Livestock – Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

October 15, 2019October 15, 2019

Temperate forages at the NPGS

We just got hold of a very neat infographic summarizing the work of the USDA’s National Plant Germplasm System on the Management of Temperate-adapted Forage Legume Genetic Resources and Associated Information.

If you were to scan that QR code, you’d get here, and be able to select and order material from the USDA’s GRIN-Global site.

Here’s the distribution of over 6000 USDA-held accessions of Medicago, Trifolium and Lotus with geographical coordinates according to Genesys.

The colours show annual mean temperature.

October 14, 2019October 14, 2019

Brainfood: Diversification, Wheat genomics, Historical tom, Crop mapping, African crops & CC, Trans CWR, Fish nutrition, Seed storage, Indian rice, Food Neighbourhoods, Diet sustainability, Onion evaluation, Aussie wild rice, Rice evaluation

To diversify or not to diversify, that is the question. Pursuing agricultural development for smallholder farmers in marginal areas of Ghana. Diversify.
Improving grain yield, stress resilience and quality of bread wheat using large-scale genomics. A genotype –> phenotype map at last. I guess that means breeders are superfluous.
The earliest recorded tomato in Britain, in Wales. In 1590, no less.
Biotechnology of the sweetpotato: ensuring global food and nutrition security in the face of climate change. A whole special issue. Our troubles are over.
Probabilistic global maps of crop-specific areas from 1961 to 2014. A new, different, cooler algorithm provides somewhat different results to older, less cool algorithms.
Potential adaptive strategies for 29 sub-Saharan crops under future climate change. Climatic conditions not currently experienced by these crops will spread, but CWRs and diversity from outside Africa might help.
Trans Situ Conservation of Crop Wild Relatives. Just means properly integrated in and ex situ.
Criar y Dejarse Criar: Trans-Situ Crop Conservation and Indigenous Landscape Management through a Network of Global Food Neighborhoods. See what it means? Scaling up the Parque de la Papa.
Harnessing global fisheries to tackle micronutrient deficiencies. Small fish from the tropics could be really good for nutrition in some countries. Namibia, I’m looking at you.
Artificial seed aging reveals the invisible fraction: Implications for evolution experiments using the resurrection approach. Store your seeds properly.
Status of Rice (Oryza sativa L.) Genepool Collected from Western Ghats Region of India: Gap Analysis and Diversity Distribution Mapping using GIS Tools. Out of 678 rice landraces from this region, 43 have been used in crop improvement.
Advancing an Integrative Framework to Evaluate Sustainability in National Dietary Guidelines. In 32 sub-dimensions, no less. Important.
Assembly and characterisation of a unique onion diversity set identifies resistance to Fusarium basal rot and improved seedling vigour. Group according to local daylength.
Australian wild rice populations: a key resource for global food security. Because they’ve been isolated from the crop.
Novel method for evaluation of anaerobic germination in rice and its application to diverse genetic collections. No word on whether it’s applicable to Aussie wild species, but I bet it is.

October 11, 2019

Nibbles: Forages, Zimbabwe policy, Kyrgyz nuts, Warwick vegetables, Asparagus breeder

Brachiaria is the new Napier grass.
Zimbabwe has a new seed conservation strategy.
Agroforestry in Kyrgyzstan.
Podcast on the Warwick University veggies genebank.
Award for asparagus breeding. Somebody has to do it…

October 9, 2019

Nibbles: Phenotyping, Capsicum expert, Svalbard kudos, Yippee-ki-yay, Future Seeds, Bottoms up, Maps galore, Knepp Wildland Project

Agar plates, hydroponics, or field? The best way to do your phenotyping in one handy chart.
Pioneering chilli expert Fabián García inducted into the National Agricultural Center’s Hall of Fame.
Svalbard Global Seed Vault makes Top 10 of Project Management Institute’s best 50 projects, between M-Pesa and Netflix.
Saving horse breeds in the USA.
CIAT’s new genebank is in the works.
Beer companies try to save their water supply. No word on what they plan to do about saving barley and hops diversity.
World Bank maps biodiversity and the threats it faces. No plants, but still interesting. Opening the buggers is not easy, though.
Wildland farming in the UK. A glimpse of the beckoning post-Brexit future.

September 30, 2019September 12, 2019

Brainfood: Traditional grazing, Land use & health, Local foods, Forage fish, OFSP, Olives & nematodes, Ohia seed, Mauka, Wolf erosion, American CWR, Open seeds, Global diseases, Neolithic LP, Rice in the US, Useful plants

Traditional grazing systems in the Venetian Alps: Effects of grazing methods and environmental factors on cattle behaviour. Better for the cows, better for the cheese, better for the environment.
Biodiversity, land use change, and human health in northeastern Madagascar: an interdisciplinary study. Paddy rice cultivation is bad for you.
Local traditional foods contribute to diversity and species richness of rural women’s diet in Ecuador. Local food species are good for you.
Illustrating the hidden economic, social and ecological values of global forage fish resources. $18.7 billion per annum, over 3 times of their direct catch value. But what exactly are they?
Determination of carotenoids in sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas L., Lam) tubers: Implications for accurate provitamin A determination in staple sturdy tuber crops. Not all carotenoids have provitamin A properties.
Evaluation of the Phytopathological Reaction of Wild and Cultivated Olives as a Means of Finding Promising New Sources of Genetic Diversity for Resistance to Root-Knot Nematodes. Some wild relatives could help.
Picking from the Past in Preparation for a Pest: Seed Banks Outperform Herbaria as Sources of Preserved ‘Ōhi‘a Seed. I would hope so.
Unearthing the “Lost” Andean Root Crop “Mauka” (Mirabilis expansa [Ruíz & Pav.] Standl.). On the rebound?
High levels of recent wolf × dog introgressive hybridization in agricultural landscapes of central Italy. Not much real wolf left.
A Road Map for Conservation, Use, and Public Engagement around North America’s Crop Wild Relatives and Wild Utilized Plants. Understand, protect, collect, conserve, make available, inform. Allrighty then.
Open source seed, a revolution in breeding or yet another attack on the breeder’s exemption? May backfire.
A global surveillance system for crop diseases. A Global Surveillance System, in fact. Here’s the origin story.
New insights into Neolithic milk consumption through proteomic analysis of dental calculus. People unlikely to have lactase persistence consumed milk, which means either they were in constant discomfort or processed it in some way.
Race and Region: Tracing the Cultural Pathways of Rice Consumption in the United States, 1680-1960. WW2 made it a cosmopolitan commodity.
The climatic challenge: Which plants will people use in the next century? Depends on the tradeoffs between diversification-specialization and between substitution-adaptation.

Samoan breadfruit comes to Ghana (6)
- Isaac: Please I would like to purchase a few Bread Fruit trees, give me the phone# or any information I need…
Detoxifying cassava (8)
- Glorya: nice article! I learned that cassava has many benefits for humans. Did you know that cassava skin has benefits…
Harvesting diversity (1)
- Dave Wood: "ARIs are also sources of broad and accessible collections of crop genetic resources, such as those maintained by the CGIAR…