- 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.
Nibbles: A2S2019, ICRISAT seeds, High protein rice, American grapes, Religion & diet, Australian NUS
- Access to Seeds comes out with 2019 edition. Not much change, alas. LATER: Ok, I stand corrected. And spanked.
- Maybe this ICRISAT online seed tool will help with that access.
- How many people will have access to this high protein rice?
- Indigenous American grape species: more than just rootstocks.
- The religion of diets.
- Bush tucker is a religion for some.
Brainfood: Intensification, Yemen ag, Czech barley, Bangladesh community genebank, Agrobiodiversity Index, North American CWR, Israeli genebanks, Biofortified wheat, QDS, Collecting Miscanthus, Ethnobotany, NUS, Pecan diversity, Korean ponds, CWR gaps double, Salty rice
- Agricultural intensification, dietary diversity, and markets in the global food security narrative. Intensification is all well and good but it needs to be sustainable and nutrition-sensitive.
- Health, Seeds, Diversity and Terraces. Maybe evolutionary plant breeding can help with that.
- Identification of barley powdery mildew resistances in gene bank accessions and the use of gene diversity for verifying seed purity and authenticity. It’s difficult to deal with heterogeneous accessions.
- The USD 1,875.95 Seed Center. A serious-looking community seed bank in Bangladesh.
- Assessing agroecosystem sustainability in Cuba: A new agrobiodiversity index. Not same as the old index.
- North American Crop Wild Relatives, Volume 1. Volume 1?
- Ex-situ conservation strategies for endangered plants in the Israel Gene Bank. Not just crops, and not just conservation…
- The Institute of Evolution Wild Cereal Gene Bank at the University of Haifa. …and not even the only genebank in Israel.
- Assessing Genetic Diversity to Breed Competitive Biofortified Wheat With Enhanced Grain Zn and Fe Concentrations. Four translocations from rye and various Aegilops species have resulted in 8 biofortified bread wheat varieties after a decade of work. Compare and contrast with potatoes.
- Improving efficiency of seed system by appropriating farmer’s rights in India through adoption and implementation of policy of quality declared seed schemes in parallel. FAO’s Quality Declared Seed (QDS) system is the way to go.
- Collecting wild Miscanthus germplasm in Asia for crop improvement and conservation in Europe whilst adhering to the guidelines of the United Nations’ Convention on Biological Diversity. It can be done.
- Making friends in the field: How to become an ethnobotanist – A personal reflection. Yes, it can.
- Mainstreaming Underutilized Indigenous and Traditional Crops into Food Systems: A South African Perspective. Start by having researchers translate their findings for policy makers.
- Genotyping by sequencing (GBS) and SNP marker analysis of diverse accessions of pecan (Carya illinoinensis). Geographic patterning of genetic diversity and SNPs for dichogamy found.
- Trait-based evaluation of plant assemblages in traditional farm ponds in Korea: Ecological and management implications. Dumbeongs are carefully managed. Well there’s a shocker.
- Conservation gap analysis of crop wild relatives in Turkey. There still are some.
- An in situ approach to the conservation of temperate cereal crop wild relatives in the Mediterranean Basin and Asian centre of diversity. 10 locations would do.
- Molecular characterization and identification of new sources of tolerance to submergence and salinity from rice landraces of coastal India. 5 of 98 accessions had novel alleles.