Livestock

July 15, 2020July 14, 2020

Visualizing the use of crop diversity

A couple of nice infographics for you today. Here’s on on forage genetic resources conservation and use, courtesy of the CGIAR Research Programme on Livestock. Click on the numbers to see the interactive elements.

And here, from Euroseeds, is an explanation of how gene editing could save beloved beloved grape varieties from fungal pests without (hopefully) changing their taste or wine-making features. This one is not interactive, though, so download the PDF to see it properly.

And yes, attentive readers will have noticed that both were included in Nibbles yesterday, but I thought they deserved re-upping, as the cool kids say.

July 14, 2020July 14, 2020

Nibbles: Coconut & biodiversity, Nutrition, Maize volatiles, Tea history, OFS online, AGRA, Forage breeding, Grapevine editing, SDG indicators, Black Lives Matter

Coconut oil is the new palm oil? And not in a good way.
The cost of poor diets is considerable.
Maize plants call natural enemies for help against stemborers. And there’s variation in how well they do it, natch.
Fortune’s fortune: the colonization of tea. With added poison.
The Oxford Food Symposium is on, virtually. Registration is closed, but follow on the blog, social media etc.
Criticism of the Green Revolution approach to African agricultural development.
Forages, from genebanks to farmers, in one interactive infographic.
Saving Sangiovese through gene editing: the infographic. Not interactive, though, alas.
How FAO keeps track of progress on the SDGs.
How to not be a racist in the plant sciences.

July 13, 2020July 13, 2020

Brainfood: Sled dogs, Chicken origins, Ancient livestock, Tenure and deforestation, Buckwheat, Soybean pangenome, Yam bean nutrients, Orphan legumes, Wild seeds, SeedGerm, Coconut conservation

Arctic-adapted dogs emerged at the Pleistocene–Holocene transition. Sled dogs arose in Siberia, where they interbred with wolves.
863 genomes reveal the origin and domestication of chicken. It was Gallus gallus spadiceus from southwestern China, northern Thailand and Myanmar that was domesticated, possibly by rice and millet cultivators, according to Dorian Fuller, who disagrees with the domestication dates but likes the rest of the paper.
Fodder for Change: Animals, Urbanisation, and Socio-Economic Transformation in Protohistoric Italy. In first-millennium BCE Italy, pigs grew in importance, cattle increased in size, sheep breeds differentiated according to use, and the chickens was adopted and adapted.
Formalizing land rights can reduce forest loss: Experimental evidence from Benin. Randomized control trial shows land registration is associated with less deforestation.
Buckwheat (Fagopyrum sp.) genetic resources: What can they contribute towards nutritional security of changing world? Not much until given the full -omics treatment, apparently.
Pan-Genome of Wild and Cultivated Soybeans. The pan-genome is the new genome. Wait, did I use that before?
Developing the role of legumes in West Africa under climate change. Lesser know, orphan legumes could step in for cowpea in some places, if only we knew more about them. Like a pan-genome, I guess.
Evaluation of Nutritional and Antinutritional Properties of African Yam Bean (Sphenostylis stenocarpa (Hochst ex. A. Rich.) Harms.) Seeds. But we do know more about them! Lots of variation available to combat protein malnutrition, if only farmers grew more of the stuff. Oh so now it’s their fault?
Conserving orthodox seeds of globally threatened plants ex situ in the Millennium Seed Bank, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, UK: the status of seed collections. Some decline in germinability for about 16% of samples. Includes successful germination protocols for 165 globally threatened seed plant taxa.
SeedGerm: a cost‐effective phenotyping platform for automated seed imaging and machine‐learning based phenotypic analysis of crop seed germination. Fancy kit and maths can match seed specialists in scoring radicle emergence. But will it work with wild seeds? MSB unavailable for comment.
In Situ and Ex Situ Conservation of Coconut Genetic Resources. Beyond coconut-only genebanks. I’d like to see SeedGerm work on this lot. Check out the whole book.

July 8, 2020July 8, 2020

Nibbles: NHM, CGN, NordGen, ICRISAT, Chai, Cacao, Coffee, Amazon, Indian aromatics, Spying, Talking cattle

Dr Sandy Knapp on botanical monographs. Solanum, of course.
Dr Joukje Buiteveld on fruit field genebanks in the Netherlands.
NordGen adopts GRIN-Global.
Hybrid pigeonpa in the Indian news.
All the tea in India. And Ireland?
The rise of craft chocolate.
And here’s the beverage trifecta: coffee in Ethiopia.
Seed collecting in Brazil for reforestation.
NBPGR does medicinals.
You wanna be a “germplasm acquisition coordinator“? I bet you do. But watch out…
Podcast on cattle domestication. Dr Hans Lenstra from Utrecht University in the hot seat.

July 1, 2020July 1, 2020

Nibbles: Olive plague, ITPGRFA, Potato, Sweetpotato, Guinea pig, Amazon farming, Unilever, Apomixis, Pathogens, Reindeer,

The Xylella butcher’s bill mounts up.
Webinar on the Plant Treaty.
The history of the humble: potato, sweetpotato, guinea pig.
Agroforestry in the forest.
Unilever does C labelling. Biodiversity next?
Hacking apomixis in sorghum and cowpea so farmers can save seeds of hybrids.
Temperature range and plant host range of fungus and oomycete pathogens change rapidly and are not correlated.
In from the cold: Rudolph’s genome.
Rethinking public gardens in a series of 5-minute presentations.

How many rice varieties are there in India? (2)
- Luigi Guarino: I'm afraid I have no idea. I don't think anyone does.
- Jayanta Jit Hazarika: I appreciate you for your blogpost as I wanted to know exactly how many varieties of rice exist in 2020.…
Exploring Afghanistan’s wheat (2)
- Luigi Guarino: I think it may well be geo-referenced and digitized. It's just that the data are not available online. No idea…