- Nutritional profiling and GIS-based grid mapping of Job’s tears (Coix lacryma-jobi L.) germplasm. 2 genebank accessions out of 32 are especially good.
- Diversity and Adaptation of Currently Grown Wheat Landraces and Modern Germplasm in Afghanistan, Iran, and Turkey. Some wheat landraces were just as productive as modern varieties, so crossing landraces with other landraces could be a good breeding strategy. Maybe even for Job’s tears.
- Mining of the national gene bank collection identifies resistance sources for loose smut of wheat in Northern Himalayan conditions. 58 of 586 were resistant. Let the inter-landrace crossing begin!
- Are Traditional Lima Bean (Phaseolus lunatus L.) Landraces Valuable to Cope with Climate Change? Effects of Drought on Growth and Biochemical Stress Markers. Oh no, the commercial variety is more drought-resistant than the, ahem, two landraces.
- Low-cost, handheld near-infrared spectroscopy for root dry matter content prediction in cassava. A faster and cheaper way of figuring out which cassavas are better than others.
- Mutations in DNA polymerase δ subunit 1 co-segregate with CMD2-type resistance to Cassava Mosaic Geminiviruses. Now for a faster and cheaper way of spotting the gene in your crosses.
- Phenotypic Variation and the Impact of Admixture in the Oryza rufipogon Species Complex (ORSC). Sometimes there’s no short-cut to the slog of detailed phenotyping if you want a short-cut to pre-breeding.
- Evaluation of black gram varieties using crowd source citizen science under northern hilly climatic condition of Chhattisgarh. Let the farmers do the slog of phenotyping.
- A view of the pan-genome of domesticated cowpea (Vigna unguiculata [L.] Walp.). The genes not shared by all six sub-populations of the cultivated cowpea are very important to the overall diversity of the crop. Let scientists do the slog of genotyping.
- Breeding for disease resistance in soybean: a global perspective. 800 resistance loci/alleles for 28 varied diseases from all over the world. Imagine one variety with all of them :)
- Genetic diversity in early maturity Chinese and European elite soybeans: A comparative analysis. Two equally diverse but distinct genepools. Unclear how the above 800 loci divide up.
- Association mapping across a multitude of traits collected in diverse environments in maize. More slogging through phenotyping, this time to uncover pleiotropy.
- Incorporating male sterility increases hybrid maize yield in low input African farming systems. But I guess you need the above to decide on the parents for your fancy hybrids.
- Pedigree reconstruction for triploid apple cultivars using single nucleotide polymorphism array data. Triploids apples may be bigger and stronger, but they’re also genetic dead ends.
- Evidence of an additional center of apple domestication in Iran, with contributions from the Caucasian crab apple Malus orientalis Uglitzk. to the cultivated apple gene pool. Another example of multiple domestication “events”.
Nibbles: Asian yams, Coconut survey, Belarus genebank, Jordan genebank, Tepary beans breeding, Dante’s wine
- Nice Twitter thread on Asian yams (and incidentally sweet potato and taro).
- Surveying and collecting coconuts in PNG. What will they do with those nuts?
- Belarus genebank gets a high-level visit. Can’t help wondering if the Ukraine genebank being in the news is behind this somehow.
- Jordan to get a(nother) genebank. Apparently.
- Tepary beans to get their 15 minutes of fame.
- Medieval Italian wine was biodynamic.
Nibbles: Wheat diplomacy, Bean improvement, Ghana genebank, Algeria genebank, CIP genebank
- Yeah what we all need right now is to politicize wheat.
- Tepary bean to the rescue of common bean. Politicize that!
- Ghana’s genebank getting some use.
- Algeria gets a genebank. Hope it gets used.
- Pretty sure the CIP genebank is getting used. Find out how on Facebook Live today.
Nibbles: Forgotten crops special issue, Coffee fingerprinting, Three Sisters, Food gardening, Magic mushrooming, Genebanks in Ukraine, Colombia, Australia, China
- Forthcoming special issue of Plants, People, Planet on forgotten crops. Get your paper in about how they’re under-represented in genebanks.
- Or about how they need to be DNA fingerprinted, like the USDA is doing for coffee.
- I wonder if there is a forgotten crops version of the Three Sisters. Answers on a postcard, please.
- Forget about genebanks, grow those forgotten crops in your garden. Rebelliously.
- Forget about forgotten crops, how about forgotten mushrooms?
- Lest we forget the Ukrainian genebank.
- No way to forget the Future Seeds genebank.
- Australians are not being allowed to forget about genebanks, plant and animal. With video goodness. There’s hope yet.
- Meanwhile, in China…
Brainfood: Wild scarlet runner beans, Wild coffee, Mexican vanilla, Hybrid barley, Zea genus, Wild maize gene, N-fixing xylem microbiota, Drone phenotyping, Wild tomato, Potato breeding, Wild potato, Wheat evaluation, Rice breeding returns
- The genomic signature of wild-to-crop introgression during the domestication of scarlet runner bean (Phaseolus coccineus L.). The wild Mexican genepool is helping to counteract the effects of the domestication bottleneck.
- Genetic variation in wild and cultivated Arabica coffee (Coffea arabica L.): Evolutionary origin, global distribution, and its effect on fungal disease incidence in Southwest Ethiopia. Domesticated disease-resistant cultivars are threatening the genetic integrity of the wild genepool. You win some, you lose some.
- Uncovering haplotype diversity in cultivated Mexican vanilla species. Plenty of evidence of past hybridization events in cultivated vanilla in Mexico. Maybe it can swap stories with scarlet runner bean.
- Six-rowed wild-growing barleys are hybrids of diverse origins. In the case of barley, the wild-cultivated hybrids even got a separate Latin binomial.
- Portrait of a genus: genome sequencing reveals evidence of adaptive variation in Zea. Lots of variation in interesting adaptive traits in the wild relatives of maize. Did they, or will they, make their way into the crop, I wonder?
- An adaptive teosinte mexicana introgression modulates phosphatidylcholine levels and is associated with maize flowering time. This one did.
- A highly conserved core bacterial microbiota with nitrogen-fixation capacity inhabits the xylem sap in maize plants. Its wild relatives are not the only wild organisms maize benefits from.
- Phenomic data-facilitated rust and senescence prediction in maize using machine learning algorithms. Drones and fancy maths can be used to predict and document southern rust infection in maize. Maybe in wild relatives too one day, who knows.
- A Solanum lycopersicoides reference genome facilitates insights into tomato specialized metabolism and immunity. A tomato wild relative has a gene for resistance to bacterial speck disease, so of course they had to sequence its genome.
- Genetic gains in potato breeding as measured by field testing of cultivars released during the last 200 years in the Nordic Region of Europe. Genetic gains for yield (measured in non-target environments) were not that great and contributed about half of productivity gains. Results for other traits were even worse, mainly because of stringent market demands. So no chance of using wild relatives I suppose.
- Genotypic Response and Selection of Potato Germplasm Under Heat Stress. Not so fast…
- Dataset of historic and modern bread and durum wheat cultivar performance under conventional and reduced tillage with full and reduced irrigation. I wonder to what extent wild relatives contributed to the differences.
- Assessing returns to research investments in rice varietal development: Evidence from the Philippines and Bangladesh. Net returns from collaboration in rice breeding between IRRI and national partners are still strong in the Philippines and Bangladesh, but declining, and faster in the former than the latter. Plenty of genes from wild relatives in IRRI lines of course. Maybe there could be more?