Mainstream

May 16, 2017May 16, 2017

Kew helping protect your morning joe

Remember a short blog post from seven years back saying how Ethiopia had just protected some wild coffee forests?

We Nibbled yesterday a UN press release saying that a Biosphere Reserve had been created in Ethiopia to protect wild coffee. But actually it turns out that it is no less than TWO reserves that have just been selected by UNESCO, Kafa and Yayu. Many thanks to Tadesse Woldemariam Gole for the tip.

No, I didn’t think so. But anyway, here’s the latest on that, courtesy of the coffee team at Kew.

In April 2015 we started the three year project ‘Mainstreaming biodiversity conservation and climate resilience at Yayu Biosphere Reserve (Ethiopia)’. In this project, poverty alleviation, biodiversity, and climate resilience, are inextricably linked.
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The project has now been running for almost two years, and despite a few surprises, is achieving considerable success. Catch-up on our progress in the second part of this post, available in the coming months.

Previous experience in this sort of thing has been mixed, so I’m looking forward to hearing more. In the coming months.

May 15, 2017May 15, 2017

Brainfood: Canola model, Saline dates, High rice, Perennial wheat, European cowpea, Mesoamerican oil palm, Seed viability, Citrus identity, Poor cassava, Horse domestication, Wild tomatoes, Tea genome, Veggie breeding, Classical brassicas

Development of a Statistical Crop Model to Explain the Relationship between Seed Yield and Phenotypic Diversity within the Brassica napus Genepool. Look for primary raceme area.
Screening of Date Palm (Phoenix dactylifera L.) Cultivars for Salinity Tolerance. In Oman, Manoma and Umsila are particularly tolerant.
Genetic structure and isolation by altitude in rice landraces of Yunnan, China revealed by nucleotide and microsatellite marker polymorphisms. Geneflow is horizontal, adaptation vertical.
Breeding Perennial Grain Crops Based on Wheat. By adding a wild genome.
European cowpea landraces for a more sustainable agriculture system and novel foods. 24 of them, no less. But you have to start somewhere, I suppose.
Genetic diversity of Elaeis oleifera (HBK) Cortes populations using cross species SSRs: implication’s for germplasm utilization and conservation. From 532 palms in 19 populations to 34 individuals.
Large-Scale Screening of Intact Tomato Seeds for Viability Using Near Infrared Reflectance Spectroscopy (NIRS). Good-bye germination tests?
Genetic identification of ‘Limau Kacang’ (Citrus sp.), a local mandarin cultivated in West Sumatra by sequence-related amplified polymorphism (SRAP). It’s a ponkan.
Cassava haplotype map highlights fixation of deleterious mutations during clonal propagation. Cassava is decaying genetically, but breeders are helping.
Ancient genomic changes associated with domestication of the horse. The ancient DNA of immediate post-domestication horses suggests that the stallion bottleneck happened later.
Genetic Diversity and Population Structure of Two Tomato Species from the Galapagos Islands. They mirror island formation.
The Tea Tree Genome Provides Insights into Tea Flavor and Independent Evolution of Caffeine Biosynthesis. It evolved caffeine independently of coffee but not cacao. And flavour is down to a whole genome duplication.
The contribution of international vegetable breeding to private seed companies in India. It can still make one, but for traits rather than varieties.
Domestication, diversity and use of Brassica oleracea L., based on ancient Greek and Latin texts. Their use as a hangover cure has a long and august pedigree. No word on their raceme area.

May 11, 2017May 11, 2017

Ghostly Bramley

I don’t think I linked last year to the sad news of the impending demise of the original Bramley apple tree. I did link a year before to the news that the pie filling made from said apple was being protected by the EU. And I’ll link now to an article about what Brexit may mean for British apple growers. But all merely by way of introduction to this stunning 3D scan of that fading mother tree in Southwell.

3D scan and drawing of the 200 year old original Bramley Apple tree in Southwell. The 'mother' of all modern Bramley apples. pic.twitter.com/gCq1zmpl0n

— Wolfgang Buttress (@WButtress) May 10, 2017

May 11, 2017

Nibbles: Rice in Trinidad, Sweet potatoes in Ethiopia, EU crop diversity double, Sir Peter on the ginkgo, Forages, Brazilian peanuts, Seed moisture, Phenotyping double, Svalbard deposit, CATIE data, Herbarium double, Seed #resistance, Father of the apple, Agave congress

African rice out of Africa, and out of the genebank.
The other way around for sweet potato.
Markers for micronutrients. And diversity for taste…
The deep history of the ginkgo.
Study plants to decrease the effects of burping.
Brazil rationalizes peanut collections.
Measuring moisture in seeds.
Big data for better seeds. And not only in Iowa.
NZ seeds in Svalbard.
CATIE on Genesys.
Oz biosecurity fail. Better stick to online.
I want to be a seed rebel too.
Maybe in Kazakhstan?
Agave under the volcano under the cosh.

May 5, 2017May 7, 2017

Vegetables, joy and justice

A long(ish) Edible Manhattan piece by Rachel Nuwer on the movement to breed crops for flavour, rather than only productivity or shelf-life, very nice in its own right, also gives me the excuse to link to Jeremy’s interview on Eat This Podcast with Lane Selman of the Culinary Breeding Network. Here’s Nuwer’s sign-off as an amuse-bouche. She first points out that production of the much un-loved kale has seen quite a jump lately in the US. Why not the Habanada pepper, the honeynut squash, or “a subtly flavored cucumber with a white rind”?

A similar renaissance could happen for these new ingredients, too — if only we demand it through our dining habits and grocery store purchases. As Swegarden points out, “Everything that happens upstream in the food system is dictated by the consumer.” Should a flavor-forward movement take hold, it has the possibility of changing the food system, including potentially creating more jobs for farmers and strengthening the shift toward local, seasonal and minimally-processed and -doused ingredients. Selman also anticipates that greater availability of delicious, affordable produce would translate into greater consumption of fruits, veggies and grains—and thus hopefully to a healthier general public. “I don’t do this because I want to hang out with high-end chefs,” she says. “It’s about joy and justice.”

Indeed it is.