- The fascinating story of konzo, nicely told.
- You’ll remember my take on that, of course.
- Speaking of my take, on the release of the Access to Nutrition Index I ask: cui bono genebanks?
- Somebody mention genebanks? Yes, ICRISAT.
- Consider the beauty of the humble potato.
- Nobody ever calls coffee humble.
- Wanna tell the world about any of the above?
Brainfood: Czech genebank value, AnGR value, Korea rice core value, Cannabis value, Red rice diversity, Aquaculture trends, Mexican CWR, Rice male sterility, Evidence base, Siberian cheese
- Estimating the Value of Crop Diversity Conservation Services Provided by the Czech National Programme for Agrobiodiversity. Willingness-to-pay (WTP) amounts to country-wide benefits of $68 million.
- Animal genetic resources diversity and ecosystem services. Traditional breeds make a significant contribution to non-provisioning ecosystem services, but their keepers are often marginalized. Maybe somebody should calculate WTP?
- Genome-wide association study reveals candidate genes related to low temperature tolerance in rice (Oryza sativa) during germination. 100 genes on 2 chromosomes, based on data from the Korean core collection.
- The Role of Agriculture in Supplying Nutritional, Medicinal, and Recreational Cannabis Products. We need a Green Ganja Revolution, man.
- Diversity and population structure of red rice germplasm in Bangladesh. Red rices, actually.
- Comparative terrestrial feed and land use of an aquaculture-dominant world. Farming fish spares more land than farming livestock. And is better for you.
- A Crop Wild Relative Inventory for Mexico. 310 taxa, 30% endemic.
- Genetic analysis of male sterility obtained from a rice cultivar Lebed backcrossed with Taichung 65. You can get it here.
- The major barriers to evidence‐informed conservation policy and possible solutions. Convince the public, and the policy-makers will come.
- Using PacBio sequencing to investigate the bacterial microbiota of traditional Buryatian cottage cheese and comparison with Italian and Kazakhstan artisanal cheeses. Buryatia is a mountainous Russian republic in eastern Siberia, and they make really diverse cheese there, bacterially speaking.
Nibbles: Cloisters, Plum breeding, Wild tomatoes, Phytosanitary regulations, Public breeding, EU regulations, Svalbard @10, Local grains, Chips, ICRAF double
- Medieval monastery gardens deconstructed.
- Burbank’s plums decoded.
- The wild tomatoes of the Galapagos evaluated.
- Germplasm exchange expedited.
- Public sector plant breeding advocated.
- Farmer-saved seeds saved?
- Svalbard Global Seed Vault celebrated.
- Local flour milled.
- Potato chips (crisps) invented.
- Indigenous trees taken seriously. Very seriously.
Brainfood: Genebanks genomics, Improving forages, 3000 rices, Sweet potato dispersal, Diversity on farm double, Herbaria double, Phenotyping box, Invasives, Meta-meta-analysis, Rice domestication, Soil depth
- Role of genomics in promoting the utilization of plant genetic resources in genebanks. Genebanks don’t need to do genomics themselves to benefit from genomics.
- Improving the Yield and Nutritional Quality of Forage Crops. Case in point.
- Genomic variation in 3,010 diverse accessions of Asian cultivated rice. Case in point. Multiple independent domestications. Tomorrow, the world.
- Sweet potato dispersal or human transport? Maybe no evidence one way or another after all. Rebuttal of: Reconciling Conflicting Phylogenies in the Origin of Sweet Potato and Dispersal to Polynesia. And the counter to the rebuttal. This genomics stuff not so easy after all.
- Review: Meta-analysis of the association between production diversity, diets, and nutrition in smallholder farm households. It’s not always there. But that would have been a high bar.
- Agricultural diversification as an important strategy for achieving food security in Africa. Case in point. More diverse households and farming systems are more food secure, but only up to a point, and it depends on various factors. 43% of African cropland will be difficult to diversify.
- Using herbaria to study global environmental change. Have been used to monitor the effects of climate change, habitat change, pollution and invasives on plants.
- Green Digitization: Online Botanical Collections Data Answering Real‐World Questions. Gotta get the stuff digitized first though.
- The ‘PhenoBox’, a flexible, automated, open‐source plant phenotyping solution. Somebody mention digitizing?
- Dissecting the null model for biological invasions: A meta-analysis of the propagule pressure effect. The success of aliens is down to their numbers. Wonder if it works for pest and disease organisms too.
- Are systematic reviews and meta-analyses still useful research? We are not sure. All righty then. Scrap the above.
- Shattering or not shattering: that is the question in domestication of rice (Oryza sativa L.). From one of the authors, Debarati Chakraborty: Loss of shattering through sh4 is not a crucial step for rice domestication. Genetics, cultural anthropology and archaeology suggests that primitive agrarians were dependent on wild or semi-domesticated shattering rice.
- Rooting for food security in Sub-Saharan Africa. Sub-Saharan Africa probably hasn’t the rootable soil depth for monster maize yields.
Brainfood: Definitions, Atlantic goats, Sorghum photoperiod, Maize erosion, Dactylis diversity, Chickpea diversity, Social media, TR4, Diet change
- ‘Genetic resources’, an analysis of a multifaceted concept. You don’t say.
- Exploring the genetic diversity and relationships between Spanish and Moroccan goats using microsatellite markers. Different, but connected, except for the ones in the Canary Islands.
- Latitudinal Adaptation of Flowering Response to Photoperiod and Temperature in the World Collection of Sorghum Landraces. Out of 20,710: 1697 photoperiod and temperature insensitive, 18,766 photoperiod sensitive and temperature insensitive and 247 photoperiod and temperature sensitive.
- Conserving maize in gene banks: Changes in genetic diversity revealed by morphological and SSR markers. Not good ones.
- AFLP-based genetic diversity of wild orchardgrass germplasm collections from Central Asia and Western China, and the relation to environmental factors. Strongish ecogeographic structure. Good to see old school markers still in use.
- Genetic Diversity, Population Structure, and Genetic Correlation with Climatic Variation in Chickpea (Cicer arietinum) Landraces from Pakistan. Some differentiation along elevation and temperature gradients despite limited overall diversity.
- Capturing genetic variation in crop wild relatives: An evolutionary approach. Environmental data is your friend. But we knew that, right?
- New Geographical Insights of the Latest Expansion of Fusarium oxysporum f.sp. cubense Tropical Race 4 Into the Greater Mekong Subregion. Be afraid.
- The opportunity cost of animal based diets exceeds all food losses. Never happen.
- An Introduction to Social Media for Scientists. It might happen, if you tweet it.
- Tweet success? Scientific communication correlates with increased citations in Ecology and Conservation. See what I mean?