- Jeremy gets into tomato domestication and diversity on his podcast.
- The 2021 Access to Seeds Index Insights Report is out, and includes tomatoes.
- What is the most famous place for coconut varieties?
- A new book attempts to decolonize the peanut.
- Blood and water in Spain.
- A tale of two genebanks: China and Nigeria. Maybe the African Union can help? If not, maybe China might.
- Africa needs help with tree planting too. Maybe follow Italy’s example?
- Though maybe sorghum and millet will be ok.
- Send them to Iraqi farmers?
- Presentations on seed conservation and use in genebanks.
Brainfood: Ultra-processed food, Micronutrients, Wheat breeding, Bambara groundnut breeding, Seed longevity, Sheep diversity, Switchgrass ploidy, Seed services, Jersey in Africa, Wine history, Austronesian dispersal
- Ultra-processed foods should be central to global food systems dialogue and action on biodiversity. Should.
- Global plant diversity as a reservoir of micronutrients for humanity. As.
- Mainstreaming grain zinc and iron concentrations in CIMMYT wheat germplasm. Eventually.
- Utilization of Plant Genetic Resources of Bambara Groundnut Conserved Ex Situ and Genetic Diversification of Its Primary Genepool for Semi-Arid Production. Insufficient.
- More on seed longevity phenotyping. p50.
- Gender dynamics around introduction of improved forages in Kenya and Ethiopia. Training.
- Whole-Genome Resequencing of Worldwide Wild and Domestic Sheep Elucidates Genetic Diversity, Introgression, and Agronomically Important Loci. Hairy.
- Jersey cattle in Africa: From the Breed’s Documented Past to a Profit IndexLinked Future. Promising?
- A generalist–specialist trade-off between switchgrass cytotypes impacts climate adaptation and geographic range. Polyploidy!
- Decentralized Seed Services in Africa. Quality.
- The Rise of Wine among Ancient Civilizations across the Mediterranean Basin. Ritual.
- Genome Analysis Traces Regional Dispersal of Rice in Taiwan and Southeast Asia. Ok, I give up, I can’t do this. Austronesian speakers did not spread out of Taiwan because of rice. If you can summarize that in a word, I’m impressed, so let me know.
Brainfood: Digitizing collections, Bean core, Livestock diversity, Maya & maize, Fish stocks & CC, Save the weed, Flax CWR, Italian agrobiodiversity
- Cross-validation of a semantic segmentation network for natural history collection specimens. Computers can distinguish the herbarium label from the actual specimen and other stuff on the sheet, helping with the whole automatic digitization thing, but it takes some really fancy math.
- The landscapes of livestock diversity: grazing local breeds as a proxy for domesticated species adaptation to the environment. Medium fancy math used to map breed diversity in the Iberian Peninsula for different livestock species and relate it to environmental factors.
- South-to-north migration preceded the advent of intensive farming in the Maya region. Sort of like tomato, but in the other direction. Plenty of math involved, but behind the scenes, thankfully.
- Timing and magnitude of climate-driven range shifts in transboundary fish stocks challenge their management. Huge amount of data and very fancy math shows fish are in trouble.
- A Core Set of Snap Bean Genotypes Established by Phenotyping a Large Panel Collected in Europe. Ok, even I can follow the math on this one.
- Assessment of biogeographic variation in traits of Lewis flax (Linum lewisii) for use in restoration and agriculture. Very approachable math shows which populations of a CWR can best be used for restoration, and where; and also for domestication and breeding.
- An updated checklist of plant agrobiodiversity of northern Italy. Very useful use of very basic maths. Key number: only 43% of the PGR on the list are conserved ex situ.
- Cannabis, the multibillion dollar plant that no genebank wanted. No math needed to figure out weed needs a genebank.
An apple story a day…
Well, that’s odd. The rush of stories about apples usually happens in the autumn. And yet, just in the past couple of days, quite apart from the tweet about Korbinian Aigner, I have come across:
- An excellent roundup from the Apples & People newsletter.
- A pointer to a webpage on the history of American apples.
- News of newly-bred hypoallergenic varieties.
Oh, and since I have you here, might as well also say that there’s been an update from GRIN-U. No new resources specifically on apples lately, but there’s been a few in the past.
Nibbles: American single malt, Gauguin’s coconut, World Seed Congress, Red gold, Kunming
- Will American single malt whiskey be a thing? Depends on the American barley.
- Is the fruit in Paul Gauguin’s Eü haere ia oe (Woman Holding a Fruit) a coconut? Have your say.
- Will the World Seed Congress sow a brilliant future? We shall see.
- Is the oil palm over in West Africa? Depends.
- Where are we with that post-2020 biodiversity deal? Nowhere much yet.