- The ever-dependable Roads & Kingdoms on a very special Swiss cheese.
- The ever-dependable Mongabay on Kyrgyz apple forests.
- The ever-dependable Simran Sethi on how the California pistachio industry got it’s start.
- The ever-dependable Bioversity with a global strategy for the conservation of coconut genetic diversity.
- The ever-dependable Twitter…no wait. Thread on why farmers with a bigger share in their output produce more.
- A cow wild relative in Myanmar.
- Carolina Sansaloni of CIMMYT on genotyping genebank collections.
- Are chickens “rescuing mute, passive non-Western women”?
- Blueberries are in all kinds of trouble.
Brainfood: NUS crackers, Genomic prediction, Chicken double, Wild German celery, Cretan sheep, Boricua papaya, Sorghum breeding, Wheat breeding, Italian carrots, Mining barley, Onion review, Fertilizers
- Development of value-added nutritious crackers with high antidiabetic properties from blends of Acha (Digitaria exilis) and blanched Pigeon pea (Cajanus cajan). Putting orphan crops to work.
- A deep convolutional neural network approach for predicting phenotypes from genotypes. Artificial intelligence applied to genomic selection. Sexy enough for you?
- Genomic diversity dynamics in conserved chicken populations are revealed by genome-wide SNPs. Gotta watch those effective population sizes.
- Chicken semen cryopreservation and use for the restoration of rare genetic resources. Maybe a way to help with the above?
- Patterns of Genetic Diversity and Implications for In Situ Conservation of Wild Celery (Apium graveolens L. ssp. graveolens). 15 Most Appropriate Wild Populations out of 78. Still seems like a lot.
- Challenges for local breed management in Mediterranean dairy sheep farming: insights from Central Greece. Conservation through cross-breeding. But how long can it last?
- Genetic Diversity of Puerto Rican Farmer-held Papaya (Carica papaya) Using SSR Markers. I wonder how many are left after Maria.
- Breeding Sorghum for Diverse End Uses: Genetic Improvement of Grain Sorghum. More germplasm could be used.
- Harnessing genetic potential of wheat germplasm banks through impact-oriented-prebreeding for future food and nutritional security. Getting impact from “exotic” germplasm is possible. To be clear, I think that just means wild stuff.
- BiodiverSO: A Case Study of Integrated Project to Preserve the Biodiversity of Vegetable Crops in Puglia (Southern Italy). Saving the Polignano carrot.
- Genomics Approaches to Mining Barley Germplasm Collections. Management, cores, history. But we knew that.
- Allium Genetic Resources. Significant progress in data availability, cryopreservation protocols, health status and levels of evaluation. Maybe acquisition and exchange could be increased?
- Review: Taking stock of Africa’s second-generation agricultural input subsidy programs. 80 studies from 7 countries show that helping smallholders obtain fertilisers gives rapid but short-term and lower-than-expected increases in production. One reason is that yields don’t respond to fertilisation as much as they should. Is it because it’s mainly landraces?
Nibbles: Transformation, Restoration, Renumeration, Validation, Mensuration, Celebration, Visualization, Diversification, Fructification, Information, Fermentation, Sustentation, Association, Migration, Transformation, Microconservation
- Lawrence Haddad on how to start transforming the food system.
- Here’s an idea: CIMMYT genebank recognized for restoring agricultural diversity in Guatemala.
- And another. Cash transfers are better than more conventional interventions for malnutrition, but they have to be real money.
- But, of course, they don’t always work. That’s one of many development myths listed in this fun Twitter thread.
- We also need metrics, sure, but the right ones, and we may already have them.
- The first ecologist remembered. That would be Humboldt.
- Terrible visualizations of the changing geography of American agriculture.
- But where are heirloom grown? Rice, say?
- And where are all the pomegranate farmers?
- I’m sure there are plenty of grape maps of France somewhere. But what’s with all these varieties? And are there more than in pomegranate?
- IUCN launches a new Red List website.
- Laos launches a sort of Red List website on traditional foods. Here it is. No word on linkages with Ark of Taste.
- Belgian lambic beer threatened by climate change. Now it’s personal.
- In Italy, the landscape needs people to keep it safe.
- Even olive landscapes, which maybe need to be more promiscuous.
- Early agricultural migrations fuelled by cheese.
- Early eggplant migrations fuelled by elephants.
- Microbes to the rescue.
Brainfood: Quinoa boom, Diet affordability, Insect boom and bust, Organic & pests, Maize agroforestry, Landraces, Wheat roots, Conservation costs, Sustainable intensification, Defences & domestication, Polyploid niches, Mexican CWR, Danish apples, Diversity proxies, Grassland nutrient hotspots
- Foods and fads: The welfare impacts of rising quinoa prices in Peru. Modest.
- Measuring the Affordability of Nutritious Diets in Africa: Price Indexes for Diet Diversity and the Cost of Nutrient Adequacy. Maybe they could try quinoa.
- Impacts of climate warming on terrestrial ectotherms across latitude. Insects are in trouble in the tropics, but will make up for it at higher latitudes, which will be really bad for crops there, 10-25% more bad.
- Evidence that organic farming promotes pest control. Something for farmers in those higher latitudes to think about.
- The global distribution of Bacillus anthracis and associated anthrax risk to humans, livestock, and wildlife. 63.8 million rural poor livestock keepers are at risk. No word on effect of climate change.
- Do open-pollinated maize varieties perform better than hybrids in agroforestry systems? Maybe in Rwanda, but in Ethiopia not so much.
- More than Yield: Ecosystem Services of Traditional versus Modern Crop Varieties Revisited. Landraces are liked for yield stability in marginal environments, and for cultural reasons.
- Root and shoot traits in parental, early and late generation Green Revolution wheats (Triticum spp.) under glasshouse conditions. Modern wheat have smaller roots.
- Standardized reporting of the costs of management interventions for biodiversity conservation. Behind a paywall, so can’t tell whether includes genebanks. But I bet it doesn’t. Tell me I’m wrong.
- Global assessment of agricultural system redesign for sustainable intensification. Apparently 30% of farms and 10% of agricultural land worldwide, which is both more and less than I would have guessed.
- Genetic homogeneity of North-African goats. The Berber breeds are different, everything else is a big mixed up mess.
- Plant domestication decreases both constitutive and induced chemical defences by direct selection against defensive traits. In cabbage, even the tissues that are not eaten are more edible than in the wild relative.
- Polyploid plants have faster rates of multivariate climatic niche evolution than their diploid relatives. Relevant for domestication?
- An Initiative for the Study and Use of Genetic Diversity of Domesticated Plants and Their Wild Relatives. In Mexico.
- Population structure, relatedness and ploidy levels in an apple gene bank revealed through genotyping-by-sequencing. There’s a lot of inter-relatedness in the Danish collection.
- Biases induced by using geography and environment to guide ex situ conservation. “Although geographic and environmental diversity have proven to be reliable predictors of allele frequency differences and ecotypic differentiation across species ranges, they appear to be poor predictors of allelic diversity per se.” At least for 3 species.
- Examining the spectra of herbarium uses and users. Herbaria mostly used by taxonomists shock.
- Ancient herders enriched and restructured African grasslands. Shit. You heard me.
Brainfood: Fox domestication, Wheat synthesis, Microscale selection, Sports, Brinjal evolution, Famous faba, Synthetic wheats, Watkins collection, Wheat genetic gains, Chinese cattle
- Red fox genome assembly identifies genomic regions associated with tame and aggressive behaviours. It’s down to synaptic plasticity, among other things.
- Development and identification of new synthetic T. turgidum–T. monococcum amphiploids. Did this never happen in the wild?
- Genomic adaptation to drought in wild barley is driven by edaphic natural selection at the Tabigha Evolution Slope. Big genetic differences in wild populations just meters apart but on different soil types.
- Attention sports fans! The far-reaching contributions of bud sport mutants to horticulture and plant biology. Much more than just Pinot gris.
- Shedding new light on the origin and spread of the brinjal eggplant (Solanum melongena L.) and its wild relatives. Originated in Africa, moved to Asia, where it was domesticated; spread in Africa by elephants.
- ILB 938, a valuable faba bean (Vicia faba L.) accession. Goes well with chianti. Note the DOI.
- Unlocking the novel genetic diversity and population structure of synthetic Hexaploid wheat. More in diversity in synthetics compared to elite bread wheats.
- Genetic Gains for Grain Yield in CIMMYT’s Semi-Arid Wheat Yield Trials Grown in Suboptimal Environments. 1.6% per year (2002-2014), not least because of the above.
- Hidden variation in polyploid wheat drives local adaptation. Could this contribute to continuing the above?
- Genome-wide scanning reveals genetic diversity and signatures of selection in Chinese indigenous cattle breeds. More diversity in the north.