Microbes – Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

April 18, 2018April 19, 2018

A Nibble big enough to choke on

Yeah, yeah, it’s been quiet here for the best part of a month. Work, you know. When you notice lack of action here, though, that doesn’t mean that I’m being completely idle. Not always, anyway. Check on Twitter and Facebook, if you dare, and you’ll see new stuff on a fairly regular basis, because that’s easier to do than a fully-fledged blog post. Anyway, what I’ll do here is a mega-Nibble hoovering up snippets from the past few weeks that I posted on social media but not here.

Vegetable History 101.
If you have a heirloom of one of the above to name, try this neural network approach.
Just as long as the name doesn’t end up being racist.
It’s too late for some German veggies. Though not, it seems, for German forests. What’s the difference?
Not yet too late for Tanzanian wild veggies, but winter is coming. Maybe giving them cool names would help.
And for some North American indigenous crops too, thanks to some committed people.
And for beans in Mexico for that matter.
Why all the above is important.
And urgent.
And this is the resulting problem if you ignore that lesson.
You see, the Australians are on the case, with their bush tucker fixation.
Mind you, it’s not all sweetness and light: the quinoa bubble bursts.
Maybe we can make a game of this diversification lark. Oh, look, it seems we can.
You can even breed for it.
Wherein I pontificate about genebank data. Again.
Maybe these guys will listen?
These guys obviously did, and built a better peanut.
Yeah, but can you see them from space?
The cost of ending hunger. The cost of ensuring crop diversity conservation in genebanks seems, well, peanuts.
The archaeology of gardens. Two of my favourite topics, combined. If only there was beer too. And peanuts.
A banana is a banana is a banana. Not.
All those bananas? You can help to map them.
They’ll put them on Google Earth next, like Kew did for these beautiful natural areas, with all their crop wild relatives :)
A Japanese agricultural encyclopaedia. Illustrated to boot.
Or, for the more Euro-centric, food art at the Met…
This cheese should probably be at the Met there too.
And this weed strain may well soon be on sale in the gift shop.
The sweet potato made it to Oceania on its own.
Oh no it didn’t.
On the other hand, livestock generally need to be accompanied.
All the yeast belong China.

March 19, 2018March 24, 2018

Brainfood: Tunisian carrots, Benin & CC, Tree variation, Grape phenotyping, Small ruminant domestication, Rio herbarium, Barley domestication, Millet groupings, Greek cheese

Genotyping-by-sequencing reveals the origin of the Tunisian relatives of cultivated carrot (Daucus carota). D. carota subsp. gummifer is different.
Impacts of climate change on cropping patterns in a tropical, sub-humid watershed. Recent advances in both rainfed and irrigated cropping in central Benin will be undone. Genetics to the rescue?
Is local trait variation related to total range size of tropical trees? No.
High-Precision Phenotyping of Grape Bunch Architecture Using Fast 3D Sensor and Automation. Next, put it on a drone.
Convergent genomic signatures of domestication in sheep and goats. Same genes, different selection pressures.
Herbarium collection of the Rio de Janeiro Botanical Garden (RB), Brazil. Any crops wild relatives? Pretty sure there must be.
Targeted resequencing reveals genomic signatures of barley domestication. Distinct ancestor populations at eastern and western ends of the Fertile Crescent implicated in domestication.
Towards Defining Heterotic Gene Pools in Pearl Millet [Pennisetum glaucum (L.) R.Br.]. Hybrid pearl millet is just around the corner.
Biodiversity and microbial resistance of lactobacilli isolated from the traditional Greek cheese kopanisti. Impressive biodiversity, alarming resistance.

January 31, 2018January 31, 2018

Nibbles: Wild wheat & rice genomes, Lost American crops, Bread Lab, Tea symposium, Burping cows, Australian botanist, Ecuadorian landrace pics, Red listing, Fermentation PhD, Cheese rind microbes, HRH reception

Goat grass genome to the rescue.
No, some other weedy grass genomes to the rescue!
Weeds could actually be lost crops.
Clif Bar endows Bread Lab.
Symposium on the future of tea. Mother-in-law alerted.
You’ll need milk for that tea: breeding cattle for more production and less burping.
Aunty Fran Bodkin: Australian botany hero.
Field Museum field guide to Ecuadorian landraces. Of all things.
Learn about red-listing.
Study the microbial communities of cabbage leaves.
Cheese rind has complex microbial communities too.
So, anyways, this was fun.

January 29, 2018January 22, 2018

Brainfood: Biodiversity trends, Banana viruses, Forest fragmentation, Apple cryo, NPGS, Brazilian goats, Turkish AnGR, Using agrobiodiversity, Genetic variation, Leaf rust loci, Leaf Doctor, Colombian cassava

Is local biodiversity declining or not? A summary of the debate over analysis of species richness time trends. Better data needed.
How endogenous plant pararetroviruses shed light on Musa evolution. Some banana plants have B genomes which are non-infective for potentially nasty viral integrants, making them good parents in breeding programmes.
Late Holocene forest contraction and fragmentation in central Africa. From one horse’s mouth: “…this fragmentation 2500 years ago allowed the migration of the Bantu through the forests, who were able to exploit pioneering trees, such as energy rich oil palms which had colonized the gaps created, as well as being able to cultivate for the first times cereals in this newly created agricultural zone, notably pearl millet.”
Cryobiotechnology of apple (Malus spp.): development, progress and future prospects. “…one of the most extensively studied plant genera with respect to cryopreservation.”
Sustaining the Future of Plant Breeding: The Critical Role of the USDA-ARS National Plant Germplasm System. The next level: gap filling, more phenotyping and genotyping, better info systems, more pre-breeding, improved training for using PGR in breeding programs, expanded outreach. Could say the same about the rest of the world too.
Role of Viral Diagnostics in Quarantine for Plant Genetic Resources and Preparedness. Calls for India to put in place a “National Plant Pests Diagnostic and Certification Network.” Maybe should be added to above.
Threatened Goat Breeds from the Tropics: The Impact of Crossbreeding with Foreign Goats. You need to be careful with it, Brazilians say.
Importance of native animal genetic resources. Turks too.
Editorial: Harvesting plant and microbial biodiversity for sustainably enhanced food security. A whole Research Topic, no less. No animals though…
Genotypic variability enhances the reproducibility of an ecological study. Because it buffers the effects of “environmental” differences in laboratory studies.
Unlocking new alleles for leaf rust resistance in the Vavilov wheat collection. 13 new loci, maybe.
Leaf Doctor: A New Portable Application for Quantifying Plant Disease Severity. Something to test the above with.
Household Determinants of the Adoption of Improved Cassava Varieties using DNA Fingerprinting to Identify Varieties in Farmer Fields: A Case Study in Colombia. 434 samples from 217 farmers reveals 120 varieties, 9 of which were improved; farmers overestimate their use of new varieties, but in general those with more dependents, more land, and more access to extension have more improved varieties.

January 23, 2018January 23, 2018

Nibbles: “Millets”, GLF, Agrobiodiversity & resilience, Nepali earthquake, Seed systems, Super beans in Uganda, Cherokee seeds, Potato Park, Italian cook, Ancient turkeys, Linnaean globalization, Wild rice genomes

I really don’t like the way a bunch of very different cereals are lumped together as “millets,” but anyway.
Mongabay optimistic about climate-smart agriculture after Global Landscape Forum.
I guess it must be the resilience.
Rebuilding Nepali seed systems after the earthquake. See what I mean?
And here’s a primer on innovative seed systems work from ICRISAT.
Beans for refugees. Seeds systems at work.
Cherokee nation knows what to do to get seeds out there.
So does the Parque de la Papa, for that matter.
Morocco has truffles? Yep.
Ancient turkeys were pets, not food.
Linnaeus was a globalist. Not his fault, though.
Australian gene-jockey says that Australian wild rice genome could make it easier to grow rice in Australia. Linnaeus, where are you?