- BBC Food Programme on wheat, with the authors of Amber Waves and The Man Who Tried to Feed the World.
- Tides of History podcast on livestock domestication with Prof. Greger Larson. He thinks “domestication” should be used as a descriptor of a state rather than a label for a process. He also thinks that animals became “domesticated” basically only once (except for pigs).
- A citrus fruit you never heard of is crucial to Japanese cuisine.
- Bringing back heirloom rice and other traditional crops in the Sea Islands. And more.
- Building back better: from 200 food systems recommendation to 41 no regrets actions. And why we need them NOW!
- A Peruvian peasant organization goes digital.
- Huge book on strengthening seed systems in South Asia.
- Nice CGN video on seed processing in genebanks.
- How can businesses value biodiversity? Here come the guidelines.
Brainfood: Cali ag, Wild potato double, Enset diversity double, Banana collecting, Disease models, Wild resistance, SP drought, Wheat blast, MAGIC wheat, Biological control, Teosinte, Artemisia, Multiple cropping, Mungbean value, Traditional crops, Singing dogs, Biodiversity metric, Hotspots
- Projected temperature increases may require shifts in the growing season of cool-season crops and the growing locations of warm-season crops. In California’s Mediterranean climate, cool season crops will have to shift in time, and warm-season crops in place.
- A “Mega Population” of the Wild Potato Species Solanum fendleri. Large population, safe, accessible and very diverse. Who needs genebanks, right?
- Survival of Solanum jamesii Tubers at Freezing Temperatures. Very unusual trait in both the crop and the wild relatives, apparently.
- Diversity and uses of enset [Ensete ventricosum (Welw.) Cheesman] varieties in Angacha district, Southern Ethiopia: call for taxonomic identifications and conservation. 55 varieties in 75 homegardens, 88 in the field genebank, many in only one or the other.
- Impact of Climate Change on the Diversity and Distribution of Enset (Ensete ventricosum (Welw) Cheesman) in Ethiopia: A Review. Some are moving, some are dying. I guess we really need in vitro and cryo after all.
- Filling the gaps in gene banks: Collecting, characterizing and phenotyping wild banana relatives of Papua New Guinea. Much diversity of banana ancestor still not in genebanks, but people are on the job.
- Modeling the Impact of Crop Diseases on Global Food Security. Genetic diversity is not enough.
- What natural variation can teach us about resistance durability. That genetic diversity is not enough, apparently.
- Wheat blast: a new threat to food security. We have the genes to fight it, but they won’t be enough.
- Limited haplotype diversity underlies polygenic trait architecture across 70 years of wheat breeding. I hope at least those genes can be found in this MAGIC population based on European bread wheat varieties from the past few decades.
- Potential Short-Term Memory Induction as a Promising Method for Increasing Drought Tolerance in Sweetpotato Crop Wild Relatives [Ipomoea series Batatas (Choisy) D. F. Austin]. Wild sweet potatoes have the genes to remember drought stress, and hence cope with it better. Will they be enough though?
- Ecological pest control fortifies agricultural growth in Asia–Pacific economies. Biological control has been worth USD 15-20 billion a year for non-rice crops over the past 100 years across 23 countries. But how much is the interaction with genetic diversity worth?
- Evaluation of the contribution of teosinte to the improvement of agronomic, grain quality and yield traits in maize (Zea mays). Wild relative not just a source of stress resistance, could be useful for yield potential too.
- “It may also have prevented churchgoers from falling asleep”: southernwood, Artemisia abrotanum L. (fam. Asteraceae), in the church bouquet, and its contemporary presence as a heritage plant in Sweden. The fragrance lingers.
- Multiple cropping systems of the world and the potential for increasing cropping intensity. Multiple cropping on 12% of total agricultural area, which could increase, but probably not as much as was thought.
- Impact and returns on investment of mungbean research and development in Myanmar. Four varieties coming out of international research created economic gains of USD 1.4 billion from 1980-2016. That’s a ROI of about 90, but it took 20 years to kick in.
- Are Traditional Food Crops Really ‘Future Smart Foods?’ A Sustainability Perspective. Well, they could be, but maybe we don’t have 20 years.
- New Guinea highland wild dogs are the original New Guinea singing dogs. …which are therefore not extinct in the wild as used to be thought. Or so the DNA says.
- WEGE: A new metric for ranking locations for biodiversity conservation. That’s “Weighted Endemism including Global Endangerment,” and it hasn’t been tried on plants. Yet.
- Toward Unifying Global Hotspots of Wild and Domesticated Biodiversity. They overlap a lot but not completely. Expect WEGE to be applied at some stage.
Nibbles: Costich leaving seminar, Dibble video, AnGR plan, Building back better
- Dr Denise Costich says goodbye to the CIMMYT maize genebank. Sad.
- Dr Flint Dibble talks to himself about his Neolithic package.
- Europe’s plan for conserving transboundary livestock breeds.
- How are genebanks doing in the pandemic?
Nibbles: Lost apple, Ducks, Chilli breeding, Heritage breeds, Population and Quantitative Genetics, Madeira
- Finding the Colorado Orange apple.
- British duck breed goes wild in Thailand.
- Might consumers care about genetics?
- Well they do, right? At least if they’re into heirloom varieties and heritage breeds.
- If they do care, they should read this book.
- Is madeira your desert island wine?
Brainfood: Bending the curve edition
- Bending the curve of terrestrial biodiversity needs an integrated strategy. Meaning: (i) sustainable agricultural intensification, (ii) trade, (iii) less food waste, (iv) more plant-based human diets, and (v) more and better protected areas.
- The carbon opportunity cost of animal-sourced food production on land. See (iv) above.
- Just ten percent of the global terrestrial protected area network is structurally connected via intact land. See (v) above.
- Cropland expansion in the United States produces marginal yields at high costs to wildlife. See (i) above.
- A cultivated planet in 2010 – Part 1: The global synergy cropland map. Gotta know where the cropland is before you can do (i) above.
- Advances in plant phenomics: From data and algorithms to biological insights. Fancy maths can really help with (i) above.
- Retrospective Quantitative Genetic Analysis and Genomic Prediction of Global Wheat Yields. Different fancy maths shows that CIMMYT’s Obregon wheat testing site can really help with (i) above.
- Diversity analysis of 80,000 wheat accessions reveals consequences and opportunities of selection footprints. Here’s some stuff that wheat breeders can use to develop new materials to test at Obregon using phenomics, genomics and fancy maths.
- First report on cryopreservation of mature shoot tips of two avocado (Persea americana Mill.) rootstocks. This should help with (iv) above. Eventually, work with me here.
- Bread and porridge at Early Neolithic Göbekli Tepe: A new method to recognize products of cereal processing using quantitative functional analyses on grinding stones. Ahem. Well… No, sorry, I got nothing.