- Releasing agriculture from the food security mandate. Research should focus toward sustaining production means and farmer welfare, rather than area productivity.
- Beyond yields: a systems approach is essential for reconciling agriculture and biodiversity. Research should focus toward sustaining production means and farmer welfare, rather than area productivity.
- Underutilized crops for diverse, resilient and healthy agri-food systems: a systematic review of sub-Saharan Africa. Opportunity crops sustain production means and farmer welfare, rather than area productivity.
- Exploring the potentials of neglected underutilized crops (NUCs): an integrative review for developing a sustainable food system model. Opportunity crops sustain production means and farmer welfare, rather than area productivity.
- Prospective of indigenous African wild food plants in alleviation of the severe iron deficiency anaemia in Sub-Saharan Africa. Some wild food plants can sustain welfare.
- Nature-based agricultural practices in the Mediterranean agroecosystems: A meta-analysis of their benefits on crop productivity, soil quality, and biodiversity. 15 ways to sustain production means and farmer welfare, and sometimes area productivity.
- The role of Seed Banks in food systems transitions: the case of Portugal. Genebanks could help sustain production means and farmer welfare, and area productivity too.
- Mainstreaming agrobiodiversity in planet-friendly school meals for children: a scoping review. Opportunity crops and wild food plants in school meals could help sustain the welfare of schoolchildren.
- Spatial association between nutrient deficiency and agricultural diversity in India. Agrobiodiversity could help sustain welfare in whole districts actually.
- Grain zinc, iron and protein concentrations of contemporary wheat cultivars fall short of targets for human health. Agrobiodiversity could help sustain welfare but breeders need to use it.
- Nutritional and Biochemical Diversity in Beans Accessions from Three Phaseolus Species Using Multiomics Characterization. Agrobiodiversity could definitely help sustain welfare but breeders need to use it.
- Genome-wide association study in a lettuce core collection from 811 accessions reveals genetic loci for anthocyanin accumulation and cultivar development. Agrobiodiversity could definitely help sustain welfare and breeders can use it pretty easily.
Nibbles: Agricultural expansion maps, Brassica diversity, Not against the grain, South African seedbanks, Safer peanuts, Diné seedbank
- Agriculture is bad for natural ecosystems. But great for maps, you have to admit.
- Greens are good for you. And this is a great roundup of the latest scholarship on brassica evolution, domestication and diversity. You’ll find most of the paper quoted in past Brainfoods.
- Grains are great. Especially with greens.
- Thank goodness for household seed banking. Especially in conjunction with the formal kind.
- All so we can breed a better peanut. And cut down more natural ecosystem?
- No, there’s community genebanks for that too…
Nibbles: German genebank, Bambara groundnut, Community seedbanks, Atacama genebank, Georgian traditional crops
- Seed saving at IPK handed over.
- Why Bambara groundnut needs saving.
- Kenyan women get together to save seeds.
- Saving seeds in the Atacama Desert.
- Saving wheat and vines in Georgia.
Brainfood: Genebanks edition
- Seed collection and processing practices affect subsequent seed storage longevity in durum wheat and wild relatives. Immature seeds can still usefully be harvested for long-term storage of properly handled.
- Two-step drying of soya bean seed germplasm often improves subsequent storage longevity. “Proper handling” includes drying at higher temperatures.
- Seed-stored transcript integrity as a molecular indicator of viability in conserved common bean germplasm. mRNA degradation predicts loss of seed viability.
- Developing a cryopreservation protocol for the conservation of coconut palm (Cocos nucifera L.) using a novel type of explant, meristematic clumps. Who needs seeds anyway?
- Pollen cryobanking at the USDA-ARS National Laboratory for Genetic Resources Preservation. Well, who needs meristematic clumps?
- Mapping pea seed composition through strategic selection of accessions from the Nordic gene bank. Image analysis can be used to maximise diversity in nutritional composition in pea seeds, thus facilitating use of genebank collections. Can’t do that with pollen, I suspect.
- A small-scale assessment of the availability of EURISCO accessions. Facilitating use needs all the help it can get.
- Strengthening national genebanks through genomics and regional collaboration: Lessons from Latin America and the Caribbean. I guess genomics capacity could help with use.
- Enhancing farmers’ access and use of conserved germplasm for improved food security and climate resilience: The case of sorghum at Kenya’s national genebank. Genomics unavailable for comment. Farmers, on the other hand….
- Linking the ICRISAT Genebank to Poverty Reduction and Welfare in Malawi. Facilitating use by farmers is important.
- Farmers as breeders and seed producers: Insights from 30 years of scaling up seed clubs in Vietnam. It’s super cool when farmers organize. Including for genebanks.
- Elephant ear yam Xanthosoma robustum Schott (Araceae), a neglected crop native to Central America. Needs more attention from genebanks. And farmers and their clubs for that matter.
- Plant genebank of Sudan: Towards recovery from the wreckage of war to a new era of further capacity development based on lessons learnt from similar situations. We must de-risk genebanks. Wouldn’t want to lose all those elephant ear yam collections we’ll be making.
Brainfood: Diversity of Sugarcane, Rice, Lentils, Olives, Sweetpotato, Cassava, Beans, Buckwheat, Pigeon pea, Landscapes
- The genomic footprints of wild Saccharum species trace domestication, diversification, and modern breeding of sugarcane. The genome of modern sugarcane is a mosaic of wild introgressions, including one from an unknown source.
- Evolutionary histories of functional mutations during the domestication and spread of japonica rice in Asia. Selection by biotic stresses acted differently on standing variation in rice across geographic regions. Colour me surprised.
- Ancient DNA from lentils (Lens culinaris) illuminates human-plant-culture interactions in the Canary Islands. Local lentils trace back a thousand years in the Canaries.
- An olive parentage atlas: founder cultivars, regional diversification, and implications for breeding programs. Modern cultivars derive from a surprisingly small set of founding genotypes…
- Intraspecific variation and phenotypic plasticity of olive varieties in response to contrasting environmental conditions. …but cultivated olives maintain high within-species variation and plasticity, enabling adaptation across Mediterranean environments.
- Deciphering the Origins of Commercial Sweetpotato Genotypes Using International Genebank Data. One Brazilian sweetpotato traced back to a CIP accession with a different name, but others did not match anything in the genebank.
- Exploring genetic diversity and selective signatures, a journey through Colombian cassava’s landscape. Colombia’s farmers and environments have shaped its cassava diversity. No word on whether any of it traces back to the CIAT genebank.
- Novel germplasm of tepary and other Phaseolus bean wild relatives from dry areas of southwestern USA. The available genepool for bean breeding gets a welcome boost.
- Insight into root system architecture of buckwheat through genome-wide association mapping-first study. Want drought-resilient, high-yielding buckwheat varieties? Here are the genes — and genotypes — to play with. So the available genepool doesn’t need a boost?
- Non-destructive prediction of nitrogen, iron and zinc content in diverse common bean seeds from a genebank using near-infrared spectroscopy. High-throughput, non-destructive phenotyping methods capture nutritional trait variation across a bean core collection. Wild teparies unavailable for comment.
- Germplasm exploration and digital phenotyping reveal indigenous diversity and farmer preferences in pigeon pea (Cajanus cajan (L.) Millsp.) for climate-smart breeding. Not all phenotyping can be high-throughput, but that doesn’t mean it’s not useful, at least in pigeon peas.
- Agricultural landscape genomics to increase crop resilience. Could have been applied to all of the above, I guess.