- Evolution of the crop rhizosphere: impact of domestication on root exudates in tetraploid wheat (Triticum turgidum L.). Domestication and breeding have led to (probably adaptive) changes in root exudates.
- Threats from urban expansion, agricultural transformation and forest loss on global conservation priority areas. Vertebrate Biodiversity Hotspots are most threatened by all three factors. Plants too?
- Patterns and drivers of biodiversity–stability relationships under climate extremes. Species richness may not be enough to buffer ecosystems from extreme precipitations events. But a different metric would give a different result?
- Evaluating the environmental impacts of dietary recommendations. Adopting nationally recommended diets would help the environment.
- On the Use of Hedonic Price Indices to Understand Ecosystem Service Provision from Urban Green Space in Five Latin American Megacities. There’s an overall strong positive correlation between urban greenery and house prices, but it’s context-specific.
- Disease: A Hitherto Unexplored Constraint on the Spread of Dogs (Canis lupus familiaris) in Pre-Columbian South America. Yes, why are there no dogs in the Amazon?
- Children and Wild Foods in the Context of Deforestation in Rural Malawi. Fewer wild foods in more deforested sites, and fewer sold by children from better-off households. What of the nutrition outcomes, though?
- Biodiversity defrosted: unveiling non-compliant fish trade in ethnic food stores. About 40% of samples in Liverpool and Manchester mislabelled.
- Population viability analysis of the Crioula Lageano cattle. It’s going to be fine.
- The Kalanchoë genome provides insights into convergent evolution and building blocks of crassulacean acid metabolism. Next stop, CAM rice.
- Contribution of trees to the conservation of biodiversity and ecosystem services in agricultural landscapes. It depends. But what would those kids in Malawi say?
Nibbles: Orphan edition
- The Economist jumps on the genomics-for-orphan-crops bandwagon.
- But is phenomics more important?
- And seed systems, don’t forget seed systems…
- Some of those orphan crops may get an International Day, if India has anything to do with it.
- Immortelle is as orphan as they come, but maybe not in Croatia any more.
- Amaranthus never really went away, not in Mexico.
- Persimmon, meanwhile, is being adopted by the snack industry in the US. But the Japanese are way ahead.
- Some think yerba mate is not orphan enough.
- Is yam an orphan. It depends on what your definition of is is.
- Avocado is the opposite of orphaned in Mexico. It is spoiled rotten.
- Many orphan crops are women’s crops. Case in point: enset.
- Orphan is a relative term, and reversible.
- Exhibit B: sweet potato.
- People often take their orphan crops with them. Even in antiquity.
- Coconut is fast becoming an orphan in Tanzania.
- With 32 cultivars available to grow in Louisiana alone, nobody can say lettuce is an orphan.
- Mexico and Brazil collaborate on crop diversity conservation. Including orphan crops?
- One thing that is probably not a huge priority for orphan crops is their wild relatives. Just saying.
- Anyway, we’re going to need all the orphan crops we can get if James Cameron’s titanic vegetarian utopia is to come true.
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.”
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.
Nibbles: Millets galore, Human diversity & ag, Super farmers, Extinction is forever, Indian nutrition maps, Future Food competition, Banana viruses, Cassava in Brazil & Africa, Sugar book, Fairchild & Irma, Vegetable ROI, Embrapa beans, Certified coffee, Legal pot, Native American foods
- Today’s new genome is pearl millet. The most climate-smart of crops? Now, to process it more easily.
- Finger millet is not too bad either.
- Agriculture was good for human diversity, at least in Papua New Guinea. Elsewhere, maybe not so much.
- Julio Hancco Mamani grows 400 potato varieties up in the Andes (but how did it all start?). And Rahibai Soma Popere “15 varieties of rice, nine varieties of pigeon pea and sixty varieties of vegetables, besides many oil seeds” in Maharashtra.
- “West Bengal government encourages cultivation of extinct rice varieties.” Wait, what?
- Presumably not extinct like silphium.
- India’s first nutrition atlas will maybe tells us where more Rahibai Soma Poperes are most needed.
- Future Food includes seeds.
- Cleaning up bananas.
- Would love to have been on the “Brazilian Cassava Learning Journey.” Tanzania next?
- The bitter side of sugar.
- Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden damaged by Irma.
- Research on vegetables really pays off, vegetable researchers say.
- Brazilian bean catalog launched.
- Certifying coffee seeds.
- Pot next?
- Closely followed by Navajo tea.