- Agricultural Food Production Diversity and Dietary Diversity among Female Small Holder Farmers in a Region of the Ecuadorian Andes Experiencing Nutrition Transition. Higher diversity of crops on family farms is only weakly associated with greater dietary diversity and lower household food insecurity among female caretakers. Better than nothing, though, right?
- Productive Capacity of Biodiversity: Crop Diversity and Permanent Grasslands in Northwestern France. Having a bigger percentage of permanent grassland on your French farm, or a greater diversity of crops, can increase cereal and milk yields. No word on diets.
- The influence of landscape composition and configuration on crop yield resilience. No effect on yield per se (see above), but proximity to semi-natural habitat does increase yield stability in UK farms.
- Living off the land: Terrestrial-based diet and dairying in the farming communities of the Neolithic Balkans. Ancient farmers had a varied diet, but possibly not involving consumption of raw milk, at least by adults.
- Food securers or invasive aliens? Trends and consequences of non-native livestock introgression in developing countries. In 40 countries, the proportion of livestock populations belonging to local breeds has been decreasing by about 1% a year for the past 20 years. Hey, but milk yield per cow has been going up, so there’s that.
- Potentials of Cultivated Varieties and Wild Yam Seeds as Efficient Alternative Plant Genetic Resources for Resistant Genotypes against Yam Mosaic Virus (YMV) in Togo. Work with seeds! But were they properly inoculated? Hopefully a virologist will tell us.
- Genome-wide association analysis reveals new insights into the genetic architecture of defensive, agro-morphological and quality-related traits in cassava. Lots of interesting markers for cassava breeders, or at least those working with material from W Africa. Do it for yams next?
- High-resolution satellite imagery applications in crop phenotyping: An overview. Clouds, you say? Not a problem any more. But can it distinguish landraces from modern varieties? What’s needed is a sort of mutant algorithm, I guess.
- Crop type identification and spatial mapping using Sentinel-2 satellite data with focus on field-level information. Still some way from being able to distinguish landraces from modern varieties, I see.
- Global forest restoration and the importance of prioritizing local communities. I’m shocked I tell you, shocked.
- Protection gaps and restoration opportunities for primary forests in Europe. A lot of restoration could usefully be done in currently protected areas, though it would be better if these were expanded. No word on local communities.
- Mapping the forest disturbance regimes of Europe. I guess this means that restoration, when it happens, will be monitored from space.
- Genetic rescue: A critique of the evidence supports maximizing genetic diversity rather than minimizing the introduction of putatively harmful genetic variation. When you do do restoration, don’t worry about genetic pollution, just go for as much diversity as possible. Well, for small relict populations. Of animals.
- Considerations for large-scale implementation of dormant budwood cryopreservation. It’s about the logistics.
- Development of a fast and user-friendly cryopreservation protocol for sweet potato genetic resources. It’s the axillary meristems. Among other things.
- The human–environment nexus and vegetation–rainfall sensitivity in tropical drylands. Dryland grasslands in Africa and Asia less able to respond to water availability overall, more able in Australia and S America, evens stevens in N America. Would be interesting to mash up particularly hard-hit areas with CWR and forage germplasm collecting localities.
- Botanic garden solutions to the plant extinction crisis. Expertise, tools, facilities, and networks are there. You know what’s missing, right?
Brainfood: Special citizen science edition
Something for the weekend. I hope you enjoy this special edition of Brainfood focusing on citizen science, Indigenous knowledge and participatory research. Do you like themed Brainfood editions like this? There will be another one on Monday, as it happens. They’re more tricky to produce, but if there’s significant interest I may make the extra effort. Let me know, and suggest topics.
- The value of climate-resilient seeds for smallholder adaptation in sub-Saharan Africa. Up to USD 2 billion in Malawi and Tanzania over the next 30 years.
- Agricultural productivity and deforestation: Evidence from input subsidies and ethnic favoritism in Malawi. Cheaper fertilizers increased yields and decreased deforestation. Better seeds would help too, no doubt (see above).
- Channels used to deliver agricultural information and knowledge to smallholder farmers. Farmer groups and demonstration plots work well to spread the news about fertilizers and seeds.
- Integrating Conventional and Participatory Crop Improvement for Smallholder Agriculture Using the Seeds for Needs Approach: A Review. Combine high-tech centralized and participatory decentralized germplasm evaluation and breeding approaches to get those better seeds to farmer groups and their demonstration plots.
- Citizen science breathes new life into participatory agricultural research. A review. Why do the participatory, decentralized bit? Here’s why. Fortunately, there’s an app for it…
- A global resource for exploring and exploiting genetic variation in sorghum crop wild relatives. If those seeds include sorghum, you could start with this lot.
- Gendered differences in crop diversity choices: A case study from Papua New Guinea. And don’t forget gender as you do all this participatory, decentralized stuff. For example, in PNG, the women are into marketing, the men into tradition.
- Crowd breeding of Danish apple cultivars. No word on gender differences, alas.
- Modelling illustrates that genomic selection provides new opportunities for intercrop breeding. Here’s the high-tech, centralized bit, or at least a model of it, ripe for mashing up with citizen science.
- Dissection of the domestication‐shaped genetic architecture of lettuce primary metabolism. More high-tech, centralized stuff, the real thing this time. Which can now be used to breed a better lettuce, hopefully by lots of citizens growing the stuff in their gardens and providing salad tasting results through a nifty app.
- Indigenous and Local Knowledge Practices and Innovations for Enhancing Food Security Under Climate Change: Examples from Mijikenda Communities in Coastal Kenya. Maybe farmers should run participatory programmes, with scientists as the citizens.
- Micronutrient composition and microbial community analysis across diverse landraces of the Ethiopian orphan crop enset. Don’t know how you’d do citizen science on this, but I bet somebody does.
- Discovering the indigenous microbial communities associated with the natural fermentation of sap from the cider gum Eucalyptus gunnii. Someone mention traditional fermentation practices?
- The Milpa Game: a Field Experiment Investigating the Social and Ecological Dynamics of Q’eqchi’ Maya Swidden Agriculture. Citizen science is not a game. No, wait…
- The Ancient Tree Inventory: a summary of the results of a 15 year citizen science project recording ancient, veteran and notable trees across the UK. Not a game indeed: very serious, but fun, definitely fun.
Brainfood: Millet yields, Millet review, Taro genome, Salty sunflower, WorldVeg network, Phylorelatives, Bovine domestication, Diet quality, Nutrition metrics, Aztec diets, Complementary conservation, Post-2020, Climate change breeding
- Using remote sensing to assess the effect of trees on millet yield in complex parklands of Central Senegal. Tree cover in the landscape of up to 35% increases pearl millet yields.
- Genetic and genomic resources for improving proso millet (Panicum miliaceum L.): a potential crop for food and nutritional security. All that’s missing is the investment. And, possibly, the trees.
- A high-quality genome of taro (Colocasia esculenta (L.) Schott), one of the world’s oldest crops. Has benefitted from two whole-genome duplications. Now that this investment has been made, I expect to see the crop take off. And here’s a blast from the past on this subject.
- Key traits and genes associate with salinity tolerance independent from vigor in cultivated sunflower. There is a way to increase yield under salinity stress without affecting yield under more benign conditions. Millets and taro should take note.
- Sustainable Cucurbit Breeding and Production in Asia Using Public–Private Partnerships by the World Vegetable Center. WorldVeg presents improved lines and F1 hybrids of bitter gourd (Momordica charantia), tropical pumpkin (Cucurbita moschata), ridge gourd (Luffa acutangula) and sponge gourd (Luffa cylindrica) to private sector breeders at Crop Field Days. Everybody wins. But are there any private sector breeders of millets and taro to take note?
- Crop Wild Phylorelatives (CWPs): phylogenetic distance, cytogenetic compatibility and breeding system data enable estimation of crop wild relative gene pool classification. Predicting crossability of a crop with its wild relatives from whatever data is on hand.
- Evolution and domestication of the Bovini species. They’ve been very promiscuous, and the results can be summarized in one illustration.
- Defining diet quality: a synthesis of dietary quality metrics and their validity for the double burden of malnutrition. Seven dietary metrics out there, none of them perfect.
- Assessing nutritional, health, and environmental sustainability dimensions of agri-food production. Here’s how to make nutrition and health metrics better. Maybe these guys should get together with the above?
- Aztec diets at the residential site of San Cristobal Ecatepec through stable carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis of bone collagen. The men drank more pulque than the women. I wonder if 500 years from now they’ll be judging us like this.
- The unique role of seed banking and cryobiotechnologies in plant conservation. Good summary of the different ex situ approaches available for plants, none of them perfect. The existence of an Exceptional Plant Conservation Network and a Project Baseline for seed genebanks was news to me.
- Making the post-2020 global biodiversity framework a successful tool for building biodiverse, inclusive, resilient and safe food systems for all. The CBD needs to learn to love mixed, diverse agricultural landscapes. And genebanks, natch. Maybe it should invest in dietary metrics.
- The Role of Genetic Resources in Breeding for Climate Change: The Case of Public Breeding Programmes in Eighteen Developing Countries. Business as usual, except more intense. Oh, and perhaps more use of landraces. No word on dietary metrics.
Nibbles: Robin Graham RIP, Fred Bliss award, Seed production, Chile spuds, Indian goats, Ancient bread, Horner Bier, Cheap food, Vigna, Singing dog, Fungal diversity
- Remembering Robin Graham, prophet of biofortification.
- Honouring plant breeder supreme Fred Blisss.
- Need to produce seed of all those new varieties that breeders come up with.
- And save the stuff they will replace: The Economist does the potatoes of Chiloé.
- Hey, it’s not just about the crops: conserving goats on farm in India.
- The experimental archaeology of bread thrives under corona. And if you were intrigued by the potato detoxification reference, find the details on Bill Schindler’s website. And not only bread and potatoes, also beer…
- Like Mozart’s oat beer? Which was apparently killed off by lager back in Austria but is now available in Denver.
- Food shouldn’t be cheap, it should be affordable, and not only for those who consume it. Ancient Egyptian bread will be exempted.
- No way Kenyan coffee can be described as cheap. h/t Jeremy’s newsletter: have you subscribed yet?
- I don’t know how cheap mungbean is in Myanmar, but it seems to be very valuable.
- The PNG singing dog is not extinct in the wild after all? Priceless.
- Combination of key and photo guide to the identification of European fungi. Worth its weight in truffles. Source.
Nibbles: Hambre, Potato song, Blockchain, Pacific crops, Botanic gardens
- Vavilov in Spanish.
- Song about the potato Solanum ajanhuiri from Aymara to Spanish to English.
- Using blockchain to trace biofortified seeds. Maybe.
- Vincent Lebot on the opportunity that Covid-19 represents for traditional Pacific crops. Silver lining.
- Botanic gardens to the rescue. Wouldn’t that be cool.