- Needs and strategies for breeding and sustainable use of genetic resources in Opuntia. Surely there are molecular markers for spinelessness by now?
- Teosinte confers specific alleles and yield potential to maize improvement. There are 71 QTLs associated with 24 differential traits between maize and teosinte.
- A short review on sugarcane: its domestication, molecular manipulations and future perspectives. Forget sugar or fuel, the future is vaccine production.
- SNP discovery in proso millet (Panicum miliaceum L.) using low-pass genome sequencing. Ok, but why are the South Asian accessions so different from everything else?
- Meta-analysis of qualitative and quantitative trait variation in sweet watermelon and citron watermelon genetic resources. Rob citron to pay sweet watermelon.
- Genomics-informed prebreeding unlocks the diversity in genebanks for wheat improvement. How I learned to stop worrying and love non-adapted germplasm.
- Wild Sorghum as a Promising Resource for Crop Improvement. Oooh, I like the idea of de novo domestication of Australian wild sorghum species.
- Disentangling the Genetic Diversity of Grass Pea Germplasm Grown under Lowland and Highland Conditions. Always good to have multi-locational trial data, even when n=2.
- Hybridization, missing wild ancestors and the domestication of cultivated diploid bananas. Let the search for the 3 unknown wild ancestors begin!
- Improved pea reference genome and pan-genome highlight genomic features and evolutionary characteristics. If only Mendel had worked on wild peas too.
- Genetic diversity and population structure analyses of South African Bambara groundnut (Vigna subterranea [L.] Verdc) collections using SNP markers. Two heterotic groups to play around with.
Nibbles: GRIN-U, Canadian seeds, Jordan genebank, Green genebank, Millets everywhere, Saving livestock diversity, Sustainable smallholders, Uli Westphal, Eat This Tomato
- Lots of new stuff on GRIN-U. Check out the genebank success stories in particular. How many of the things below will be successes? Lots of luck to all of them…
- Showcasing seeds in Canada.
- Setting up a new genebank in Jordan.
- Let’s hope it will be eco-efficient like CIAT’s. Other GROW webinars here. Yes, they’ve started up again.
- Embracing millets in southern Africa and India.
- Why livestock should not follow the example of Charles II of Spain.
- Supporting traditional sustainable farming in Central America.
- More on Uli Westphal‘s cool illustrations of crop diversity.
- Which include tomatoes. Don’t forget to subscribe to Jeremy’s pod.
- And subscribe to the GRIN-U newsletter too while you’re at it!
Nibbles: New cassava, Community seedbank double, Rwandan beans, Knotweed et al., Seed systems, Adam Alexander, Uruguay genebank, Kelp biobank
- There’s a new cassava in town in Kenya.
- I wonder if it will end up in a community “seed” bank.
- …because they swear by them in Zimbabwe.
- Cassava is not the only American crops that’s important in parts of Africa: the cultural appropriation of beans in Rwanda.
- Some American crops didn’t make it very far out of America.
- Be it beans, cassava or sump/knotweed, what’s needed is a Quality-Declared Seed (QDS) system. Right?
- Well you also need someone to go around collecting the stuff in the first place.
- But don’t forget to back everything up in Svalbard, like Uruguay is doing.
- Well maybe not everything.
Nibbles: Old olive, Silphion, Heirloom watermelon, Calabrian chili, ICARDA genebank, Jamaica genebank, Tamil community seedbank, Forestry seeds
- Really old olive tree in the gardens of the mosque-cathedral of Cordoba is a lost variety.
- Long extinct medicinal spice plant not extinct after all?
- The next nearly extinct heirloom on our list is a watermelon from Virginia. Who knows, it may originally have been grown in Cordoba or Cyrenaica…
- And moving in the opposite direction, a really hot Calabrian chili pepper beats the heat.
- The ICARDA genebank is trying to find stuff that will beat the heat too.
- Jamaica is looking to beat the heat by establishing some new genebanks.
- Tamil Nadu going the community seedbank route, and why not? Jamaica please take note.
- An alliance of forestry outfits is pushing for a global seedbank infrastructure to support woodland restoration. Nothing if not ambitious. And much needed.
Brainfood: GIAHS, Austronesian ag, Neolithic Scotland, Livestock origins, Iroquoia maize, Maya drought, Agave diversity, Coffee diversity, Breadfruit cultivation
- Agricultural heritage systems and agrobiodiversity. FAO’s Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems (GIAHS) work just fine.
- A northern Chinese origin of Austronesian agriculture: new evidence on traditional Formosan cereals. The precursors of the Austronesians took foxtail millet, broomcorn millet and rice to Taiwan from around Shandong in northeastern China in the second half of the 4th millennium BCE. That was quite a globally important agricultural heritage system (note lower case) in its day.
- Neolithic culinary traditions revealed by cereal, milk and meat lipids in pottery from Scottish crannogs. At roughly the same time as the above, farmers in Scotland were eating a gruel made of wheat and milk. Maybe not so globally important, but still.
- Epipalaeolithic animal tending to Neolithic herding at Abu Hureyra, Syria (12,800–7,800 calBP): Deciphering dung spherulites. That wheat and milk came from far away and long ago. In fact, maybe 2000 years longer ago than is usually thought.
- Tracing Maize History in Northern Iroquoia Through Radiocarbon Date Summed Probability Distributions. Maize really took off in NY/Ontario/Quebec between 1200 and 1450 AD.
- Drought-Induced Civil Conflict Among the Ancient Maya. Towards the end of the above period there was real strife in the Maya lands, but also local resilience. Makes you wonder whether whatever was happening among the Iroquois and Maya was somehow connected.
- Genomic and Morphological Differentiation of Spirit Producing Agave angustifolia Traditional Landraces Cultivated in Jalisco, Mexico. Whatever happened in Mesoamerica 600 years ago, Indigenous knowledge of agave diversity survived.
- Vernacular Names and Genetics of Cultivated Coffee (Coffea arabica) in Yemen. Indigenous knowledge of coffee diversity doesn’t correspond with genetic data in this globally significant agricultural heritage system.
- Advanced and emerging agricultural innovations for securing food, climate and ecosystems in Moroccan oasis. Even globally important agricultural heritage systems need innovation.
- Potential of breadfruit cultivation to contribute to climate-resilient low latitude food systems. Breadfruit can be important globally, not just in its current agricultural heritage system.