- Nice vintage map of global crop distribution, starring wheat.
- CIMMYT DG on the glories of plant breeding, starring wheat (p. 6).
- Australia supports Pacific genebank. No wheat in sight.
- Saving coconut. No, not in the Pacific.
- The history of chocolate and vanilla. The crops, not the ice cream.
- Speaking of ice cream: maybe someone should try making some out of these tasty endangered fruits before it’s too late.
- Speaking of tasty: basmati.
- Speaking of rice: this guy has 1420 varieties.
- Hey, it’s not about the taste: it’s the ethics too, stupid. But, being wine, it’s also about the taste.
- Speaking of ethics: what good is forest conservation if it stops people accessing wild foods.
- At least one senator gets it.
- You’ve got a few weeks to register for a potato breeding course. Using CWR, no less.
- Amazing pics of Chinese aquaculture.
- Chinese efforts to save ancient trees. No connection with above at all. And no pics.
- Google will identify your plants. Of course it will.
- Speaking at Google: a linguist (Dan Jurafsky) on menus.
- Next generation shepherding in South Africa. No sign of Google, though. For now.
- Interactive atlas of US forests. There goes the afternoon. Imagine if if ever got mashed up with the global fire atlas.
- Automated Red List assessments. Wow.
- The MERL has an exhibition on the history of farming. One of my favourite museums, one of my favourite topics. My cup runneth over.
- Gin made from peas. Sometimes I hate farming.
Brainfood: Food system, Ethiopian durum, Enset, Legume seeds, Salinity, Ryegrass genomics, Weeping lovegrass genomics, Pest occurrences, Golden Rice, Cattle origins, Pollinator & diversity, Production shocks, Production & diversity
- Transforming agricultural land use through marginal gains in the food system. A nudge here, a nudge there, pretty soon you’re talking about a revolution.
- Exploitation of diversity within farmers’ durum wheat varieties enhanced the chance of selecting productive, stable and adaptable new varieties to the local climatic conditions. Some landraces are pretty good.
- Enset in Ethiopia: a poorly characterized but resilient starch staple. Some local crops are pretty good.
- Market‐led options to scale up legume seeds in developing countries: Experiences from the Tropical Legumes Project. Ah yes, PPPs.
- Global mapping of soil salinity change. A billion hectares and increasing. We’re going to need all the above.
- Integrating a newly developed BAC-based physical mapping resource for Lolium perenne with a genome-wide association study across a L. perenne European ecotype collection identifies genomic contexts associated with agriculturally important traits. “Clearly this is not an end-point for L. perenne genomics…” Ok, call me when you get there.
- A high-quality genome of Eragrostis curvula grass provides insights into Poaceae evolution and supports new strategies to enhance forage quality. “Understanding and subsequently manipulating the genetic drivers underlying apomixis could revolutionize agriculture.” Ok, call me when you get there.
- Many unreported crop pests and pathogens are probably already present. Especially in China, India, southern Brazil and some countries of the former USSR.
- Compositional Analysis of Genetically Engineered GR2E “Golden Rice” in Comparison to That of Conventional Rice. Only difference is beta-carotene. But that was never the issue.
- Ancient cattle genomics, origins, and rapid turnover in the Fertile Crescent. aDNA shows origin from multiple populations, and separate introgressions from aurochs, then an influx of zebu bulls from the Indus Valley in the Bronze Age. Basically a Zeus-and-Europa scenario.
- Global agricultural productivity is threatened by increasing pollinator dependence without a parallel increase in crop diversification. Agricultural diversification going up weakly, possibly undermining pollinators, while proportion of pollinator-dependent crops increasing strongly.
- Food production shocks across land and sea. There are shock hotspots, and overall the frequency of shocks is going up. Whatever can be done?
- National food production stabilized by crop diversity. I wonder.
- The SDG of zero hunger 75 years on: Turning full circle on agriculture and nutrition. No longer just calories.
Brainfood: Biodiversity & production, Tertiary tomato, Maya collapse, Restoration opportunities, Mixtures, Synchronous crop failure, Boswellia future, Soya diversity, Genetic load, Domestication, Ag & biodiversity, Cotton domestication, Food preservation
- Contributions of biodiversity to the sustainable intensification of food production. They are various and considerable, but context-specific. See additional data here. See also everything below…
- Development of interspecific hybrids between Solanum lycopersicum L. and S. sisymbriifolium Lam. via embryo calli. Tertiary genepool? No problem.
- The Role of Diet in Resilience and Vulnerability to Climate Change among Early Agricultural Communities in the Maya Lowlands. More diverse diets allowed Maya to survive the droughts of the Late Pre-Classic Period (AD 100–300) better than those of the Terminal Classic Period (AD 750–1000).
- Global restoration opportunities in tropical rainforest landscapes. Massive mashing up of spatial datasets concludes that top 10% areas for potential return of benefits and feasibility of forest restoration are located largely within conservation hotspots and in countries committed to the Bonn Challenge, but cover only a small portion of the Key Biodiversity Area network.
- Plant domestication disrupts biodiversity effects across major crop types. Wild relatives are better at living in diverse mixtures than their descendant crops.
- Synchronous crop failures and climate-forced production variability. ENSO has caused global crop failures. Which are likely to get more frequent.
- Frankincense in peril. Because of cows and fire.
- Identification of Loci Controlling Adaptation in Chinese Soybean Landraces via a Combination of Conventional and Bioclimatic GWAS. Three geographic sub-populations among 2000 diverse landraces; 12 SNPs associated with variation in 3 bioclimatic variables at collecting sites.
- Estimates of genetic load in small populations suggest extensive purging of deleterious alleles. Counterintuitively, rapid declines cause worse genetic load for more diverse species.
- Grazing animals drove domestication of grain crops. Small-seeded herbaceous annuals were mainly animal-dispersed, which meant they grew in dense stands on nitrogen hotspots near water sources, making them easily harvested. Hey presto, crops!
- Global impacts of future cropland expansion and intensification on agricultural markets and biodiversity. Expansion mostly threatens biodiversity in Central and South America, intensification in Sub-Saharan Africa, India and China. Prices lower everywhere.
- Domestication and varietal diversification of Old World cultivated cottons (Gossypium sp.) in the Antiquity. G. arboreum first domesticated in Baluchistan 8000 years BP, G. herbaceum much later in Nubia. But they’re really difficult to tell apart in archaeological remains.
- ‘Preserve or perish’: food preservation practices in the early modern kitchen. The housewife as natural philosopher.
Nibbles: Ragone award, CC impacts, Uganda AGR genebank, Spanish livestock, Indian community genebank, COGENT in India, RTB and CC, Sudden oak death
- Diane Ragone is Distinguished Economic Botanist for 2020.
- Climate change is reducing consumable calories by about 1% a year for the top 10 crops globally.
- East Africa to get a livestock genebank. Will they use this “universal tool“?
- Meanwhile, transhumance is hanging on in Spain.
- Another community seed bank in India.
- And the international coconut genebank will survive.
- Roots, tubers and banana to increase in importance, but will need investment.
- Indigenous tribes to be involved in fight against sudden oak death in California.
Brainfood: Production stability, Mapping crops, Nigerian fish, Seed quality, C&E meta-data, Robots, Multivariate stats, Almond domestication, Fruit chilling, Forages & soils, Groundnut mini-core, PAs & CC, Indonesian diets, NUS, Asian-African animals
- Sensitivity of grain yields to historical climate variability in India. Other cereals are less sensitive than rice.
- Monitoring Changes in the Cultivation of Pigeonpea and Groundnut in Malawi Using Time Series Satellite Imagery for Sustainable Food Systems. Pigeonpea cultivation has expanded so much in response to Asian markets you can track it from space. But for how long?
- The relationship between forests and freshwater fish consumption in rural Nigeria. Fish need forests.
- Temporal patterns of seed quality development, decline, and timing of maximum quality during seed development and maturation. “…when maximum quality is first attained, and for how long it is maintained during seed development and maturation, varies with genotype and environment.” Oh, great.
- Modeling Crop Genetic Resources Phenotyping Information Systems. Managing meta-data on characterization and evaluation data.
- In vivo human-like robotic phenotyping of leaf traits in maize and sorghum in greenhouse. Yes, characterization and evaluation data like this.
- Ten quick tips for effective dimensionality reduction. How to analyze all that C&E data.
- Mutation of a bHLH transcription factor allowed almond domestication. A point mutation is all it took.
- Chilling accumulation in fruit trees in Spain under climate change. Some fruit trees, even in generally warm places, need a certain amount of cold to develop properly, and might not get it in the future. Maybe a point mutation will come to the rescue.
- Smart forage selection could significantly improve soil health in the tropics. Could.
- Evaluation of linkage disequilibrium, population structure, and genetic diversity in the U.S. peanut mini core collection. Can’t really use for GWAS. What a tragedy.
- Implications of climate change to the design of protected areas: The case study of small islands (Azores). The current PA system will still be ok on one island, but not on another. Has someone done this globally?
- Urbanisation, dietary change and traditional food practices in Indonesia: A longitudinal analysis. Westernization of diets is limited to Jakarta.
- Orphan crops: their importance and the urgency of improvement. They seem to be doing ok in Indonesia?
- Reconstructing Asian faunal introductions to eastern Africa from multi-proxy biomolecular and archaeological datasets. Chickens and black rats went from Asia to the coast of E Africa in the mid-first millennium CE.
- Archaeological and biometric perspectives on the development of chicken landraces in the Horn of Africa. Or maybe earlier for chicken after all.