- Towards resilient and sustainable agri-food systems. Summary report from the FORSEE Series of Töpfer Müller Gaßner GmbH (TMG). Take home message: We need an internationally agreed framework for agri-food systems transformation that reduces the externalities of the current systems. But how?
- Chair Summary and Meeting Outcome of the G20 Meeting of Agricultural Chief Scientists 2023. “We highlight the importance of locally adapted crops for the transition towards resilient agriculture and food systems, enhancing agricultural diversity, and improving food security and nutrition.” And that includes the wonderfully named Millets And OtHer Ancient GRains International ReSearcH Initiative (MAHARISHI). Ah, so that’s how.
- Are pastoralists and their livestock to blame for climate change? Spoiler alert: It’s complicated, but no. And here’s a digest of resources from the Land Portal explaining they can be part of sustainable and resilient agri-food systems.
- The Utopian Seed Project is developing more climate-resilient okra in the southern USA.
- Joseph Lofthouse, Julia Dakin, Shane Simonsen and Simon Gooder — interviewed here about landrace-based breeding — would approve of utopian okra.
- Plenty of landraces in the Ghana national genebank, according to this mainstream media article.
- Also plenty of landraces in India’s community seedbanks.
- Professor Zhang Jianwei at the National Key Laboratory of Crop Genetic Improvement, Huazhong Agricultural University has built an rice pan-genome database based on 16 (landraces presumably) accessions representing all the major sub-populations. The technical details are here. Rice sustainability and resilience no doubt beckons. Okra next?
- No, perennial rice next, apparently.
Brainfood: Pollinator evolution, Pollinator diversity, Livestock, Yak milk consumption, Poultry in situ conservation, Soil stress, Self-domestication, Natural history collections
- The expansion of agriculture has shaped the recent evolutionary history of a specialized squash pollinator. The genetic diversity of an insect crop pollinator has been affected by the fact that it pollinates a crop.
- Native pollinators improve the quality and market value of common bean. The diversity of native insect crop pollinators affects the value of the crop they pollinate.
- A global approach for natural history museum collections. Basically amounts to “ask curators what they have.” Including presumably specimens of insect pollinators. We’ve been doing this for PGRFA for quite a while now, one way or another. Back to mainly plants next week, hopefully, but let’s keep going with animals for now, and let’s see what more we can learn.
- A 12% switch from monogastric to ruminant livestock production can reduce emissions and boost crop production for 525 million people. Ruminants are not all bad after all.
- Permafrost preservation reveals proteomic evidence for yak milk consumption in the 13th century. The Mongols thought this particular ruminant was just great.
- The self-management organization as a way for the in situ conservation of native poultry genetic resources. In response to the promotion of exotic commercial poultry breeds, women’s groups in Mexico have got together and developed rules to protect native hens. Please let not these be among the 12% of monogastrics that get replaced by yaks.
- Increasing the number of stressors reduces soil ecosystem services worldwide. It’s the number of different stressors, more than their aggregate strength, that most affects how badly soils are stressed. Goes for me too, to be honest.
- Elephants as an animal model for self-domestication. I’ll believe it when elephants domesticate yaks.
How Native Americans got their horses
You know how you read in history textbooks that the Native Americans of the Great Plains got hold of horses from retreating Spanish colonists after the Pueblo Revolt of 1680? And you know how Native Americans have been saying that’s not what they think happened? That they in fact got their horses long before that? You know how rare it is that a scientific paper involving museum specimens and DNA includes Indigenous authors? And that said paper overturns a mainstream historical narrative and is then splashed all over the mainstream media? Very rare, that’s how rare.
Nibbles: Wild tomatoes, Ghana genebank, India livestock census, USDA coffee breeding, Native Americans & their horses
- It’s pretty rare to have a mainstream media piece on the use of crop wild relatives for climate change adaptation but here we have an example with tomato, so make the most of it. There’s an interesting wrinkle though, so more to come, time permitting.
- It’s even rarer to see a mainstream media piece on genebank staff getting trained. What’s going on out there?
- Not exactly mainstream media, but how many times have you seen an official government press release on its livestock censuses? Anyway, India’s last one was carried out in 2019 and covered 184 breeds of 16 species. Wonder where the data is.
- Speaking of government press releases, here’s one from USDA announcing that it has joined a coffee breeding network. Well, I for one think it’s important.
- And staying in the USA, you know how you read in mainstream textbooks that Native Americans got horses from retreating Spanish colonists after the Pueblo Revolt? And you know how Native Americans have been saying that’s not what they think happened? How rare is it that a scientific paper involving Indigenous authors overturns a mainstream historical narrative and is splashed all over the mainstream media? Very rare, that’s how rare.
Brainfood: Traits & environment, Acacia growth, Local extinction risk, Lebanese CWR priorities, Malawi CWR payments, Bread wheat origins, Wild lettuce, Ethiopian forages, Editing forages
- Why can’t we predict traits from the environment? Because plants are not collections of independent, isolated traits. All the more reason to study, understand and protect wild plants of economic importance, as the following papers show.
- Differential climatic conditions drive growth of Acacia tortilis tree in its range edges in Africa and Asia. Case in point of the above. Makes germplasm evaluation really hard.
- Understanding local plant extinctions before it is too late: bridging evolutionary genomics with global ecology. Modelling based on the genomic offset (GO) method and the mutations–area relationship (MAR) can help better predict the risk of extinction of different populations.
- Crop wild relatives in Lebanon: mapping the distribution of Poaceae and Fabaceae priority taxa for conservation planning. Bekaa and Baalbak have the highest diversity and the SW the most gaps.
- Community-Level Incentive Mechanisms for the Conservation of Crop Wild Relatives: A Malawi Case Study. Paying communities to conserve crop wild relatives could work and be relatively cheap. Waiting to see this being applied in the Bekaa.
- Population genomics unravels the Holocene history of bread wheat and its relatives. Yeah but crop wild relatives really held back bread wheat domestication. So maybe the Bekaa owes everyone else.
- New insights gained from collections of wild Lactuca relatives in the gene bank of the Institute of Evolution, University of Haifa. Maybe they can gain an insight into how to make lettuce taste of something. And I wonder what environmental variable that will be associated with.
- Climate change and land-use change impacts on future availability of forage grass species for Ethiopian dairy systems. Two forages will do better under climate change, one worse. Assuming a lot of stuff.
- Application of CRISPR/Cas9 technology in forages. But plants are not collections of independent, isolated traits, right?