley in Tibet. Tibetan barley was introduced from the southwest.
- On the Origins and Dissemination of Domesticated Sorghum and Pearl Millet across Africa and into India: a View from the Butana Group of the Far Eastern Sahel. Sorghum and pearl millet got to India from Sudan. No word on whether they ever got to Tibet.
- Was there ever a Neolithic in the Neotropics? Plant familiarisation and biodiversity in the Amazon. Depends on how you define it.
- The earliest maize from San Marcos Tehuacán is a partial domesticate with genomic evidence of inbreeding. The earliest proto-maize was inbred.
- Evaluating Future Impacts of Climate Change on Traditional Mexican Maize Suitability and Indigenous Communities in Mexico. Landraces are going to lose half their area of suitability.
- Why could the coffee crop endure climate change and global warming to a greater extent than previously estimated? Because of carbon dioxide?
- Understanding and exploiting plant beneficial microbes. We’re going to need microbial consortia.
- Genetic analysis of a heritage variety collection. The Heritage Seed Library, in fact.
- Noemi Controls Production of Flavonoid Pigments and Fruit Acidity and Illustrates the Domestication Routes of Modern Citrus Varieties. In citron, limetta, sweet lime, lemon, and sweet orange, acidless phenotypes are associated with large deletions or insertions of retrotransposons in a single gene. Some of them go back a long way, and are associated with ritual use in Jewish culture.
- Introduction: Commoning the seeds: the future of agrobiodiversity and food security. Is there a way out of the current impasse? Maybe.
- Molecular and Genetic Bases of Fruit Firmness Variation in Blueberry—A Review. It’s still unclear whether firmness is a quantitative trait or monogenic.
- Hunter-gatherer genomes reveal diverse demographic trajectories following the rise of farming in East Africa. Hunter-gatherers were more inventive in Africa than in Europe in the face of agricultural expansion.
- Tropical Forage Legumes in India: Status and Scope for Sustaining Livestock Production. >3200 accessions conserved, >50 cultivars released.
- Conservation of crop genetic resources in Brazil in the context of the target 9 of the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation. A lot done, a lot still to do. CWR remain a gap.
- The Impacts of Climate and Social Changes on Cloudberry (Bakeapple) Picking: a Case Study from Southeastern Labrador. Social changes have been more significant, but for how long?
- Global wheat production with 1.5 and 2.0°C above pre‐industrial warming. Frequency of extreme low yields and variability will increase in hot places like India. Assuming no new varieties.
Nibbles: Carrot breeding, BIEN, Protected areas databases, Brazilian genebanks, Endangered coconut genebank, DSI, ABS, Climate pix, Botanical pix double, Potatoes galore, Pandanus language, Archaeological double, Palestinian seed saving
- Putting the polyacetylene back into carrots.
- The Botanical Information and Ecology Network gets an upgrade. Any CWRs among its 18,844,855 more observations?
- And any is protected areas? This will tell how well they’re managed. Mash up with this spatial database on indigenous lands?
- Otherwise, there are genebanks, though not enough in Brazil, apparently.
- And not always safe.
- What to do with Digital Sequence Information? Would be nice to be clear on what it is.
- ABS broken down by ISF. And the CGIAR. Not DSI though.
- Need climate visuals? Well, who doesn’t.
- The Columbian Exchange has visuals also.
- And the Royal Horticultural Society too.
- Speaking of Columbian Exchange: frites. And Vavilov, chefs, etc.
- Speaking about nuts in PNG. Comment by Jim Croft, who would know: “Except the species illustrated is the widespread oceanic strand species, Pandanus tectorius, not the endemic highland crop ‘karuka’, Pandanus julianettii.”
- 5000-year-old brewery in Egypt.
- 14,000-year-old bread.
- Fast forward 14,000 years.