Nutrition

May 10, 2021

Feed on a better food system

I missed WWF’s report Bending the Curve: The Restorative Power of Planet-Based Diets when it came out in October last year, but the interview with one of the authors, Brent Loken, on the Feed podcast was an excellent way to catch up.

Well worth listening to the whole thing, and indeed reading the report. I really like it when complexity and nuance are embraced, and silver bullets eschewed. Here’s a few take-aways to whet your, ahem, appetite:

Shift diets: it’s not that hard. Start by de-centering beef.
Reform national dietary guidelines.
Regulate marketing food to kids.
And, speaking of marketing, learn how to make healthy food sexier.
Cut waste.

May 3, 2021July 13, 2021

Brainfood: Lettuce, Little millet, Finger millet, Rice, Maize, Apple, Brassicas, Onions, Grapevine, Tomato, Sheep, Species diversity, Genetic diversity

Whole-genome resequencing of 445 Lactuca accessions reveals the domestication history of cultivated lettuce. Originally domesticated in the Caucasus, for oil, and then a long, slow wander westward. But so much more to it…
Variability and trait‐specific accessions for grain yield and nutritional traits in germplasm of little millet (Panicum sumatrense Roth. Ex. Roem. & Schult.). From 200 accessions to 5 both high yielding and rich in Ca.
Genomic and phenotypic characterization of finger millet indicates a complex diversification history. Wait, East Africa is the least genetically diverse area?
Portrait of a genus: the genetic diversity of Zea. There has been convergent adaptation in high altitude teosinte and high latitude (temperate) maize.
Genetic diversity of African wild rice (Oryza longistaminata Chev. et Roehr) at the edge of its distribution. The Ethiopian material is special.
Candidate genes and signatures of directional selection on fruit quality traits during apple domestication. Fruit colour and taste genes lose diversity during domestication.
The Evolutionary History of Wild, Domesticated, and Feral Brassica oleracea (Brassicaceae). B. cretica is the closest wild relative.
Brassica rapa domestication: untangling wild and feral forms and convergence of crop morphotypes. The truly wild stuff comes from the Caucasus, Siberia and … Italy. But it all goes back to turnips in the Hindu Kush.
‘Neodomesticates’ of the Himalayan allium spices (Allium species) in Uttarakhand, India and studies on eco-geography and morphology. Gotta know your onions.
Multiple independent recombinations led to hermaphroditism in grapevine. The switch from dioecious to hermaphroditic flowers happened two times in the last 6000 years, but before domestication.
Revitalization of the Greek Vitis database: a multimedia web-backed genetic database for germplasm management of Vitis resources in Greece. Welcome back!
Participatory Plant Breeding and the Evolution of Landraces: A Case Study in the Organic Farms of the Collserola Natural Park. From 80 plants of the Mando tomato landrace to over 2000.
Evidence for early dispersal of domestic sheep into Central Asia. Sheep were being kept in the Ferghana Valley 3000 years earlier than thought.
A metric for spatially explicit contributions to science-based species targets. Sustainable crop production and forestry in Indonesia, Colombia, Mexico, Madagascar and Brazil would make a hell of a difference.
Conserving intraspecific variation for nature’s contributions to people. Oh good, I’m glad somebody thought of this.

April 27, 2021

Nibbles: Plant book, Heirlooms, Vavilov, Breeding

April 26, 2021April 14, 2021

Brainfood: PES, WTP, Agroforestry, SPA, Urban trees, Plant uses, Fish diversity, Gene editing, Algae, HTP, Cassava breeding, Barcoding, Grasspea genomics, Ancient farmers

Reducing Hunger with Payments for Environmental Services (PES): Experimental Evidence from Burkina Faso. Paying farmers during the lean season for keeping trees alive results in better diets and livelihoods.
Payments for Conservation of Animal Genetic Resources in Agriculture: One Size Fits All? No, pay pig prices for pigs and sheep prices for sheep. No word on effects on diets and livelihoods.
Factors influencing the adoption of agroforestry by smallholder farmer households in Tanzania: Case studies from Morogoro and Dodoma. Mainly access to seeds and land. No word on effects on diets and livelihoods.
Seed production areas are crucial to conservation outcomes: benefits and risks of an emerging restoration tool. Somebody mention seeds?
Trees and their seed networks: The social dynamics of urban fruit trees and implications for genetic diversity. Maybe just source your seeds from cities?
Maximum levels of global phylogenetic diversity efficiently capture plant services for humankind. Species chosen from diverse lineages are more diversely useful than species chosen at random. Now to make sure seeds are available.
Aquatic biodiversity enhances multiple nutritional benefits to humans. Basically the above, but with fish.
Improving Nutritional and Functional Quality by Genome Editing of Crops: Status and Perspectives. Or, we could just genetically edit some random species, fish or otherwise.
Exploring, harnessing and conserving marine genetic resources towards a sustainable seaweed aquaculture. Maybe even seaweeds?
Picturing the future of food. I wonder if the high-throughput phenotyping described here will work on seaweeds.
New cassava germplasm for food and nutritional security in Central Africa. 16x greater fresh root yield than the local landrace check wouldn’t need fancy phenotyping to pick up.
Reliable genomic strategies for species classification of plant genetic resources. This high throughput genotyping and data analysis approach certainly seems to work in picking up misidentified crop wild relatives in genebank collections. No word on seaweeds yet though.
Grasspea, a critical recruit among neglected and underutilized legumes, for tapping genomic resources. Including its wild relatives, of course.
An integrative skeletal and paleogenomic analysis of prehistoric stature variation suggests relatively reduced health for early European farmers. Who’d be a farmer, though, eh? But then they didn’t get payments for ecosystem services, nor gene-edited seaweeds.

April 14, 2021April 14, 2021

Nibbles: Real farming, Ancient farming, Organic farming, Open farming, Innovative farming, African maize farming

Colin Tudge and Jeremy rethink agriculture.
Wait, so it’s not about producing an energy surplus?
Maybe the rethink can include Seed Ambassadors?
Seeds4All is quite the thought.
Who needs a rethink when there’s a whole book on how plant breeding can contribute to sustainable agriculture?
Well, it can certainly pay off, at least money-wise. But does that need a rethink?