- Puerto Rico is the location for R&D of “up to 85 percent of the commercial corn, soybean and other hybrid seeds grown in the US”. Nope, I did not know that either.
- “According to Bioversity International, an international research and policy organization, just three crops — rice, wheat and maize — provide more than half of plant-derived calories consumed worldwide,” says online magazine. Excellent, we now have a reliable source.
- Marc Bellemare spills the beans on fad foods quinoa and avocado
Nibbles: Joanne Labate, Gebisa Ejeta, David Spooner, Strawberry 101, Mad honey, First figs, Agrobiodiversity maps, School project, Takesgiving, Private investment
- USDA vegetable crop curator tells it like it is.
- $5 million to find more Striga resistance genes in sorghum.
- Wild potato herbarium specimens find good home.
- How two New World strawberries got together in the Old World and then spread all over the world.
- Hallucinogenic honey: what could possibly go wrong?
- First farmers gave a fig.
- The other of all agrobiodiversity map mashups.
- Cool school project on crop diversity in Europe.
- In other news, “Columbusing” is a thing.
- Private sector investment in conservation: Turning “small and new” into “big and familiar.”
Brainfood: Banana diversity, Cacao and CC, Coffee and CC, Zosya diversity, Certification, Genetic surrogates, Potato diversity, Food sovereignty, Swiss wheat, Seed storage, Golden potato
- Diversity and morphological characterization of Musa spp. in North Kivu and Ituri provinces, Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. New cultivars still being discovered.
- A review of research on the effects of drought and temperature stress and increased CO2 on Theobroma cacao L., and the role of genetic diversity to address climate change. We have the diversity. But for how long?
- Climate change adaptation of coffee production in space and time. Gonna need Plans B and C. But do we have the diversity?
- Evaluation and Breeding of Zoysiagrass Using Japan’s Natural Genetic Resources. Stick to morphology.
- Where are commodity crops certified, and what does it mean for conservation and poverty alleviation? Less for poverty alleviation than for conservation. But more and better spatial data needed, especially on organic certification.
- Environmental and geographic variables are effective surrogates for genetic variation in conservation planning. Phew!
- Genome diversity of tuber-bearing Solanum uncovers complex evolutionary history and targets of domestication in the cultivated potato. More diversity in the landraces compared to wild species than in any other crop, few genes involved in early improvement, and different loci for adaptation to uplands and lowlands; also, wild relatives involved in diversification of long-day types.
- Agricultural biodiversity is sustained in the framework of food sovereignty. Peasants feed the world.
- Crop domestication facilitated rapid geographical expansion of a specialist pollinator, the squash bee Peponapis pruinosa. Bee follows crop follows people.
- Unlocking the diversity of genebanks: whole-genome marker analysis of Swiss bread wheat and spelt. Early breeders missed some stuff.
- A probabilistic model for tropical tree seed desiccation tolerance and storage classification. Predict storage behaviour from morphology.
- Potential of golden potatoes to improve vitamin A and vitamin E status in developing countries. Here we go again.
Nibbles: CWR, Vavilov, Russian wheat, Spinifex, Copal, Pacific veggies, ITPGRFA, GHUs, Brewing, Sustainable meat, Livestock domestication
- FoodTank does crop wild relatives.
- “The inveterate collector who understand the poetics of diversity had left behind a new plant unknown to science.”
- That “inveterate collector” would probably approve of this.
- A VERY tasty grass.
- Chew on that spinifex while burning this stuff for the full botanical multi-sensory experience..
- Pacific people told to cultivate their gardens for health and nutrition. And climate change adaptation.
- Progress on Farmers’ Rights. Incremental, but still.
- The unsung heroes of germplasm distribution get together.
- Reviving the fortunes of NY hops through fancy breeding.
- Too much plant protein is going to animals, so let’s give them insects instead.
- Because animals are bad for equality anyway.
Brainfood: Wild rice double, Paspalum evaluation, Industrial cassava, Intercropping meta-analysis, Chinese cotton, Power of words, Sampling, Biodiversity threats, Mung bean diversity, Chestnut core, Olive double, Durian genome
- Unlocking the genetic diversity of the undomesticated rice relative Oryza longistaminata. Natural hybrids discovered in IRRI genebank can accelerate breeding.
- Evidence for mid-Holocene rice domestication in the Americas. Another rice domestication?
- Evaluation and strategies of tolerance to water stress in Paspalum germplasm. A species for every purpose.
- Evaluation of Cassava Germplasm Accessions for High Tuber Yield and Starch Content for Industrial Exploitations. Watch Me681 take over. At least in India.
- Does intercropping enhance yield stability in arable crop production? A meta-analysis. Yes.
- Collection, Evaluation and Utilization of Cotton Germplasm. Over a thousand accessions!
- Treasure in the vault: The guardianship of ‘heritage’ seeds, fruit and vegetables. “Treasure” is a loaded term.
- Will the same ex situ protocols give similar results for closely related species? Yep.
- Global Hotspots of Conflict Risk between Food Security and Biodiversity Conservation. Madagascar is particularly worrying.
- Genetic diversity assessment of a set of introduced mung bean accessions (Vigna radiata L.). Germplasm from USDA genebank could be useful in China.
- Database of European chestnut cultivars and definition of a core collection using simple sequence repeats. Not sure you can call it European when 96 of 118 accessions are from Spain, but anyway.
- Genome of wild olive and the evolution of oil biosynthesis. Two genes explain all that oil…
- Did Greek colonisation bring olive growing to the north? An integrated archaeobotanical investigation of the spread of Olea europaea in Greece from the 7th to the 1st millennium BC. …which would have been intensely interesting to early Bronze Age elites.
- The draft genome of tropical fruit durian (Durio zibethinus). “Transcriptomic analysis showed upregulation of sulfur-, ethylene-, and lipid-related pathways in durian fruits.” You don’t say. Let’s engineer them into olives. Paleopolyploidizations here too, as in olives.