- AdaptMap: exploring goat diversity and adaptation. Strong geographic structuring.
- Insights into the genetic diversity of indigenous goats and their conservation priorities. “…if one breed could survive in changing conditions all the time, the straightforward approach is to increase its utilization and attraction for production via mining breed germplasm characteristic.” If…
- Leveraging agriculture for nutrition in South Asia: What do we know, and what have we learned? To do its part for nutrition, agriculture needs to play nice with other sectors. Here comes the evidence base.
- A global synthesis reveals biodiversity-mediated benefits for crop production. Service-providing organisms really do provide services.
- Intensifying Inequality? Gendered Trends in Commercializing and Diversifying Smallholder Farming Systems in East Africa. Commercialization good for men, diversification good for women. Maybe do both? And more on commercialization.
- Iron biofortification interventions to improve iron status and functional outcomes. Cognitive performance improved, but no effect on iron deficiency or anaemia. So complicated.
- In vitro tissue culture of apple and other Malus species: recent advances and applications. Lots of tinkering still needed.
- Mediterranean and Northern Iberian gene pools of wild Castanea sativa Mill. are two differentiated ecotypes originated under natural divergent selection. One xeric, the other mesophytic. Satisfyingly uncomplicated.
- Guidelines for seed collection of Araucaria angustifolia (Bertol.) Kuntze: A genetic, demographic and geographic approach. Watch out for fragmentation.
- Screening of wild potato genetic resources for combined resistance to late blight on tubers and pale potato cyst nematodes. 5% of about 1000 very resistant. Another 1000 to go.
- Connecting genebanks to farmers in East Africa through the distribution of vegetable seed kits. Distributing 42,000 seed kits with 183,000 vegetable seed samples in 5 years generates lots of questions.
- Role and management of soil biodiversity for food security and nutrition; where do we stand? We stand uncertain is where we stand.
- Genetic Approaches to Improve Common Bean Nutritional Quality: Current Knowledge and Future Perspectives. Not as nutritious as it could be.
- Trophic Cascade in Seaweed Beds in Sanriku Coast Hit by the Huge Tsunami on 11 March 2011: Sea Urchin Fishery as a Satoumi Activity Serving for Increase in Marine Productivity and Biodiversity. Human-intervention-encourages-biodiversity shock. In other news, Japan has a sea urchin fishery.
- Molecular evidence for repeated recruitment of wild Christmas poinsettia (Euphorbia pulcherrima) into traditional horticulture in Mexico. Fancy genotyping shows plants in gardens were transplanted from the wild. Why not just ask the gardeners though?
Brainfood: Forage seeds, Meat is murder, Medieval farming, Bean breeding, Moth bean genomics, Red List definitions, Amaranth domestication, Seed networks, Local adaptation, Social norms, Food demand, Grasspea future, Strawberry evolution, Maracuoccio
- Medium-term seed storage of diverse genera of forage grasses, evidence-based genebank monitoring intervals, and regeneration standards. One size does not fit all.
- Sustainability gridlock in a global agricultural commodity chain: Reframing the soy–meat food system. Divide and conquer.
- Farm establishment, abandonment and agricultural practices during the last 1,300 years: a case study from southern Sweden based on pollen records and the LOVE model. Medieval Swedes got high.
- A review of breeding objectives, genomic resources, and marker-assisted methods in common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.). Oh dear, a worldwide catalogue of germplasm needed.
- Construction of genetic linkage map and genome dissection of domestication-related traits of moth bean (Vigna aconitifolia), a legume crop of arid areas. No word on whether a catalogue is needed.
- Resources and opportunities for re-establishing Lathyrus cicera L. as a multipurpose cultivated plant. I’d try it. But do a catalogue first.
- Ex situ seed banks and the IUCN Red List. When is extinct not extinct?
- Convergent seed color adaptation during repeated domestication of an ancient new world grain. Grain amaranth selected 3 times independently from same wild precursor, but always for the same colour.
- Modeling epidemics in seed systems and landscapes to guide management strategies: The case of sweetpotato in Northern Uganda. Spread of disease depends on where it starts. Watch out for places with lots of out-nodes.
- A Molecular View of Plant Local Adaptation: Incorporating Stress-Response Networks. Adaptation here does not necessarily mean no adaptation there. Interesting for breeders?
- Using social norms to encourage healthier eating. To get kids to eat broccoli, tell them their favourite youtuber does. Probably generalizable.
- Nutrition Transition and the Structure of Global Food Demand. Lower growth in overall food demand than in the past, but a doubling of demand for animal calories.
- Grass pea (Lathyrus sativus L.): orphan crop, nutraceutical or just plain food? Needs to shed its bad image.
- Origin and evolution of the octoploid strawberry genome. All four parents tracked down.
Nibbles: Homeric food, Two atlases, Cacao breeding, Smart foods, Lancet/EAT, Wild grapes, Landrace maize, Training breeders, Apios, Sustainable use, Cost of nutrition
- Did Homeric heroes eat a lot of meat? The answer will surprise you. A thread.
- Social food atlas to be launched.
- Atlas of West African food systems already launched. Very different thing.
- Saving chocolate through biotech.
- What makes foods smart?
- Pros and cons of the Lancet/EAT thing. And more.
- Waking up the wine industry to the beauty grapevine wild relatives.
- The magos of maize, from Mexico to the US, and back again.
- Plant breeding training in Africa.
- Pre-colonial North America: not wilderness, not dense forest, and not just the Three Sisters, lots of Apios too. Lots.
- Food AND biodiversity.
- Nutritious OR affordable.
Brainfood: Improvement recapitulates domestication, Functional variation, Intensification, Gender & nutrition, Collaboration double, Losses, AgRenSeq , Crocus domestication, Saffron evolution, Mascarene CWR, Mexican CWR, ABS, Sweet cocoa, Tasty fruits, Baobab diversity
- How can developmental biology help feed a growing population? By figuring out how domestication hacked developmental processes.
- Distinct characteristics of genes associated with phenome-wide variation in maize (Zea mays). Analyzing a lot of traits at a time identifies a different set of phenotypically causal genes than more conventional single-trait approaches. What it all means in practice I have no idea, you tell me.
- Sunflower pan-genome analysis shows that hybridization altered gene content and disease resistance. Not only is one trait not enough, one genome is not enough.
- Agriculturally productive yet biodiverse: human benefits and conservation values along a forest-agriculture gradient in Southern Ethiopia. Depends what you mean by productive.
- Does providing agricultural and nutrition information to both men and women improve household food security? Evidence from Malawi. Yes.
- Principles of effective collaboration in agricultural development and research for impact. Learn from the birds.
- Opening the dialogue: Research networks between high‐ and low‐income countries further understanding of global agro‐climatic challenges. See above. Maybe.
- The global burden of pathogens and pests on major food crops. About 20%. We talked about this…
- Resistance gene cloning from a wild crop relative by sequence capture and association genetics. A new way to reduce the above, using crop wild relatives.
- Adding color to a century‐old enigma: multi‐color chromosome identification unravels the autotriploid nature of saffron (Crocus sativus) as a hybrid of wild Crocus cartwrightianus cytotypes. Which means you can now re-synthesize it.
- Crop wild relative diversity and conservation planning in two isolated oceanic islands of a biodiversity hotspot (Mauritius and Rodrigues). Basically coffee.
- Diversity and conservation priorities of crop wild relatives in Mexico. Over 300 species, but not coffee.
- Benefit sharing mechanisms for agricultural genetic diversity use and on-farm conservation. Profit-sharing is better for conservation than technology transfer.
- Are Cocoa Farmers in Trinidad Happy? Exploring Factors Affecting their Happiness. Well, those whose main crop was not cacao are happier, which must say something.
- Edible fruits from Brazilian biodiversity: A review on their sensorial characteristics versus bioactivity as tool to select research. Eat Anacardium occidentale, Passiflora edulis and Acrocomia aculeata to be happiest. Seems very unadventurous, though.
- Genetic differentiation in leaf phenology among natural populations of Adansonia digitata L. follows climatic clines. Anyone going to do this for all those Brazilian fruits?
Brainfood: Sinotato, Photophenomics, Bangladesh lentils, Vernalization gene, Droning on, Pathogen identification, Human domestication, Citrus cryo, Purple rain, Teff diversity, Mining biodiversity lit, Wild dates, Buckwheat improvement, Panicum genome
- Potato and Food Security in China. Huge expansion, mainly due to product diversification, but still room for growth. But how will it end? Like bananas?
- Converging phenomics and genomics to study natural variation in plant photosynthetic efficiency. Chlorophyll fluorescence technologies are revolutionizing phenotyping. Now everyone will want another gadget.
- Is DNA fingerprinting the gold standard for estimation of adoption and impacts of improved lentil varieties? It’s not about yield.
- A florigen paralog is required for short-day vernalization in a pooid grass. Nope, I can’t say it better than the press release: Ancient gene duplication gave grasses multiple ways to wait out winter.
- Drones for Conservation in Protected Areas: Present and Future. Sure, why not. On-farm too?
- Genome-Enhanced Detection and Identification (GEDI) of plant pathogens. Sort of barcoding for bugs.
- Self-domestication in Homo sapiens: Insights from comparative genomics. There’s a domestication syndrome for humans too.
- Cryopreservation of Citrus limon (L.) Burm. F Shoot Tips Using a Droplet-vitrification Method. Well, at least two varieties work.
- Farmers Drive Genetic Diversity of Thai Purple Rice (Oryza sativa L.) Landraces. Well, who else?
- Genetic Diversity of Ethiopian Tef [(Eragrostis tef (Zucc.) Trotter] Released and Selected Farmers’ Varieties along with Two Wild Relatives as Revealed by Microsatellite Markers. The landraces are distinct from the released varieties, and more diverse.
- Biodiversity Observations Miner: A web application to unlock primary biodiversity data from published literature. Nice enough, but you need to upload a PDF corpus. Why not let it loose on the internet?
- Cross-species hybridization and the origin of North African date palms. I always knew that P. theophrasti would come in useful.
- Revisiting the versatile buckwheat: reinvigorating genetic gains through integrated breeding and genomics approach. Start with a database, core collection, and wild relatives. Gratifyingly old-fashioned.
- The genome of broomcorn millet. That would be Panicum miliaceum.