- Learning from the Ancient Maya: Conservation of the Culture and Nature of the Maya Forest. Teaching forest gardening, before it’s too late.
- Genetic Diversity of Bangladeshi Jackfruit (Artocarpus heterophyllus) over Time and Across Seedling Sources. Downward trend in time, but no difference between growers and nurseries.
- Plum Cultivars in Sweden: History and Conservation for Future Use. From 70 varieties in nurseries, to 45 in the genebank.
- Integration of expert knowledge in the definition of Swiss pear core collection. Let stakeholders choose a few, it won’t make too much of a difference to the overall diversity, and they’ll be pleased.
- Can agricultural intensification help to conserve biodiversity? A scenario study for the African continent. Land sparing is better for biodiversity and food production.
- Influence of experimental design on decentralized, on-farm evaluation of populations: a simulation study. Replicate populations of interest rather than controls, and environments.
- Botanicals used for cosmetic purposes by Xhosa women in the Eastern Cape, South Africa. 16 plants, 14 families, bark the most common component, skin complexion the most common use.
- Droughts, Biodiversity, and Rural Incomes in the Tropics. More access to natural biodiversity means smaller effect of drought during the growing season on income from crops.
- A global surveillance system for crop diseases. Could be extended to other threats to crop diversity?
- A data-driven approach improves food insecurity crisis prediction. Market data, rainfall, geography and demography predict food insecurity at village level in near real time.
- Rapid detection of stressed agricultural environments in Africa under climatic change 2000–2050 using agricultural resource indices and a hotspot mapping approach. Increasing trouble for Tanzania, Zimbabwe, and to a lesser extent Ethiopia. But will biodiversity, disease monitoring and food insecurity prediction help?
- Kavalactones and Flavokavins Profiles Contribute to Quality Assessment of Kava (Piper methysticum G. Forst.), the Traditional Beverage of the Pacific. High-throughput HPTLC will do the job.
- Transcriptome and organellar sequencing highlights the complex origin and diversification of allotetraploid Brassica napus. 6 genetic groups: Winter rapeseed in Europe and America, Rutabaga, Spring rapeseed, Siberian kale, Winter rapeseed in East Asia, and Winter rapeseed in Europe and South Asia. No evidence of multi-origin.
- Parallels between natural selection in the cold‐adapted crop‐wild relative Tripsacum dactyloides and artificial selection in temperate adapted maize. Artificial selection for temperate adaptation in maize involved the same genes as natural selection for temperate adaptation in Tripsacum.
Brainfood: Production stability, Mapping crops, Nigerian fish, Seed quality, C&E meta-data, Robots, Multivariate stats, Almond domestication, Fruit chilling, Forages & soils, Groundnut mini-core, PAs & CC, Indonesian diets, NUS, Asian-African animals
- Sensitivity of grain yields to historical climate variability in India. Other cereals are less sensitive than rice.
- Monitoring Changes in the Cultivation of Pigeonpea and Groundnut in Malawi Using Time Series Satellite Imagery for Sustainable Food Systems. Pigeonpea cultivation has expanded so much in response to Asian markets you can track it from space. But for how long?
- The relationship between forests and freshwater fish consumption in rural Nigeria. Fish need forests.
- Temporal patterns of seed quality development, decline, and timing of maximum quality during seed development and maturation. “…when maximum quality is first attained, and for how long it is maintained during seed development and maturation, varies with genotype and environment.” Oh, great.
- Modeling Crop Genetic Resources Phenotyping Information Systems. Managing meta-data on characterization and evaluation data.
- In vivo human-like robotic phenotyping of leaf traits in maize and sorghum in greenhouse. Yes, characterization and evaluation data like this.
- Ten quick tips for effective dimensionality reduction. How to analyze all that C&E data.
- Mutation of a bHLH transcription factor allowed almond domestication. A point mutation is all it took.
- Chilling accumulation in fruit trees in Spain under climate change. Some fruit trees, even in generally warm places, need a certain amount of cold to develop properly, and might not get it in the future. Maybe a point mutation will come to the rescue.
- Smart forage selection could significantly improve soil health in the tropics. Could.
- Evaluation of linkage disequilibrium, population structure, and genetic diversity in the U.S. peanut mini core collection. Can’t really use for GWAS. What a tragedy.
- Implications of climate change to the design of protected areas: The case study of small islands (Azores). The current PA system will still be ok on one island, but not on another. Has someone done this globally?
- Urbanisation, dietary change and traditional food practices in Indonesia: A longitudinal analysis. Westernization of diets is limited to Jakarta.
- Orphan crops: their importance and the urgency of improvement. They seem to be doing ok in Indonesia?
- Reconstructing Asian faunal introductions to eastern Africa from multi-proxy biomolecular and archaeological datasets. Chickens and black rats went from Asia to the coast of E Africa in the mid-first millennium CE.
- Archaeological and biometric perspectives on the development of chicken landraces in the Horn of Africa. Or maybe earlier for chicken after all.
Brainfood: Molecular characterization, Ancient weed, Patagonian berries, Strawberry origins controversy, Potato & nutrition, European potatoes, Extension, Cacao, Maize & wheat breeding history, Rural employment, Production stability, Amazonian Neolithic, Fairtrade wages
- Genebank genomics bridges the gap between the conservation of crop diversity and plant breeding. What do we want? An accurate genotype-to-phenotype map for all seeds stored in the genebank. When do we want it? As soon as we have the money to ensure their conservation.
- The origins of cannabis smoking: Chemical residue evidence from the first millennium BCE in the Pamirs. Well, that’s like your opinion, man. Residues in incense burners used for mortuary rituals, if you must know.
- Patagonian berries as native food and medicine. Good, and good for you.
- Revisiting the Origin of the Octoploid Strawberry. Not 4 separate diploid progenitors, as another paper recently found, but rather 2 extant ones, once you re-do the math.
- The Nutritional Contribution of Potato Varietal Diversity in Andean Food Systems: a Case Study. It’s great, but it’s not enough.
- The origins and adaptation of European potatoes reconstructed from historical genomes. Sequencing of old herbarium specimens, including Darwin’s, shows that early introductions to Europe were from the Andes, and later admixed there with Chilean and wild material, forming a sort of secondary centre of diversity.
- Effect of Intensive Agriculture-Nutrition Education and Extension Program Adoption and Diffusion of Biofortified Crops. Breeding is not enough.
- Morphological characterisation and evaluation of cacao (Theobroma cacao L.) in Trinidad to facilitate utilisation of Trinitario cacao globally. Now we know which ones are the best, for different reasons.
- Evolution of US maize (Zea mays L.) root architectural and anatomical phenes over the past 100 years corresponds to increased tolerance of nitrogen stress. There has been unconscious selection for root traits resulting in better N use efficiency. An old paper, resurrected because of the next one.
- Breeding improves wheat productivity under contrasting agrochemical input levels. Breeding wheat in Europe for good performance under high input levels has not markedly affected its performance under more challenging conditions. Diversity has held up too.
- Positive outcomes between crop diversity and agricultural employment worldwide. Irrespective of input levels and economic growth rates.
- National food production stabilized by crop diversity. Crop diversity is not just good for rural employment (see above), but for year-on-year production stability too.
- Climate change and cultural resilience in late pre-Columbian Amazonia. And it was sort of the same in ancient Amazonia.
- Effects of Fairtrade on the livelihoods of poor rural workers. Fairtrade improves wages of workers in cooperatives, but not on small farms.
Nibbles: Bean and chili diversity, European Neolithic, Microbiota Vault, Paški sir, Freeze dried potatoes, Rice art, ABS
- Collecting beans in the American SW.
- Chilis too.
- Updated map of Neolithic expansion in Europe.
- The Microbiota Vault is a thing.
- Wind-flavoured cheese.
- But is chuño worth saving, really?
- The art of rice diversity.
- Using Jerry Maguire to explain the Plant Treaty. It is not well done. But one is surprised to see it done at all.
Nibbles: Organic Greek, Mexican maize heirloom, Community seedbank, Arizona chilli, African maize, Chinese trifecta, Sex-changing solanum, Breeding oddities, Breeding costing tool, Chicken project, WFP, Cattle book, Agroforestry database, Minor cereals, Reviewing genebanks, Wheat breeding, Rice seeds
- Greek organic farm resists.
- Communities getting into seed banking all over.
- Saving zapalote chico.
- Would you like chiltepines with that?
- No zapalote chico in South Africa, but lots of other maize.
- Conserving agricultural biodiversity in China.
- Including in Hainan.
- At the same time, China restricts foreign access to human genome data.
- Sexually plastic Australian wild tomato named at long last.
- Breeding flavour crops.
- And figuring out how much it will cost.
- Interesting project on human-chicken interactions.
- Veggie breeder wins World Food Prize.
- New coffee table book on cattle in Africa.
- Flagship agroforestry database gets new version. Anyone wanna test it for us?
- Minor cereals in Europe are anything but minor.
- And lots are conserved in Europe’s increasingly scrutinized genebanks.
- Meanwhile, a major cereals keeps getting the attention it also needs.
- “The candidate markers could be used by any rice genebank to potentially identify varieties with seeds that are particularly short- or long-lived in storage. Viability monitoring intervals could then be customized by variety.” And wheat?