- Unexpected Diversity during Community Succession in the Apple Flower Microbiome. Could be important in disease management.
- Plant Tissue Culture: A Useful Measure for the Screening of Salt Tolerance in Plants. But lots of different ways to do it.
- Fisheries: Does catch reflect abundance? Some. But probably not enough. Here’s the industry spin. And the NY Times does a number on it.
- Plant-Pollinator Interactions over 120 Years: Loss of Species, Co-Occurrence and Function. Extinctions and phenological shifts have occurred, but the system has shown resilience. It is unlikely, however, to continue to do so.
- Wild Pollinators Enhance Fruit Set of Crops Regardless of Honey Bee Abundance. Don’t you sometimes wish titles left something to the imagination? NPR breaks it down for ya, but doesn’t add much to the title.
- Continental estimates of forest cover and forest cover changes in the dry ecosystems of Africa between 1990 and 2000. About 20 Mha of forest loss, not 34 Mha. Still too much, though. But how did FAO get it so wrong?
- Robustness and Strategies of Adaptation among Farmer Varieties of African Rice (Oryza glaberrima) and Asian Rice (Oryza sativa) across West Africa. Local varieties can scale out. And should be used in breeding.
- Genetic and life-history changes associated with fisheries-induced population collapse. Phenotypic changes during Eurasian perch Baltic Sea fisheries collapse could be evolution, but when you look at the genetics it looks more like immigration of unadapted interlopers. Which might be bad for recovery.
- Variable activation of immune response by quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa Willd.) prolamins in celiac disease. Quinoa may be gluten-free, but it can still give you grief, and some varieties are far worse than others.
- Social exchange and vegetative propagation: An untold story of British potted plants. It’s artificial selection, Jim, but not as we know it.
- Wheat Cultivar Performance and Stability between No-Till and Conventional Tillage Systems in the Pacific Northwest of the United States. Tested 21 cultivars for performance under late-planted no-till system and — guess what? — performance varied.
- Genetic diversity and structure in Asian native goat analyzed by newly developed SNP markers. They originated in W Asia, and then admixtured (admixed?) in the E to different extents. Yeah, I thought we knew that already too, but scientists gotta make a living.
- A Bountiful Harvest: Genomic Insights into Crop Domestication Phenotypes. The mutations that underpinned domestication came in all kinds of shapes and sizes. Like this one in maize, for example.
Brainfood: Cotton hybrids, Lentil drought phenotyping, Wild Prunus, Italian food discourse, Disturbance and diversity, Olive domestication, Rhizobium diversity, Intensification, Niche model uncertainty
- Interspecific hybridization in Gossypium L.: characterization of progenies with different ploidy-confirmed multigenomic backgrounds. They can be made, with some difficulty, and could be useful.
- A new phenotyping technique for screening for drought tolerance in lentil (Lens culinaris Medik.). In hydroponics. Seems to work.
- Polyploidy and microsatellite variation in the relict tree Prunus lusitanica L.: how effective are refugia in preserving genotypic diversity of clonal taxa? The island populations are particularly important.
- Trade-off or convergence? The role of food security in the evolution of food discourse in Italy. The food crisis had quite an impact.
- Diversity loss with persistent human disturbance increases vulnerability to ecosystem collapse. Suppression of fire in a species-rich grassland has resulted in a very low diversity but highly productive vegetation. Unfortunately, when you re-introduce fire, the whole thing collapses.
- The complex history of the olive tree: from Late Quaternary diversification of Mediterranean lineages to primary domestication in the northern Levant. Don’t forget the 3 refugia in Middle East, Aegean and Gibraltar. And, coincidentally, more.
- Isolation and characterization of salt-tolerant rhizobia native to the desert soils of United Arab Emirates. I hope someone conserves them.
- The compatibility of agricultural intensification in a global hotspot of smallholder agrobiodiversity (Bolivia). Peaches for cash didn’t do anything nasty to the diverse maize landraces. Which are in any case conserved ex situ, just to be on the safe side? Right?
- Detrital diversity influences estuarine ecosystem performance. Diverse mud makes for healthier seagrasses and mangroves.
- Conservation Planning with Uncertain Climate Change Projections. Gotta look at those sensitivities.
Brainfood: Vitamin C, Nutrition and health, European protected areas, Coffea diversity, Climate change modelling, Soil microbes, Niche modelling, Conflict, Human modified landscapes, Horse diversity, Pigeon diversity
- The challenge of increasing vitamin C content in plant foods. Surely not just because it is challenging?
- Health economics and nutrition: a review of published evidence. “[A]pproaches and methodologies are sometimes ad hoc in nature and vary widely in quality.” Ain’t that always the way.
- European protected areas: Past, present and future. The future will need to be different from the past.
- Genetic structure and diversity of coffee (Coffea) across Africa and the Indian Ocean islands revealed using microsatellites. Good correspondence with morphological species. Madagascar a diversity hotspot.
- Special Issue of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology on Agricultural prediction using climate model ensembles. There’s more than one way to identify a potential adaptation hotspot. Well that’s reassuring. Not.
- Changes in soil microbial functional diversity under different vegetation restoration patterns for Hulunbeier Sandy Land. Restoring desertified grassland led to more soil microbial diversity. Which is good because…?
- A review of composition studies of Cameroon traditional dishes: Macronutrients and minerals. 117 of them. Good for Fe, Zn, Mg.
- Essential elements of discourse for advancing the modelling of species’ current and potential distributions. There’s lots of methods, all quite different, embrace the diversity.
- Understanding and managing conservation conflicts. Build up an evidence base, and employ some social scientists to explain it.
- On the hope for biodiversity-friendly tropical landscapes. In the end, it’s about the agriculture. In more ways than one.
- Genetic Diversity in the Modern Horse Illustrated from Genome-Wide SNP Data. High maternal, low paternal during domestication. Low diversity breeds the ones you’d expect. Similar breeds the ones you’d expect.
- Genomic Diversity and Evolution of the Head Crest in the Rock Pigeon. Middle Eastern origins, Darwin vindicated. Again.
Nibbles: Yarsagumba, Chocolate meet & dig, Beer dig, Mapping disease, Mapping language, Going digital, Urban ag meet, Weird citrus, CGIAR genebanks and more, Microbiome
- Off-colour jokes pumped out with abandon as Viagra fungus splashed all over headlines.
- Two of my favourite words in one conference: sustainable and chocolate. Can I get some archaeology with that? Yes, you can. Trifecta!
- Prefer beer to chocolate? We’ve got you covered.
- Sudden oak death mapping gets all interactive. Will nobody do something similar for agrobiodiversity?
- The geography of the onion. No, not The Onion. And not interactive.
- Go online, young scientist! Even if it involves giving banana research priority setting a Facebook page? Well, why not.
- Whoa, there’s an Urban Agriculture Summit?
- Citrus australasica? Seriously?
- CGIAR crown jewels safe at last. No off-colour headlines, please.
- Some genebanks doing ok, others not so much.
- Gut microbiome kinda sorta implicated in kwashiorkor. And more from NYT.
Nibbles: School genetics, Sigrid Heuer, Fungal sex, Rubber, Wine, James Scott, Sustainable diets meet, Food exhibit, EU and climate change
- Much may be made of a wheat gene-jockey, if he be caught young.
- Or rice gene-jockeys, for that matter.
- Lots of naughtiness going on in blue cheese.
- Hope those reprobate fungi are using sustainable Amazonian rubbers.
- Some wine with that naughty cheese?
- Learning Burmese, researching the deep history of crops. Meah.
- Start planning for the next sustainable diets symposium. Symposium is quite apt, isn’t it.
- Feast your eyes on Feast Your Eyes.
- European agriculture is totally prepared for this climate change whatsit.