Nutrition

January 14, 2019January 12, 2019

Brainfood: Coca phylogeny, Potato taste & nutrition & resistance, CC & nutrition, Light & nutrition, Remote poverty, Spicy toms, Input subsidies, Broilerocene, European livestock then & now, Bean domestication, Peach domestication, Machine conservation, Habitat fragmentation, Conservation planning, Taxidermy, Wheat diversity, Livestock GS

Phylogenetic inference in section Archerythroxylum informs taxonomy, biogeography, and the domestication of coca (Erythroxylum species). Morphology is not enough.
Improving Flavor to Increase Consumption. Yield is not enough.
The Nutritional Contribution of Potato Varietal Diversity in Andean Food Systems: a Case Study. Yield is not enough.
Stacking three late blight resistance genes from wild species directly into African highland potato varieties confers complete field resistance to local blight races. One resistance gene is not enough.
Income growth and climate change effects on global nutrition security to mid-century. Calories will not be enough.
Urbanization and Child Nutritional Outcomes. Urbanization is enough.
Socioecologically informed use of remote sensing data to predict rural household poverty. Night light is not enough.
Capsaicinoids: Pungency beyond Capsicum. Peppers and tomatoes are not enough.
The impact of agricultural input subsidies on food and nutrition security: a systematic review. The data are not enough.
The broiler chicken as a signal of a human reconfigured biosphere. The broiler is enough.
Pre-Roman improvements to agricultural production: Evidence from livestock husbandry in late prehistoric Italy. The Romans were not enough.
Optimizing ex situ genetic resource collections for European livestock conservation. One genebank is not enough.
Does the Genomic Landscape of Species Divergence in Phaseolus Beans Coerce Parallel Signatures of Adaptation and Domestication? One genome is enough.
Genome re-sequencing reveals the evolutionary history of peach fruit edibility. Human selection was not enough.
Predicting plant conservation priorities on a global scale. This black box is enough.
Is habitat fragmentation bad for biodiversity? Small patches may be enough.
Synergies between the key biodiversity area and systematic conservation planning approaches. One conservation approach is not enough.
Capturing goats: documenting two hundred years of mitochondrial DNA diversity among goat populations from Britain and Ireland. Stuffed goats are enough.
Decline in climate resilience of European wheat. The current varieties are not enough.
Harnessing genomic information for livestock improvement. Genomic selection was going to be enough.

January 11, 2019January 11, 2019

The multifarious origins of food

Could it be that we neglected to say anything at all back in the summer of 2016 about our friend Colin Khoury’s paper Origins of food crops connect countries worldwide? I can hardly believe it, but I can’t find anything at all in the blog’s archives. Weird in the extreme. ¹ We were very good about Colin’s Increasing homogeneity in global food supplies and the implications for food security, but we seem to have dropped the ball on the follow-up. Anyway, here’s the money quote from the abstract:

Countries are highly interconnected with regard to primary regions of diversity of the crops they cultivate and/or consume. Foreign crops are extensively used in food supplies (68.7% of national food supplies as a global mean are derived from foreign crops) and production systems (69.3% of crops grown are foreign). Foreign crop usage has increased significantly over the past 50 years, including in countries with high indigenous crop diversity.

You can explore the data on CIAT’s wonderful companion interactive website.

I bring this up now because Colin has come up with neat infographics illustrating how even nationally iconic foods like pizza can trace the origins of their ingredients to multiple regions of the world.